This receiver has all the features I was looking for: Dolby Pro Logic, 100w equal power to all channels, and NO bells and whistles. It looks almost exactly like the Pioneer VSX-D557, right down to the multi jog dial for the tuner, and has the same stats as the Pioneer. It has only a few DSP modes: hall, jazz, arena and studio, and a few surround modes. Period. You don't get to choose "room size, reverb effect, hard or soft room modes"...which is just fine with me. I can't tell much, if any, difference between DSP modes...this may be due to the fact that I don't have a center channel speaker set up yet. However, the hall mode is the best of any receiver I've owned...instead of an exaggerated echo, it's a very subtle effect, but enough to usefully enhance some types of music. In 2channel stereo, separation and imaging are really very good. ( I'm using Optimus PRO-LX10 speakers...see the reviews at this website) The tuner gets good reception with strong stations. In fact, this receiver performs better than the Sony I owned, and ever better than the Yamaha RX592 that I tried out for comparison. In Dolby Pro Logic, the action moves cleanly around the room, and there is absolutely no hum or hiss or unwanted noise coming from any of the speakers.
On the down side, build quality isn't great...there's only one switched outlet on the back, the knobs don't have a high quality "feel", the volume increases with the remote are too great, and although the remote controls other components, the buttons are kinda crowded and not very well marked or laid out.

This receiver was originally $499 in the '97 catalog (way too much). Now, it sells for $349, but is often on sale for $299. I think at $299, it stacks up well against similarly priced competition. RS has a 30 day return policy, so it's worth a try if you don't wanna spend too much, but you DO want very good performance. Anyone else ever own an Optimus receiver? Let me know what your experiences were.

Its a good, hard working receiver, Im only 17 and this dont have much of a budget and this receiver is perfect for my room.

Not much difference in the 2 channel modes like arena and hall.

It works very well, it does everything that I could want a reciever to do, sounds great, has alot of functions, the remote is very usefull as it can controll the receiver, cd player and television, I bought it off some guy for 150 bucks which I thought was a steal, I have a P.O.S. Fisher cd changer hooked up to it and it still sounds good.

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Extremly old sansui got from germany, probly about 30 years old.