I have heard pretty good things on the denon DRA receivers. I just bought a used DRA775 for $150 (MSRP $700+) from audiogon.com that should be arriving today. I will be using mine with a pair of M-60's for stereo (mostly jazz). I will let you know how the sound is within a couple of days. If you haven't checked already, you will probably want to check out some user reviews on those units on audioreview.com.
With axioms, you will probably want to stay away from some of the brighter recievers that are out there, but most of them seem to be AV receivers as opposed to what you are considering.
Another concern of mine is stereo reception, this unit reportly has a good tuner. I will find out if I can get rid of my seperate 1970's kenwood tuner (and about 30lbs of gear).
-jd
