I heard the Denon 3805 in a store many years back. I did not care for the unit in stereo sound but it was a delight playing surround sound movies; defintely first rate surround processing in this receiver.

My brother recently bought a Denon 3311 for under a grand. Very good sound overall and excellent surround processing. It has excellent video processing as well. The main thingy about this unit is the dynamics that you get with the movie tracks that tells me that the power amplifier system is pretty darn good for a receiver.

I bought a Sherwood 6095R some years back too. It was manufactured before DPL 2 was out. I did not care for its DPL processing but its surround processing was first rate. I understand the unit had a Yamaha chip. Though not a high powered receiver, its sound quality for D.D. and DTS was fine. It also worked well in plain stereo too giving something close to an audiophile grade sound. This unit did quite good in reviews.

I currently use a PIoneer VSX-516 which ran me about 90 dollars on E-bay refurbished. Its sound quality is good, its surround quality is good but not in the league with the Sherwood. It does have the DPL2 and DTS Neo features but I only found the DPL2 movie mode to give the correct imaging on 2 channel movies and cds. There is some goofy phasing going on in DPL2 music mode. The DTS Neo stuff is nothing to crow about.