Which receivers have decent stereo performance?

I would go with a Marantz or a denon. both are pretty good at music. A friend of mine have almost the same system set up, I have a Yamaha RX-V800, and he has a Marantz 7300. his sounds much better for music

I'd second Gmood1 suggestion of adding an amp. I have the RX-v2200 and was not happy with the 2-channel sound either. My Paradigm Studio 60s are not very efficient and the Yamaha didn't have the umph to drive them. I added an Odyssey amp and was amazed at how much the lows and the mid-range opened up. Add the amp, not another receiver!

If I follow Gmood1 advice, I need to unplug/plug the speaker cables when switching from stereo to HT from amp to receiver, right?

Instead of wasting money in a bigger receiver, the suggestion of a separate amp make marked impact in the performance of Soliloqys and will definetly set you square in the path of better sonics, in the future. I might call the purchase of the 1K receiver as a temporary solution, which in the long run will force you to squander more money in the selling and upgrading game. All receivers, used below 1K and the one you are using were built to fit an economic formula in the minds the company, a separate amplifier, as the Monarchy that were suggest has less compromise in their production than a mass produced receiver....and if there is a compromise, it was done accounting the clientele of the buyers who would purchase their amp....people who can be very demanding of the quality that the amp will produce. Simply, go for the amps.

No you want have too unplug anything.Run the interconnects from the preouts on back of the receiver to the inputs of the mono blocks.Take your speaker cables off the receiver and plug one into each amp . Your main speakers will receive the same signal as the rest of the speakers when watching movies.You are good to go!Take a pair of ICs and come out of your dvd player analog outputs into the analog inputs on the back of the yamaha(preferable your left and right inputs for six channel music).This will take the soundfield processing of the yamaha out of the equation.This will give you the best 2 channel sound using the reciever as a preamp.