Yes. Just try it yourself when you have the opportunity, you will notice that affordable multichannel AV amps are really not that good for well recorded music compared to a traditional well designed stereo amp. Both driving good speakers. You will notice it immediately, no need to be an audiophile with perception issues.
The DA chips and other components in these affordable AV amps are very basic, I think that is where the difference comes from.
I am interested in good musical rendering, I am not a hifi snake oil believer. There is indeed a lot of crap going on in that little world.
I have currently a specific interest in the topic as my current vintage amps: preamp Quad 44 has problems, and previously already refurbished Quad 405-2 power amp has a bit of a buzz now but that is repairable. Both were reference grade in de 1970s and 1980s and are still very good. No real need to change the power amp after repair. But for the preamp I want to be able to connect a number of digital sources (hdmi, optical, coax), yet it should still sound good for music - which is not that easy to find. A Classé CP-800 would fit for practicality but I don't want to pay crazy money. This afternoon I will check out the Nuforce AVP-18 which seems both practical, minimal and really quite focused on good audio quality (according to all reports so far) and a reasonable price that still has relation to the expected performance. It is in essence a rather flexible multichannel dac. I would use it only for stereo. More after I can hear it, should you be interested :-)