I didn’t want it to come across like just buy X because I said so - it’s a lot of subjectivity here and everyone should try and listen themselves. We all have different requirements and expectations.Nothing wrong with personal subjective opinions as long as we know their limitations and the limited value without precise level matching/blind conditions. I have had what I thought would be obvious differences when such controls were in place. For example with comparing lossless audio to 256k AAC. Results showed I was basically guessing. When we here things like x brand blows away, is better, sounds more musical etc others have to take it with a grain of salt. In particular when using phrases like "to anyone who tried"... you have now made a claim that everyone that has compared them came to the same conclusion. It isn't possible to know that.
We can’t speak obviously in general terms. What’s interesting is haven’t found anyone who would say Denon sounds better than Arcam - I think that’s interesting observation even though we can’t say it’s always the case. Anyone who returned Arcam was due to some other software issues, which it used to have plenty. One thing to know is Arcam is sort of boutique manufacturer compared to Denon so it’s never will be as firmware polished as the latter and when comparing rrp Denon will offer better value (economy of scale).