Besides asthetics you are gaining the ability to put your amp into either normal or cool bias plus the flexibility for setting the number of channels you want running for each setting. Stero can be set through the Cal SSP where only the front & right speakers are active when listening to you CD collection, the front three speakers are active when watching a regular TV broadcast and all five turn on when watching a surround sound movie. With your listening preferences at 70% HT you definately have the premier amplifier for that particular venue. I've run through quite a few amplifiers over the last year, (Threshold T-200, Proceed HPA-2, and Theta Dreadnaught 1) and in HT setting none were as dynamic or had the slam effect of the Cal unit.
