Hi Don, I have the Elite VSX-81TXV and I love it. I am not an expert by any stretch but when I decided to move into something more up to date I looked at alot of different recievers in my price range of 6 to 8 hundred. I have never owned a Pioneer reciever before but I have owned many products made by them such as car audio and home cd players and was never dissapointed. I auditioned Sony,Onkyo,and a few more in that price range and I just liked the sound I got from the Pioneer and also I thought build quality was excellent. The connectivity is very good and this model had everything I was looking for. I use it in my HTR and have it set up as a 7.1 system with a set of Cambridge Soundworks Towers, 4 dipole,bipole,monopole surrounds also by CS and a VR-12 Boston acoustics center. I love that you can store up to 6 different audio settings so I have choices when I am changing from music to movies. I have never had to push the reciever because it has plenty of head room and the auto cal works well, although I do my share of tweeking. I read alot of reviews on the Elite recievers and they do review well and they look great too. I have owned a few different components such as Sherwood Newcastle and a few others and they were all very good but for the money I think the Elite's are a good choice for anyone that can't spend thousands of dollars on high end gear. The only thing I regret is that it is only HDMI version 1.2 so I have to use my preouts to get lossless audio from my HD DVD player instead of it just being transmitted through the HDMI cable but that will come with my next reciever and I really don't see that happening too soon as I am very happy with my set up for now. I wouldn't hesitate to recomend Pioneer to anyone.
