Thanks for the great replies. Yes, I certainly understand that home audio is an incremental hobby that (usually) takes years to build up to a 'master' system. Right now, I'm sort of looking at where to enter 'the next level' of sound. My friend's 2-channel room doesn't really have anything special done to it acoustically other than nice thick carpet. The acoustics of the room itself seem quite nice, as even the tone of your voice sounds richer.
I digress...
I spent a couple of hours tinkering with my home setup over the weekend after listening to his stereo, and did make some improvements. Pushing the m22's further out to near the walls of my room, and slightly toe-ing them in helped the sound stage and did result in real improvements (my wife commented that it sounds better, so I'm not imaginging things). And while I do love my Pioneer Elite receiver, I've definitely been lurking about on several preamp/amp manufacturer's sites and learning what I can. Outlaw Audio is one in particular that I keep coming back to. My receiver also has pre-outs for all 8 channels as well, so I might not need a new, pure pre-amp right away....
For example, the 'exercise' that just kills my system involves nothing more than a man and a microphone (Chesky system setup tools, FYI). He announces that he is standing front and center at the microphone, then walks halfway between center and stage right, then full stage right, then off stage to the right. Then he does the same thing on the left side. It's about as simple an exercise as you can have. On my friend's system, the placement is absolutely perfect, and when the man is beyond the stage his voice actually seems to come from beyond the L/R speaker - spooky and fascinating. On my system I can tell when he's dead center, and full left or right, but the in-between positions sound undefined and confusing, and the far off-stage test sounds very strange and not natural, with no 'beyond-the-speaker' feeling to it. On my friend's system you can hear details in the recording such as the echos from whatever theater where it was recorded quite clearly. It sounds and feels very much like you're in an empty concert hall, which is exactly where it was recorded. There's very little of that feeling in my system. It's quite revealing and disapointing. Again, $3k worth of components vs maybe $80k - rather difficult to compare!
Honestly, right now it boils down that proably in about 3 or so months I'll be ready to make another home theater purchase, and I don't know whether I should go the M60/M80 route, or the seperates route first - knowing that *eventually* I'll probably do both.
I suppose the best next step would be to build myself a new house with an acoustically magic room
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