Well put, Gonk...my post earlier started with details like yours, but I'm glad I edited down, yours is much better.

The most important thing to remember about this unit is that it cannot be all things to all people. Being that it is a Home Theater preamp, it must be all things (or as close to it as possible) to the HT enthusiast, all other considerations are secondary.

In this forum and others there are tons of posts from stereophiles jumping through hoops to maintain separate listening settings for their HT and 2 channel listening in the same setup. While it's good that people have been able to do so (and my admiration to those who did for their fortitude), it's clear that the two specialties are becoming divergent in enough ways that high quality all-in-one solutions will fade away.