AV Receiver Reviews

I was perplexed as to why Sound United is marketing a Stereo Receiver through their Denon brand, which normally is focused on low to mid budget multi-channel Home Theater receivers.
But wait, I get it. Their strategy is to entice the hipsters that have discovered Vinyl, and to the multitude that subscribes to Hi-res streaming platform but their delivery gear is mostly junk.
Good luck SU in trying to get that crowd into spending $2,000 + on quality Pre-amp processors and amps from your higher end brands. They are likely to stick to their airpods and their smartphones as their delivery method for their music.
Rob, I've never owned a Stereo receiver. In my college sophomore year (79') one of my buddies had Adcom pre-amp and Amp, with Polk Audio Monitor 10B. I was hooked. I do have a Multichannel Receiver that processes Atmos with all the modern bells and whistles, but that is for my Home Theater. Though Denon's $500 Stereo Receiver probably outperforms high end separates from 30 years ago, Millenials and GenX are unlikely to go for a bulky Receiver with god forbid speaker cables coming out of it.

This would have been a great opportunity to review Denon's latest AV receiver, their AVR-X3600H AV receiver, rather than an old school stereo receiver.

I get it. This magazine is run by a bunch of old farts like me who have fond memories of hedonistic 1970's dorm life where vinyl records and two channel stereo was king. I remember those times... just not as fondly as your reviewers do.

I remember always being broke, leeching money from my parents, and the fact that every two channel stereo system on the planet sounded like crap. We compensated for that (and perhaps some other issues) by buying the biggest speakers we could afford and playing it way too loud (later we added another two speakers and called it "quadraphonic" because we were the cool kids who understood how sound systems worked).

Nostalgia is great if you're into it but did you know that a Denon 8500H can also produce two channel audio? Yep, it's called STEREO MODE.

Does anybody else find it a bit wasteful for you to spend four pages of S&V reviewing what is essentially a mode setting for the rest of us?

Ah well... at least it's not another $1,500 earbud review.

Thanks S&V for giving this receiver your consideration! I have a modest 2.1 A/V setup in my garage/shop where I'd been using a Yamaha stereo receiver (no video switching) for years.

To be able to add video, I re-purposed one of my older, smaller 5.1 Denon receivers. Though I've been running it in stereo mode, it lacked current/robust network streaming chops and have used an outboard wireless DAC to connect to my music library. Like many, I've burned my entire CD library to FLAC and have since augmented with online purchases of HD audio, including 192kHz24bit and some DSD 2.8/5.6. I've just recently begun to explore what's available on Tidal.

A receiver like the DRA-800H is just what I was hoping to find. My experience with Denon has been very good over the years and this unit is at the right price point for my application. Thanks again -

Mgfarr and neuromancer, thank you for your communiques assuring us the the Troll Nation is still alive and well. But you’re missing the point. If you want to read about the latest 11.2 receiver hardware, there’s many articles out there for you. But don’t criticize Rob and this great publication for simply trying to present balanced coverage of the receiver market. There’s lot’s of us that are here for information on reproducing high-quality two channel audio that emulates the live music experience played by real human beings on real musical instruments. Anyway ... great article Rob on a very nice Denon piece.