While watching my local for sale site, I was lucky to see a guy selling this receiver for $265. When I checked on the hardware cost in Pioneers site, I had a small heart attack. It listed as their flagship at $4k. I got into my truck, and flew down to meet hit. It was mint, and seldom used. He had the complex remote and all the paperwork. I’m not supposed to lift more than 20lbs. This damn thing tried to kill me at 50-60 lbs.
This receiver does not have any hdmi support. But I do the switching on my TV anyway, so one fiber into the receiver and it never needs to be touched other than volume. This is far more simple for family. This receiver is very complex, with endless tweaking. It’s a 7.1, and the back panel has an unbelievable number of both coax and fiber connections.
As for the amplifier section, it has a multi-core transformer the size of a football. Its all MOSFET output is extremely powerful, and has no issues driving low impedance speakers in all seven connections to Extremely painful levels. My listening has been done primarily with RBH reference class speakers. My current is their T2/R stack, and remaining are SV-661/R.
The auto configuration is a thing of beauty. Other than always wanting to configure everything as “large”, I have found that the best method is to allow the configuration to to complete, then adjust the speakers to small, then re-run just the EQ portion of the configuration. The end result is the best sound I’ve ever heard in my theater
I believe that this receiver is one of the finest sounding components that I have ever used in my 40 years playing with audio. It’s old school conservative in the wattage. It’s has sheer meaty muscle to rip your face off on depth charge scenes, or other energetic material. You keep waiting to hear signs of the receiver clipping or the speaker drivers starting to crack up.Its a bit scary on material with very large transients. A few Telarc titles will make rookies jump like hell when I demo. Proud daddy I am.
The insides are all laid out on a really beautiful copper chassis. The sound is very smooth, treble never becomes harsh like some tweeters made of aluminum or titanium can be. Midrange is superb as is the bottom end, always bottomless, with lovely waves that roll through the chest. It’s also adept in two channel stereo which is 60% of my listening.
This receiver will remain on my console until it dies some day. I would need to spend a very large sum to replace it with something that betters it. It’s that good. If you have the chance at one, get it.
the specs are all on line
cheers
