AV Receiver Reviews

Price: $800 At A Glance: New rounded front panel is borrowed from higher-end gear • Audyssey MultEQ auto setup and room EQ • Audio circuits on separate circuit board

The Middle Kid Syndrome

As the third child in a series of four, I know what it’s like to be in between. My older siblings arrived a decade before I did and towered over me with their adult-like achievements. They had summer jobs, bought Volkswagen Beetles, headed off to college, and—most fatefully, I now recognize—turned me on to rock ’n’ roll. I was the pampered baby for a few years until my younger sibling arrived and, predictably, absorbed more of my mother’s time. This made me terribly jealous.

Price: $7,000 Highlights: Superb sound for both movies and music • 10 channels of powerful Class D amplification • Sets a steep learning curve but rewards with immense flexibility • Video processing has limitations, including no upconversion of HDMI sources

And the Kitchen Sink

Sometimes I get nostalgic for the early days of home theater. For example, I fondly remember the Proceed AVP processor I reviewed for Stereophile Guide to Home Theater in 1997. Conventional Dolby Digital and DTS were its most exotic operating modes, the remote had fewer than a dozen buttons, and it didn’t provide room equalization, extra surround modes, or onboard video processing. In fact, it didn’t have any video switching beyond S-video. We didn’t need no stinkin’ component, and no one had even heard of HDMI. Laserdisc was the most established source, DVD was brand new, and consumer high definition was still a mote in the FCC’s eye.

Denon redefines the surround receiver.

If you want bang for your buck, look no further.

The great thing about technol-ogy is that everything eventually becomes affordable. The latest generation of A/V receivers certainly demonstrates this, and the Onkyo TX-SR606 exemplifies the extraordinary features and performance capabilities of AVRs under $600.