Ok, you people need to stop acting like you know things about stereo equipment when you don't know anything at all. Any person with half-a-brain would be able to notice the annoying hiss that comes out of speakers being powered by a Sony receiver or Sony anything for that matter. This would be called "distortion" for the "Audiophiles" on this site...Generally distortion is caused by a poorly crafted piece of audio equipment (i.e. anything sony). I have compared many, many receivers and I have a 21 year old Pioneer that produces the music more faithfully and clearly than any Sony receiver I have ever heard. I don't know how Sony calls anything that they make, "audio equipment." It should be called "distorted-god-awful-crappy-pathetic-noise-in-a-box." I will admit that Sony has come up with a lot of features, but do any of them have a point???? Well lets see, I can make my "distortion-in-a-box" give me a customized greeting message??? AWW MAN I BETTER GO BUY ONE RIGHT NOW, THAT IS SOOOOOO USEFUL!! That is my point, Sony wastes their time making useless features to put on their garbage receivers when they should be concentrating on making something that sounds good. If you buy Klipsch, Bose, Paradigm, MK, B&K, etc. then you should be powering it with something that will make it sound as good as it was made, not some Sony piece of garbage. Buy B&K, McIntosh, Onkyo, Denon, Integra, Harmon Kardon...pretty much anything will sound better than a Sony product...And the retards that posted supporting Sony, you may want to get your hearing aids checked out before you say something good about Sony again, I really don't think they can be working properly if you consider Sony "good." P.S. I have a couple pieces of paper in my office that keep blowing away I was thinking of getting a couple of Sony STR-DA7ES ($2200) receivers to hold them down but then I realized that it was Sony and it would probably do a bad job of holding it down, it would probably combust and burn my papers or just collapse completely from the force of my fan on low. Have fun with your distortion-in-a-box you morons.