Gonk,

No, I am not looking to use the 1050 solely as a stereo amplifier. I was just toying with the idea. It will still be used as my primary A/V receiver.

One question though. If someone decides to use the 5.1 channel inputs from an already decoded signal from, for example, a DVD player, would they still run into the same problem of finding that "sweet spot" on the control volume setting?

johnny5