Harman Kardon Signature

[Guest]

<font color='#000000'>Hey All,

I need to talk/write with someone who has or has owned a Harman Kardon Signature 2.0 &amp; 2.1

I'm thinking about those and need thoughts.</font>

 

[av_phile]

<font color='#000000'>Harman Kardon has an excellent reputation for sonic excellence and reliability so I don't think I could go wrong getting a product from that house.  I am actually eyeing their receivers and have a friend who owns a Citation power amp series thst is already more than 2 decades old yet still sounding as good or better than many modern amps.   The signature 2.0 preamp/processer/tuner and the 2.1 power amp are an excellent buy if you want a discrete separates set-up and can't afford the more expensive Sunfire, Lexicon, Krell options of the same function. I wish this series is available here in my country so I can get one.  But these are just impressions.  Hope there is a user in this forum who can better assess the product.</font>

 

[Guest]

<font color='#000000'>I have used HK's Signature Series PA2200 power amp since 1993 and have found this to be very reliable. &nbsp;I have driven this amp hard on many occations and never have I replaced a single driver on my Energy 22.3. &nbsp;I have now replaced these with a pair of mirage OM-5. &nbsp;

The only problem is that I can not find a second amp to mono block. &nbsp;It would seem no one wants to part with their HK power. &nbsp;

For what its worth, HK is not the best nor is it the worst product on the market but on a price comparison HK is fine product choice. &nbsp;I just hate their dealer in canada. &nbsp;***** Shop is not my first choice to spend my hard earned dollers.</font>

 

[Unregistered]

I have a Signature 2.0 Pre and PA5800 Amplifier.

The Sig is a great pre. It has some nice customization features that weren't really norm back when this was a new product. I bought it online direct from Harmon International's website for $500 about a year ago. The remote is kinda awkward, but its typical H/K bigness that they had at the time.

You can rename all the inputs to whatever you want, plus all the inputs/outputs are assignable. Just plug into whatever free inputs and use the menu to assign to the correct name. A cool feature is that it starts at a preset volume everytime, which is nice because you never get surprised.

Since its old it only supports DD and DTS 5.1, as well as everything under those.

The only real complaint I have about this unit is that since it uses a microcontroller for pretty much everything, you can hear slight clicks whenever changing the volume, changing inputs, or making a menu selection. But it doesn't affect anything during normal playback.

For $500 its pretty nice. However you may be able to find recievers that have built in Pre-amp outputs that are only a couple years old, that will have way more features. For $800 new you can get Outlaws HT Preamp, which has gotten good reviews from what I've seen.

Also one thing on this <Signature 2.0> pre is expansion. It only has 2 coax digital inputs and 4 optical. It also only has 2 S-Video (no component switching). So you can run out of inputs with newer electronics pretty fast. Even with just an X-Box, DVD, and Laserdisc player you run out of inputs fast.

It is beautifull though, only a couple buttons and a big volume knob populate the front, along with the pretty blue display.