>>They said NO, that with the Denon I have that it would make NO difference in sound quality. I don't listen to high volume music. I am into quality recorded multichannel SACD's...any thoughts?
Nothing has changed. Most of us here believe that one amp sounds pretty much like another except at the extremes. For low volume listening it's possible that certain amps (class A's for example) might sound a tiny bit clearer because of reduced crossover notch, but most modern amps seem to just crank up the bias current, idle hot, and get rid of the notch "the class AB" way. I assume that is one of the arguments for the little T-amps (or maybe it's just because they're cute
).
At high volumes, you can start pushing the limits of a typical AV receiver and you will notice the difference between a typical good receiver and a big honkin' power amp.
Where we don't have consensus yet is the exact location of the boundaries between "normal" and "extreme". If you listen at moderate volumes in a moderate size room you probably aren't going near the extremes. Bigger room, higher volumes -- yeah, a big honkin' amp is going to start making a difference IMO.
EDIT -- you get more debate about one receiver sounding different from another, but I think that's mostly because it's so damn hard these days to make sure that all the signal processing and auto-eq geegaws are really truly turned off. There are still some unexplained differences in sound which have been reported by credible people but in general the threads end with "oh, THAT'S what happens when I turn that mode on" and everyone else goes out and changes their receiver settings when listening to stereo
