... When the Denon is controlling things the voiced sound very loud when the bass isn't present. Then as soon as the bass kicks in both the voices and the rest of the higher frequency sounds seem to drop a notch.
You can hear that a lot w/ low-budget DJs at the bowling alley or so; usually their amp will get overdriven much sooner than their speakers and that's exactly what you'll hear. So, what you are describing is fairly easy to distinguish and most likely it's not due to the placebo effect. On the other hand, I totally agree w/ JohnK's blind test argument. I think the question here is: at what SPL an 100watts Denon AVR start to show distortion/clipping. My opinion is that it happens much sooner than advertised.
