I decided to team up with haisaikat, since we had similar listening requirement and budget. On Saturday we decided to do some auditioning.
Audio Used - KK (Pay Ke Pal), Enya (May it be), Bon Jovi (Blaze of Glory), Soundtrack (Pirates of the carribean, Titanic), Robert Miles (Children), Jaybee (Shattered Dreams)
Video Used - Matrix (Morpheus' proposal + Down the rabbit hole, Lobby shooting spree + Dodge this)
Sonodyne - South City
Sonodyne - GENIE 1 HTS + Yamaha RXV367
We started with audio first in a stereo mode. The vocals were ok, but the bass appeared to be a suspect... by the time we completed playing some more songs especially the bass intensive stuff it was clear that the setup was not able to handle it... it was rather ear-jarring.
Then we tried the video... it made no difference sound was still bad... though the system was set in 5.1 mode we did not receive any audio response from the rear speakers.
Then we tried this with GENIE 3 HTS... still no good.
While the sales was explaining us a few technicalities another guy started played Kabhi Kabhi Aditi Zindagi (Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na) on PQUBE and it sounded absolutely fabulous (compared to what we just heard). That made us wonder if the AVR+Speaker setup was properly set...
ProFX
ProFx Fusion 6 Package + Denon 1911
The vocals were good, speakers were handling bass way better that the Sonodyne setup. Sound was punchy... quite "in your face" sort of sound.
We continued playing the audio for 20 minutes and then switched to video,
The dialogues were clear and bullets were thundering. The down-firing subwoofer in ProFX Fusion 6 is quite potent.
However, I felt a bit of ear fatigue... possibly might be due to high speaker volume...
Polk TSI 300 + Denon 1911
We switched to Polk TSI 300 setup. The vocals were bit more clean, and bass appeared more tight and compact. Overall it was better than ProFx Fusion 6. And yes Denon + Polk combo is definitely bright.
Promises
Jamo 408 HCS (?) + Onkyo TX-SR608
Not quite impressed. It failed to deliver with the soundtracks. The bass had a "thud".
Jamo S 606 + Onkyo TX-SR608
This one was better. For video they played a demo DVD having clip from Transporter (the dvd player was not region free so could not play Matrix).
One thing that I noticed was that the speakers sort of "held" the sound rather than "throwing" it at you... And it was not as bright as Denon + Polk combo.