Interestingly enough, I went out to audition these two receivers this weekend at Tweeter, (correction, I was looking at the Denon 3805 and the Yamaha 2500, but close enough). I followed the advice posted elsewhere on this site and took along a couple of favorite movies and cd's.

Walking into the store I was pretty much sold on the Yamaha 2500, and had the Denon placed second, mainly due to comments posted on this (amongst other) sites regarding reliability. I ran both receivers through 2 movie scenes (Two Towers/Helms Deep and Episode 5 of Band Of Brothers if you're interested) along with some favorite tracks from a number of cd's. Both receivers used the same set of speakers (I believe they were a set of Polks), and I could switch between them in the audition room.

I came away convinced that the Denon was the better receiver. Vocals from Cd's and dialogue on DVD's was much clearer...I put this down to the Denon pumping out more power per channel, but I'm a technical neophyte on this so I won't go any further with that The bass was much more pronounced on the Denon also.

The Yamaha sounded muddy in comparison, and personally I found the controls less intuitive on the Yamaha after playing with both receivers.

There was a Pioneer Elite instore, but unfortunately it wasn't wired in so I couldn't test that at the same time.

Not a scientific diagnosis I know, but I've done quite a bit of research on these receivers over previous weeks and was surprised with the difference between them. My advice to you would be to test-drive these yourself if possible. As for me, I'll be purchasing the Denon 3805 along with the Boston Acoustics System 520 speaker set this coming weekend.