MT. I have based my responses on a couple of things.
1. A conversation with Tom cumberland, the principle engineer at Axiom. He has been in the business a long time and knows many people in the industry including people at Yamaha. According to Tom, in the consumer division, they completely redesign their amps with each new series so you get variation in the quality/power from series to series.
In contrast, he told me that Denon takes an incremental approach to amp design. They keep a base design for a much longer time and make incremental changes over time.
2. I read a number of reviews done at audioholics on Yamaha receivers and it reflected Toms comments. Some receivers well exceeded their stated specs and others just met them.
3. Take a look at similarly priced Denon and Yamaha amps. The Yamis will have a lot more features. Everything has its price. If you add more components/features, you either need to add to the price, or cut back somewhere else. I think Yamaha cuts back on the amp section to deliver more features. For most people, its probably a good trade off.
