Quote Originally Posted by grampi
Man, are you brainwashed! I'm not biased. I happen to think Denon, Yamaha, Onkyo, H/K, and Marantz are all equally very good units, separated by personal preference of features and price. I fail to see how the Yamahas are clearly superior to the others. They're just as good, but not any better.
They are all good units, but the reliability factor in favor of Yamaha is something I've heard from friends of mine who've worked AV sales over the years. It's not that they're incapable of building a defective unit or that the others can't build a stellar unit, it's just that Yamaha's had a more consistent track record over the years.

With all the outsourcing that's going on in the industry right now, Yamaha's one of the few companies out there that does almost all of its own manufacturing. (And they're the only one that makes their own processors and other ICs) Denon, Marantz, and h/k, among others, outsource some of their receiver models, and that's where Marantz and h/k have run into major problems on some production runs. Denon's also shifted around their outsourcing facilities the past couple of years, but I haven't heard of any problems on the order of what Marantz and h/k have encountered.