Riffman,
I'll make myself clear on several of these points. I recommend Denon and H/K brands simply because they will drive 4-ohm loads without shutting down, imposing current limiting, or going into a protection mode. That is based on customer experience with various brands of receivers and the 4-ohm M80 tower speakers. H/K also tends to rate the output power of their receivers more honestly and conservatively than many other brands. And the fact that Denon and H/K do not shut down driving 4-ohm loads when operated within reasonable limits (not in giant rooms at extremely loud playback levels or in clipping modes) speaks to somewhat beefier power supplies in the receivers.
I also have some insider info on quality control troubles with some brands, which may or may not apply to current models. Since I edited audio/video magazines for 19 years, and, prior to that, actually did lab tests of equipment for AudioScene Canada, I'm aware of what equipment tends to be reliable and meet their specifications and what brands do not meet their specifications, including some high-priced and overrated darlings of the high-end magazines.
As to "Stereo's Intrinsic Flaw," there is no particular agenda on my part to promote multi-channel home theater systems per se. The limitations of 2-channel sound have been known and documented ever since the 1930s, when Bell Telephone engineers did tests of multichannel sound and concluded that at least 3 channels were necessary to effectively convey the sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra to a hall in a distant location (they used discrete telephone lines and a live orchestra).
As we know, recording technology up until the mid 1950s could only encode one channel--mono. The advent of 2-channel stereo was a huge leap in realism, and adding more channels to better mimic the way our hearing system detects and processes sounds from every direction, simply advances the state of reproduced sound. As I pointed out in the article, the flaw of 2-channel stereo is that it encodes and reproduces all the reflected and ambient sounds from two speakers at the front of the room, a totally unnatural presentation.
We hear sounds, in a concert hall, club, or outside, from every direction. Using multiple discrete channels to record and preserve those directional cues, with ambient sounds reproduced from the sides the way they happen in real life (as well as from the rear and even above), simply increases the level of realism. (By the way, various acoustical studies have shown that our ears/brain are most responsive to sounds from the sides of a hall or space. The time delays of lateral reflected sounds instantly tell our brain the "size" of a space that we are in. We are not nearly as sensitive to reflected sounds from above or to the rear, nor are we as precise in locating sounds from above or to the rear. This is why side-mounted surround speakers are preferable to those directly behind us).
Regards,
