Nice to have you hanging out with us! I have both Yamaha and Denon products and still use a Denon receiver for my surround sound set up while the Yamaha cranks out tunes for my kids. I prefer the sound of Denon in general. I think the Denon has a tad more warmth and the Yamaha sounds more dry and clinical in my recollection. But this is a small difference. The feature set of the amps is important as well of course. It looks like the Yamaha has a couple of HDMI outs where the Denon has one, the Yamaha has more HDMI inputs which is important if you need them. The Denon has Audyssey signal correction which I know and use, and the Yamaha has a similar system that I am not familiar with.

So bottom line, I know and like the Denon a bit more, but you may need the features of the Yamaha more.

Nice to see you here, hand around!

Trey

I tried the Denon first and what a piece of junk.  1st they have the worst iPhone iPad app.  You couldn't make it more convoluted to play your iTunes if you tried.  Next it was very important that the hdmi have pass thru capabilities.  Denon hdmi pass through was so frustrating would work for a day or two then a blank screen.  Had to turn receiver on and off to fix.  Read reviews after I bought it and this is a common problem.  One other minor complaint is the menu screens graphics looks like it came out of the first Mario bros. Nintendo game.  FYI AirPlay really never used it since I have a NAS music server.  

Next I received the Yamaha rx-v871, it was like night and day.  Right out of the box it felt like a better quality receiver.  Much heavier then the Denon.  Setup screen was easy and gorgeous.  The sound was awesome, full, natural, rich and with such depth.  Far better then Denon, don't know what the other reviewer was listening to.  Yamaha's iPhone app is a thing of beauty.  Even my wife commented on how easy and intuitive it was.  If you do nothing else Down load both apps and compare.  You will see that 1 app had much more forethought, design and excellence in it's development and how it executes.  Same holds true for each receiver.  Hope this helps.