Hi Kid; Your comments are most interesting. The 815 has the Motorola chip in its unit. It is very possible that the Motorola chip is far superior to the Freescale chip being used in the current line of Pioneer units. .

The power of the 516 is not an issue with me. It seems to be a rather powerful unit. I think the highs and midrange response is quite good in fact, similar to my experiences in the past with Pioneer control amplifiers. The bass response(unit was set to large and main speakers were a 3 way 8 inch KLH 900B) was decent, actually better than a 65 watt per channel SYSCOM Pioneer control amp. I had years back.

I paid about 100 dollars for this unit refurbished on E-bay.

I may do a report on the Insignia however in the meantime it does have its faults. I think that whatever decoder is used in that unit is actually a little bit better than the 516.

My brother thought this Pioneer did sound better than the Insignia. The Insignias sound had a kind of overall compression to it however the unit IMO is very listenable because there is a kind of nice sweetness in its audio. Adjusting the Insignia was far easier to do then the Pioneer; the remote on the Insignia is actually pretty well thought out for remotes. The Insignia also has a torodial transformer, a surprise in a mass market receiver. If you bought the Insignia alone just to use for two channel purposes, it would actally do pretty good. I paid $60 on E-bay for that unit.