Good question, I'm wondering the same thing
I'm also looking at the Pioneer Elite VSX-53TX. When I listened to the Denon and the Yamaha at Tweeter, there was a very distinct difference between them with both music and movies. With music, the Denon was much warmer. The Yamaha sounded a little tinny by comparison, not that it was tinny, just doing an A/B with the Denon it sounded that way. With movies (they used Jurassic Park 3), the Yamaha seemed to put much more emphasis on the ambient noise in the movie (footsteps, rain, running water, wind, etc.). It was cool to really hear all of the speakers in the setup working, but I wasn't sure if it was artificial. The Denon just seemed to have beefier sound during the movie playback.
I haven't done as in depth a listen with the Pioneer as of yet. There is a store near me that has both the Yamaha and the Pioneer, so I can do an A/B comparison with those two. But no one around here carries both Denon and Pioneer, so I can't A/B those ones.
At the moment I am leaning toward either the Yamaha or the Pioneer, because they seem to have a larger feature set than the Denon. I'm especially interested in Pioneer's MCACC and Yamaha's YPAO. If anyone has more firsthand knowledge of these three receivers, please add your two cents.
