Will,

i'm not spending over 2k Canadian for the 1066. It's not that it's out of my price range but i decided that enough is enough already. I'm always upgrading this and that and i've come to the point where i'm experimenting with some receivers to see how they sound as prepros. The Kenwood 6070 is a very good home theater performer and is just as good as the 950 in this area. There i said it! For 2 channel, the 6070 lacks bigtime while the Outlaw sounded above average for 2 channel in my book. Yes i know this is a bold and surprising statement but i'm very impressed with the 6070 for stricktly home theater use.

Put it this way, i like the 6070 so much that i'm going to keep it Now i just need a good 2 channel pre with passthrough and i'll be all set. In this case less is more and i'm very impressed with the Kenwood and it's processing abilities. I would have never thought this to be possible and i know everyone is saying what Kenwood? I thought the same thing believe me but after putting this receiver through it's paces for about a month, all i can say is that it's a winner for HT. After 5 minutes of stereo listening however, i had enough....

Power,

Thanks for the clarification! I've heard that in a HT environment (e.g., when video is present), the sound isn't as critical as when video isn't, because when a person concentrates on what he sees he maybe can't concentrate that well on what he hears. I don't know if that's true, but that's what I've heard...

How does your Kenwood receiver compare to the 950 in multichannel sound when video is not present, such as DPL II?

Will,

i play particular attention to sound, video is second in my home theater. There are many scenes i know by heart such as some scenes from Gladiator, etc and i really pay attention to detail such as dialogue intelligibility during scenes of chaos, low level dialogue, placement of sounds from front to back, left to right, bass impact, soundstage and sense of depth, etc, etc.

The 6070 has the Analog Devices Melody 32 bit DSP engine which is a high quality chipset which explains partly it's great performance for multi channel soundtracks. I haven't tried this receiver alone without my external amps and may be disappointed if i do but as a HT processor, i'm very happy with it...

Power,

Have you picked one out?