Zhangoku,
Alam ko yun feeling na yan. Ganyan na ganyan din ako nung bago pa ako sa hobby.
I believe you are looking for the midrange. LFE kasi can be handled by the sub, high freq (HF) can be achieved even by low powered HTiB's (madali lang i-power to). The critical midrange is very important in giving you a convincing immersive feel of the movie, specially w/ very demanding action scenes.The midrange eats up a lot of power.
In my experience, you wont get that in a budget receiver. Like, come on, imagine if you are the receiver company's engineer and you are asked to design a receiver w/ a budget way under 10k (may tubo pa sila, bentahan 20k), may tuner, amp, preamp, &
power for 7 channels 
Luckily, your marantz has pre outs, so the simplest advice is to go for
power amps. Its cheaper than going for the more powerful 50k-70k receivers that can provide you the midrange slam & umph.
malaking tulong narin sakin itong pinoydvd dahil atleast nababasa ko at nagkakaroon ng konting idea kung ano ano ba yung mga speakers na magaganda. isa na nga dito yung M52 sa nabasa ko at talaga namang marami ang nagsasabi na maganda raw ang tunog nito (number one of them is sir MAtZTER).
Nagpalit na po ako ng speakers, kasi more on audio na ako. I am now using a dynaudio floorstander. Now kung alam mo kung magkano ang Dynaudio (doble ng M52) .... and masasabi ko lang ngayon eh, mas maganda pa rin performance ng
well powered Mission M52 (at more HALF the cost) sa Home theater. Pero sa music, malayo lamang ng Dyn, but its another price class of course.
Kaya pala may Dyn owner akong friend na bilib na bilib sa performance ng Missions ko. But do take note, I really powered the M52's very well (200w bi-amp
), baka bumili kayo ng M52 & use with a budget receiver tapos sabihin nyo pangit...
