Hi forum members,

I am going to make just a few quick comments after a few hours of farting around with this receiver.

Considering this receiver got a hancy-fancy chip for decoding Dolby Digital; its decoding leaves a lot to be desired. One of my tests is on Star Wars 3, chapter 6 when General Greivous breaks through the glass on his ship. If I had not ever owned a Sherwood 6090R and a 6095R receiver, I would probably think it was just ok; wonder what might be lacking or thinking that Dolby Digital was not too hot. The Sherwoods have a Yamaha chip. When this scene is played you hear the bits and pieces of the shattered glass most distinctly in the surround field on those two receivers. You do hear the effect but it sounds like only a few pieces of glass shattered. The sound is clean and distinct but that is all I can say.

This is not only limited to the Pioneer. I tested one of those Insignia 6.1 channel receivers and a Sherwood RD7500. The decoded sound was more in the league of the Pioneer as well.

Although these are budget receivers, I wonder what kind of decoding may go on in a line of higher cost reciever that may be using a specific processing chip that could really be a real bow-wow not letting the buyer hear what they are supposed to hear.

There is one thing in common with the above three receivers. They are 6.1 and 7.1 receivers. The Sherwood is a 5.1 unit. Is it possible that the 6.1 and 7.1 units are screwing up the sound even if you set them for 5.1?

The Pioneer has a quick set-up, but I found that you would need to adjust your speaker levels which does not make it so quick. You do have to spend time with the manual to get the knack of setting up this thingy. Actually, the Insignia was very easy to set up and its longer type remote is better than the Pioneer. Even the Sherwoods 7500 remote was easier to use.

The surprising thing on all three receivers is the performance of DPL-2 music. It is good on the Pioneer and very good on the Sherwood and Insignia. The Pioneer's DTS Neo 6 mode played better than the other 2 units which IMHO pretty much stunk.

I will try to update this report in the near future. The replacement for this unit is the VSX-517. This is a 5.1 channel unit using the Freescale chip. My 6095R ain't going anywhere either unless it is blown away in a hurricane, I drop dead or it drops dead which I sure hope it does not.