They generalise too much. Plenty of bad performing AVR's and it's not a easy task to pack so much active chenels and electronics in small chassis and even harder to do it properly. Denon (with it's upps and downs) is pretty much as good as it comes for AVR's
I'm in the same boat as Rana. I'm trying to upgrade from a Marantz SR8002. I got lucky with it and I bought another 2 but I knew it was
not going to be easy to replace it especially after I saw it pop up in reviews of other high-end AVRs as the reference AVR of the person doing the review. I was hoping time would help with advancements but I'm not sure the industry has moved forward.
I returned a RZ50 very quickly.
I got a Denon 4800h and I'll admit that I enjoy listening to music on it and now that I've powered the Fronts with my old 8002 (using 4 channels to bi-amp) which is probably 140-150 watts per channel for the 4 and the Denon is in pre-out mode, it sounds better.
However, in songs like the following, the 8002 sounds amazing.
Kitaro's Light of the Spirit (Live in America), Cosmic Love
Norah Jones I've got to see you again
Pink Floyd Happier Days of our Lives/ Another Brick in the Wall Part 2
Dire Straits (Almost anything that involves guitar and voice so the entire anthology)
Sade Kiss of Life
Zamfir The Lonely Shepherd
A lot of people talk DLBC, Diract Unplugged, blah, bluh, blah. Music is #1 in movies. I'll repeat that cause it bears repeating - music is #1 in movies (games, shows, and music)
The Marantz 8002 is so engaging with these songs. Does your 8006 sound the same with those songs? You can play the same songs on the 3800h and compare like I did.
The term engaging involves body movement (feet, head, shoulders) or smacking drums and guitar riffing even if you're not a musician. When something's engaging you will always lose yourself when listening critically to it because the critical parts of the brain are taken over by your pleasure parts. You don't question that it's good, you know it's good. It's ironic but the more engaging a piece of equipment is, the less often you play music on it because it's not easy to use it for background music.