I have an opportunity to do an objective measurements based test once my HT is finished. Good speakers with good AVR vs high end 2ch amp. Will there be audible differences in my room? I will guess yes. The plots will tell the story.
In an untreated room the differences are negligible in most cases. When you can hear the recording's acoustic space (ie RT60 and early/late decay ratios are in check) a couple DB difference becomes audible. At HTS they did an amp evaluation. There were differences. I'm too lazy/busy to wade through all the pages and pages of the results thread.
