In reply to:

The Sony system appears to have more 'slam' in HT and HT sounds great but is not as musical.




That's because very little music goes down to 20Hz where you get the rumbling feeling. Most music stays up around 40-60Hz which should "slam" you at all. When was the last time you saw a live concert where you felt "slammed"?

In reply to:

That Technics was unbelievably musical, maybe the most musical of all the HT receivers I've used including some which cost more than 5 times as much.




Define this. How exactly does a musical signal differ from a movie one in order to make one receiver good at movies but not as much so at music.