New $700 Hometheater Receiver Advice
Hi guys long time no write.
I have decided to upgrade my hometheater room receiver. My current receiver is a Sony ES 555, nice sound, been reliable but looking for something with the new decoding formats.
Well I am looking for the $700 ish range, my current choices are:
1. NAD T753 $750, love the sound of NAD, but missing bells and whistles
2. Pioneer elite vsx-53tx $700, very good sound, automatic speaker calibration, plenty of bells and whistles, easy to service.
3. Marantz SR6400 $600, never owned this brand, attractive price, ok on features.
4. Denon AVR2803 $600, bad experience with denon long ago but this unit has good reviews.
5. Onkyo TX-sr701 $600, like the sound but last one i owned was not so easy to setup
6. Outlaw was a choice at first but they have no receivers right now.
ease of use and bells and whistles are more important in the HT room since it is mainly my wife and kids.
I own a NAD C-740 receiver in my stereo room and love the sound but it was a pain to find learning remote to accept the commands and is missing some bells and whistles.
leaning towards the Pioneer elite.
any opinions.
Went with the Pioneer elite vsx 53TX
I actually bought all of the following and did a head to head.
By the way all had certain features that I do not care about:
Component switching, not needed since I perfer to take video signals directly to the tv.
multi room, not needed since I have a seperate setup for my other room.
Denon AVR-2804
Marantz SR6400
Yamaha rx-v1400
Pioneer Elite vsx-53tx
first of all there is not a looser since all were good.
Only the Yamaha and Pioneer had the microphone autocal system which is very very nice espceically if you have strange room and or non-matching speakers.
My room is 20ft x 20ft with 10ft ceiling and I am running NHT in-ceiling speakers so I need plenty of amp to make them sing. The Pioneer Elite boasts 100W per channel and I must say they were honest about it because it is not lacking in juice and remains smooth and clean at ear-busting levels. The construction is heavy duty and I love that it is fan-free. The unit, programming and remote are easy to use.
I ended up buying a Pioneer elite vsx53tx and I must say it is the best HT receiver I have ever heard for $650.