I think it's just the responses that you've read the last couple of weeks. Believe me, there are plenty of Denon fans on this board, and when I first started posting here a few years ago, I was wondering about how many of the regulars were on Denon's payroll. If you think this is negativity, you haven't seen this board meltdown the way it can whenever someone puts out a truly defective product (i.e. the reaction to some of the h/k and Sony models from a couple of years ago, and Marantz's first batch of SR7200 receivers comes to mind). This is mild compared to the vitriol that perpetuates when truly bad products get released.

I'm not down on Denon. They still warrant consideration as far as I'm concerned, but there seem to have been more grumblings as of late about their product quality and they just happens to coincide with all the ownership changes and switches in outsourcing that they've had. My own experience with a Denon DVD player gives me pause as well when it comes to Denon's build quality. I haven't heard of too many major things like you used to hear about with h/k, Marantz, and Sony, but the customer support does seem to not be as good as before, even if we assume that the product quality is still high. With that in mind, it could also be Denon's a victim of its own success. They set the bar so high with a lot of their previous products that any drop in perceived product quality gets magnified.