New Pioneer SC-65

[philh]

Is on it's way. Wandered into best buy while SWMBO went into big lots

Looked at the rack of all these really good looking receivers and started to have a panic attack. Called up my fav forum that I haven't visited in way too long, and saw the yamaha 2020 review, and asked to listen to it. Magnolia mgr was helping me and asked if I done any research on the Pioneers... not yet, I wasn't even there to buy anything!

He set me up to listen to the SC-61 and 2020 , we got the volumes set to the same value. My 1/2 deaf ears thought the tone on the 2020 was a touch warmer, but he correctly pointed out the 61 had better sound separation. Their 65 wasn't hooked up, but I was heading towards the 61... right up until he pointed out they would meet any legitimate internet source, including amazon. Holy crap, that's like 30% off! They were out of stock, it will be delivered to the store Tuesday, but it will be Thursday before I can pick it up.

Really excited to finally join the modern world, what's this HDMI thingy ? No longer need to worry about buying new devices with optical and HDMI outputs, in fact struggling right now because I have to swap cables between devices. Probably most excited about letting the system tune itself, I have an extremely difficult room!

 

[Adam]

Congrats! That's a pretty exciting new purchase.

I can only imagine the conversation when you met up with her.

"Hey, honey, guess what I got at Big Lots for $5!"

"Well, guess what I got at Best Buy for...uhhhh...okay, you first."

 

[philh]

We don't make big purchases without at least talking to each other. She wanted to spend a bit less money, I was kinda at the 1k to 1.2k thinking... Best buy saying they would match amazon was golden

 

[GFOViedo]

Yeah, Best Buy is pretty much matching internet prices. I went in with a price of $280 for a Pionneer 1022 receiver. They match the price without any questions, but they weren't very happy the next day when I returned it.

 

[CHASLS2]

I just bought a new SC61 around 11 days ago. Best buy matched Amazon's price. My 14 month old Pioneer Elite SC35 blew out. Never buy a Elite product without a warranty.

 

[philh]

Got it installed... might have to unfortunately read the manual to get the Wii working

Harmony remote is mostly working, volume +/- isn't for some stupid reason, whole system starts up a bit slower than I'm used to. Remote usually needs a "help" to prompt one or more components into waking up.

Took me FOREVER to get the sub working There's a sub output for zone 2 and two zone 1 outputs, I had zone 2 hooked up.

Did the auto adjusting sequence, and extremely happy with the results... even with the damn dog barking in the middle of the measurements. He didn't like the sound coming out of the speaker and was fussing until I calmed him down. I will redo the auto measure/adjust at another time.

Still need to get the outside speakers operational.

Couple of videos played so far sound so much different. The old Sony receiver seemed to bleed things into all the speakers. Now when watching TIVO and the Broadcast is only using the front speakers, it's painfully obvious.

Since I have an extra HDMI run to the TV, may send both the DVD player and media player through the 2nd cable. That allows me to oversize the video on just those two inputs.

So far extremely happy!

 

[Adam]

The old Sony receiver seemed to bleed things into all the speakers. Now when watching TIVO and the Broadcast is only using the front speakers, it's painfully obvious.

Do you prefer to have sound from all speakers on stereo sources? In case you didn't know, the Pioneer has sound modes that will do that.

 

[philh]

Do you prefer to have sound from all speakers on stereo sources? In case you didn't know, the Pioneer has sound modes that will do that.

It automatically went to stereo when it pulled music off my server. Need to figure out how to make the harmony remote access that source I prefer music to be two channel, unless it's DTS encoded.

Wii, was installer error My rack is bit tight and the receiver is at max wt capacity for the glass shelves, so doing gymnastics to get everything attached. Parallax had me hooking up the wrong input

Taking a bit getting used to the mucho more discrete sound than I had before.

Not sure I understand the THX surround settings... It actually seems to be worse.

 

[Adam]

Hats off to you for working "parallax" into a report on hooking up a receiver.

 

[mtrycrafts]

... , we got the volumes set to the same value. ...!

I am just curious what you mean by this. You mean you placed the volume controls to the same indicated number on the display?

 

[ahblaza]

Hats off to you for working "parallax" into a report on hooking up a receiver.

What's parallax

 

[Adam]

What's parallax

What's "Google," you ask?

Just messing with you, man. Check this out for an explanation.

 

[ahblaza]

What's "Google," you ask?

Just messing with you, man. Check this out for an explanation.

You got me good,

 

[bluephi1914]

Is on it's way. Wandered into best buy while SWMBO went into big lots

Looked at the rack of all these really good looking receivers and started to have a panic attack. Called up my fav forum that I haven't visited in way too long, and saw the yamaha 2020 review, and asked to listen to it. Magnolia mgr was helping me and asked if I done any research on the Pioneers... not yet, I wasn't even there to buy anything!

He set me up to listen to the SC-61 and 2020 , we got the volumes set to the same value. My 1/2 deaf ears thought the tone on the 2020 was a touch warmer, but he correctly pointed out the 61 had better sound separation. Their 65 wasn't hooked up, but I was heading towards the 61... right up until he pointed out they would meet any legitimate internet source, including amazon. Holy crap, that's like 30% off! They were out of stock, it will be delivered to the store Tuesday, but it will be Thursday before I can pick it up.

Really excited to finally join the modern world, what's this HDMI thingy ? No longer need to worry about buying new devices with optical and HDMI outputs, in fact struggling right now because I have to swap cables between devices. Probably most excited about letting the system tune itself, I have an extremely difficult room!

If you don't mind, what did you pay for the SC-65 ?? I was looking at the Yamaha 2020 as well. My RX-V3300 is 130 watts so i need something Pushing at least that. i was looking at Yamaha 720,820 but decided to stop being cheap and get something to match what I have now.

 

[philh]

If you don't mind, what did you pay for the SC-65 ?? I was looking at the Yamaha 2020 as well. My RX-V3300 is 130 watts so i need something Pushing at least that. i was looking at Yamaha 720,820 but decided to stop being cheap and get something to match what I have now.

IRC it was 1,059.99 What ever Amazon was showing as the price, they matched it.

Hats off to you for working "parallax" into a report on hooking up a receiver.

Can you think of a better word to describe the issue?

I am just curious what you mean by this. You mean you placed the volume controls to the same indicated number on the display?

To the best of my hearing ability, I set the perceived volume level of the two receivers to be the same before I started evaluating how they sounded. Differences in volume can lead to incorrect evaluations for a variety of reasons.

 

[Adam]

Can you think of a better word to describe the issue?

I hope that I didn't come across as sarcastic - I was impressed that you threw out that word.

 

[ahblaza]

I hope that I didn't come across as sarcastic - I was impressed that you threw out that word.

If it was, I surely didn't take it that way, I had to google it...