Onkyo gear usually comes with a good remote, and the 701 is no exception. The layout makes it easy to use by feel, and all of the buttons light up just in case you need to find the sleep timer button as you doze off on the sofa. The remote is preprogrammed to control most components, like DVD players and cable boxes, and it can be taught to control anything else with direct head-to-head learning. Two so-called macros, or as I call them, mother-in-law’s little helpers, allow you to program a string of commands that are executed with the push of a button.

Bass management has become a confusing issue in the world of multichannel gear, but it basically refers to the incorporation of a filter or crossover that intercepts the low bass information from each channel and redirects it to the subwoofer. Because surround systems typically have five to seven speakers, people often use small speakers that can’t handle deep bass. A comprehensive bass-management setup will give you a wide range of settings to help ensure a good blend with the subwoofer.

To check the performance of each amplifier, I tried them with two very different sets of speakers. My big Snell A system let me run each channel in the full range setting, working the amplifiers hard to check power delivery and low-frequency performance, while a set of Magneplanars with limited bass extension allowed me to assess the flexibility of each processor’s bass-management options.