Price Paid:  $340.00 from BestBuy - open box

Summary:
I had all the receivers stated below in my house at the same time. After 2 weeks of quickly switching back and forth I came to the following conclusion. Most enjoyable sound is definitely the Sony DE895. Pioneer would have been good except for amplifier distortion.

Strengths:
Full complete sound. Great surround even at very, very low volume levels. Clean sounding amplifier. Background sound in movies totally surrounds you as though you had 20 speakers not just 5. Good sound stage puts you in the action. Runs very cool. Ordinary speakers sound good. Sounds good with music too.

Weaknesses:
Toggle on remote takes time to get use to.

Similar Products Used:
Onkyo 601 - Clean but lacks sound stage and some lower mid frequencies missing. Not good at low volumes. Preferred the Pioneer 812. Pioneer 812 - Good sound stage and lively sound puts you in the action. Excellent setup for speakers. Good at low volume. Bad is the 1% distortion rating at 1KHz. You here the distortion unlike Sony. Yamaha - same issues as Onkyo.

Price Paid:  $330.00 from jandr

Summary:
this receiver when properly adjusted to the size of your listening area sounds great..

Strengths:
sound and power..

Weaknesses:
lacks a few surround modes the volume max out at 70 instead of 100

Similar Products Used:
im a big fan of sony i have used str-de 435, 635, 845

Price Paid:  $378.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
Where to start? I owned an STDRE835 for 3-4 years and was pretty pleased with it until I blew the outputs. I felt it was time to replace as opposed to fixing it immediately after reading several other users had this problem repeatedly. I bought the STDRE895 thinking it was a logical replacement and a stepup of sorts. Boy was I wrong! This is a gutless receiver with fewer features than my 835. It came no where near the same perfomance levels of my old receiver even though it sports similar specs. I had to run this thing at two thirds volume to create anywhere near the same sound that my old receiver created at one third. Also, it would not decode my DTS audio discs even though it decoded DTS on my DVD's OK. After 10 days of buyers remorse, I took it back to Best Buy and bought the Yamaha HTR-5660 (they were out of the 5650 and I was impatient). I spent an extra $100 but MAN is the Yamaha a great receiver! I'm running JBL bookshelf speakers in front with an Infinity center and a Paradigm sub. In back I have in-wall JBL's due to my room setup and the fact the house was pre-wired when I bought it.

Strengths:
Nice learnable remote

Weaknesses:
Decode problems on DTS. Lack of power. Lousy owners manual and cust. support. Inadequate sound field options.

Similar Products Used:
Sony STDRE835 and now Yamaha HTR-5660.