That's not even close to being true. Yamaha does their own DSP. Denon and Sony and others use AD SHARCs. Rotel and Outlaw and others use Cirrus. B&K and Anthem and others use Motorola.

And then there's software, DACs and ADCs, power supplies, board design, etc, etc.

You might argue that the end effect is the same, and I would mostly agree with you there , but there are many different chip sets out there.

I have seen that the Ref 40 might list as low as $2800. That would put it in the low $2k's for the street price. I'd consider it at that point, especially if it has a true 2 channel bypass mode, and a true 5.1 analog passthrough. (No "double bass".) The Ref 30 is rated very highly on www.audioreview.com compared to other pre/pros.