I've been down that road before and ended up going back to two seperate systems. I'm sure you can find a two channel amp that exceeds the performance of the Denon but there are two probelms with that approach that I've found:
(a) The amp may be limited by the receiver's abilities as a standalone preamp, and
(b) Denon does not currently offer a seperate amplifier (except for one integrated) and therefore you'll be choosing an amp that's voiced differently. That won't be a problem -- until you watch a movie or listen to multichannel music. Then you may notice a (possibly distracting) difference in the character of the sound from the front speakers and the others.
Marantz may offer a 2-channel amp in their reference line that would probably be voiced close to the Denon. And of course, there's always the Audiogon classifieds.
Having owned a Denon AVR-2802, I find that the premp section is rather warm and laid-back, just like the amp section, and lacks detail and definition when seperated out, so a rather lively amp is probably what's called for. But they're your ears.
Last suggestion: why not just sell the Denon and move up to a top of the line HT receiver in the $3000-$5000 range? At least then, you can count on good 2-channel performance without the complication of adding a seperate amp.
(a) The amp may be limited by the receiver's abilities as a standalone preamp, and
(b) Denon does not currently offer a seperate amplifier (except for one integrated) and therefore you'll be choosing an amp that's voiced differently. That won't be a problem -- until you watch a movie or listen to multichannel music. Then you may notice a (possibly distracting) difference in the character of the sound from the front speakers and the others.
Marantz may offer a 2-channel amp in their reference line that would probably be voiced close to the Denon. And of course, there's always the Audiogon classifieds.
Having owned a Denon AVR-2802, I find that the premp section is rather warm and laid-back, just like the amp section, and lacks detail and definition when seperated out, so a rather lively amp is probably what's called for. But they're your ears.
Last suggestion: why not just sell the Denon and move up to a top of the line HT receiver in the $3000-$5000 range? At least then, you can count on good 2-channel performance without the complication of adding a seperate amp.