Interesting no mention of Arcam here. I did a lot of listening to AV and stereo receivers about ten years ago and for my taste, Arcam AVR's were clearly better into both two and multiple channels. That may have changed, but I listened to the latest generation Arcam AVR 31 recently, and it sounded pretty darn good with decent KEF speakers. You can probably pick up one of the older Arcam models used for under a grand.
kn