My Pioneer VSX-1019AH-K will be on the market in 3 weeks time
... Yamaha RX-V3800 arriving.
Ulterior motives aside, I honestly think this fits the bill as a best bang for buck receiver. I bought it despite the fact that I had just bought a Denon 1802 (IIRC) a few days before. The only downside for me has been that it does not have a phono input. It isn't THX certified but IMHO I couldn't care less ... but I'm a noob. It only has 4 HDMI inputs but with a BD player, a NMT, a PS3, and Cignal HD box connected I've nothing else to plug in. Oh another downside is it only has 2 optical inputs but with just enough HDMI inputs I only really used one.
Can't really comment about SQ, all I can say is that since I got it I've found that my ratio of music to movies has shifted in favor of music. This is not to say it does not do well with movies. Often I find myself looking around to see if a sound was from the movie I was watching or something actually happening around me.
So why did I buy the Yamaha? I think my future Polk Audio A9s deserve a bigger engine.
My 5-cents.
