What Do You Like About Current A/V Receivers?

[Leprkon]

Call me a heretic if you want, What is missing from the receiver line-up is a mid-priced unit that ignores all video and spends all its bucks giving you the best possible sound value.

Some people don't need for (or care if) them or their wives or children might have to press two (gasp !!) buttons maybe even on two different remote controls (gasp ! gasp!) to change a video function.

Would I pay two thirds the price of a Yamaha RX-V 4600 for a unit that sounds that good but the only composite plug is for the OSD ? You bet your remote control !! Give me something in the $ 600 to $ 1300 range that had the Dolbies and the DTSes and some way to upgrade to keep up with them, but keep the video someplace else !!! Let me run sounds to the sound thingamajiggy and video to the video thingamajiggy. Give me the best possible of each functions without paying for redundant capability.

Sound is not video. Video is not sound. Never the two should meet !!!

 

[davo]

lets do what I want to do

The thing about a/v recievers I would like to see disappear are most of the plugs on the back. Who needs the tape loop or 4 video inputs. It probably won't change the price much but it will make it look neater and more functional. Also yamaha need to change their policy on shipping only black recievers to australia. Firmware would be handy as well

 

[sjdgpt]

Performance. Oh baby, performance. On many levels.

Oh, and a bit of reliability as well.


The receiver of today will kick the butt of the receiver of yesteryear, and most seperates of yesteryear as well.

Noise isolation has improved dramatically. Nobody complains of radio noise leaking into their pre-amp and amp circuits any more. In fact, nobody really complains about any system sources of noise anymore. Sure a few people have hum and buzz problems, but most of those problems are external, not internal.


Remote controls actually work ... from more than 12inches away from the receiver. Sure, some Remotes could use a little work, but we are complaining about the features, not whether the darn thing can raise or lower the volume.... or keeps the lowering the volume for 2 minutes after you last pressed the remote button.

Power. Lots more power. Circuits have improved, and the reliability of the circuits have improved, and we have more power as the result.


Quality. Take the Big Denon AV 5805. How many isolated power supplies in that baby? What is the rating of those power supplies? Compare that big bad boy to an off the shelf amp or receiver of 20 years ago, even just 10 years ago. Power, Power, and more Power. And better quality Power as well.

Performance is my vote.

 

[Pyrrho]

I was going to say that I liked the performance of current A/V receivers, until I read poneal's post which reminded me of how bad the tuner section is in virtually all receivers made these days. This is something that they could do very, very cheaply, as, to give but one example, you can buy a Pioneer car stereo that retails for about $100 that has a tuner that blows away every tuner in their home units, even ones that cost thousands of dollars. If they can put a decent tuner in a $100 car stereo that manages to be a receiver and a CD player, obviously the tuner part can't be that expensive. There is simply no excuse for such crappy performance in the tuner section of A/V receivers. This is one area of performance in which they have taken a huge step backward, making products that are vastly inferior to those that they made several decades ago. If one brand would put a decent tuner in their receivers, and advertise that fact, I think they would find that they would make some sales to those of us who are wanting a receiver rather than an integrated amplifier. Probably the poor tuner performance of current receivers is the cause of many people to never bother with listening to the radio at home, as the performance is so poor that it is often unlistenable.

It would also be nice if receivers were upgradable, as new formats and processing comes available, it would be good to be able to just download some firmware instead of having to buy a new receiver (of course, the reason manufacturers don't do things that way is obvious).

The automatic setup on new receivers is a very good thing that helps people get the most out of their equipment.