has brought many good movie moment to my lounge room

After reading these reviews i am amazed, i have owned this unit for over 2 yrs now and have had not one problem with it. Sounds to me like alot of you blame the sound quality on the amp when it is most likely the speakers. And someone compared it to a Sony, after looking at Sony subwoofers on the weekend i wouldnt piss on them. Go to k-mart and pick up your Sony gear. With my mix of Bose & B&W speakers this thing sounds great. Sure i think a HK would be better but geese.

cost

the receiver does not seem to have labeled 5x100 watts

I got this receiver from uBid. I was afraid uBid was going to overcharge me on shipping, the shipping turned out to be $23 by UPS, which is not so bad considering it's weight. I just set the receiver up with my Infinity RS-1 bookshelf as fronts and Infinity BU-120 subwoofer. The rear speakers are KLH soundbite. I have not received by order of a center speakers.

The receiver performance is very good for it's price. I used to have a Pioneer mini component stereo with 2 x 50 watts. Even my wife can hear the difference between D508 and my other pioneer in stereo mode with the same speakers, the sound quality is much better. I have tried a few DVD movies, the receiver sounds very good.

The receiver does not seem to generate 5 x 100 watts because I have to set the volume at -40 to -50 for DVD movies, which is more than half of the volume setting, not good for the receiver. Another thing is that I have both pioneer LD and DVD, so I think Pioneer should provide separate inputs for LD and DVD, not sharing one by both players.

This is a decent receiver for entry level HT. It deserves 4 stars for value and 3 and half for overall.

Similar Products Used:

none

bang for the bucks' nice clean sound,easy to program

front panel is a bit old style & u can't control the volume dial via'' remote.

this tank'' is simply great.enjoy''''''''''''

Similar Products Used:

pioneer vsx 901s

Cost, Feature Set, Remote, Midnight Mode, 3 assignable digital inputs (2 optical, 1 coaxial)

Power Drop from driving 2 channels to 5 channels (standard numbers game at this price point), DSP modes are almost useless, Remote doesn't learn, doesn't produce a complete frequency sound range in DD (most noticeable in Matrix Lobby Shooting Spree), no DTS, no Svideo.

This is not a bad receiver. It has an excellent feature set. The speaker size, distance and crossover frequencies settings are great. The front video audio jacks are great for hooking up consoles and video cameras. 2 optical and 1 coaxial digital inputs that are assignable are great too. For a first foray into home theater, especially if you haven't spent a lot on you speakers, this is a great choice.

As for the weaknesses I listed, no DTS and no Svideo are not really weaknesses. There are so few DTS DVDs out there that you really don't need it (and the number that are DTS only, are even smaller). As for Svideo, if you have a TV that supports Svideo it should have all the switching ability you need. Adding extra connections will only degrade your signal quality and defeat the purpose of Svideo. The remote really isn't an issue, if you can get it to control everything to your liking, use it. If not go spend 20 bucks on an All For One Cinema 6 or 7 learning remote (you won't regret that purchase at all).

Now the weaknesses that do matter. I didn't find any of the DSP modes usefull at all. I only ever used DD for movies and Prologic for TV (which works well on some channels but not all). I believe its the drop in power from 2 channels to 5 channels driven that is really the culpret for the DSP modes being useless. Listening to CDs, only Dance and Theater 2 sounded at all decent. But the stereo mode sounded so much better. This is because if you look at the specs in 2 channel mode it's 2x 100watts from 20hz-20khz at 8ohms with 0.08 thd. While in 5 channel mode its 5x 100watts at 1khz at 8ohms with 0.8 thd. Over the full 20hz-20khz range the 5 channel mode would not score 100watts to all 5 channels, it would be more like 40-60 watts. Also its not a high current design, so during the transients of Dolby Digital sounds (short loud sounds, ie gun shots, explosions etc.) when the impedance of your speaker drops (say it drops from 8 to 6 or 5 ohms, it now requires 140 watts instead of 70 watts to produce the sound)the pioneer runs out of juice and the sound doesn't come out with the full effect. In other words the pioneer won't double its power everytime you drop the impedance by 2 ohms (the Onkyo I replaced the Pioneer with comes very close to doubling power with every 2 ohm drop in impedance, which is also why it costs twice as much). This is why the Lobby Shooting spree sounds so much better on the Onkyo than the Pioneer. Sadly hind sight is always 20/20 and I learnt about high current stuff after I bought the Pioneer.

So to sum up, if you've spent over $1000 Canadian on your speakers, go look at the Onkyo TXDS575, Denon AVR1800, Marantz SR5000 and others like it first. If you can't afford those go look at the Yamaha 595 or Technics SA-AX7. It will be well worth the extra $200-$400 you will have to shell out. If you don't have great speakers though and you are on a real tight budget, its tough to beat the Pioneer VSXD-508 (now 509s) or VSXD-608. Good speakers only sound good if you feed them a good signal. Doesn't matter how much you spend on the speakers if you don't get a good receiver. So don't pull cheap on the receiver if you bought or have some decent speakers.

Note: If I could I'd give it 3.5 stars overall.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer VSX-305, Technics SA-AX6, Onkyo TXDS-575

Not too hard to setup. Ok looks

Slow when increasing volume. OVERLOAD ALWAYS COMES ON

Watching the Matrix I need to crank it up to hear the voices and speech, but as soon as they fire ONE gun shot, it goes into OVERLOAD!!! I cant push it past -25 on the volume. Why does the volume start at around 90??? It takes an hour for me to get it up to a reasonable listening level.

Similar Products Used:

NONE

Price, remote, features, sound

display, not enough buttons......

Ok - I reviewed this before and I feel like helping the rating out... Sue me! This reciever is the single reason that I had to move into a new apartment. Does that alieviate any fears you have over power? I also made a purchase of an old Pioneer SX-1980 to do the stereo work and I keep the vsx-508 to do the home theater duties. Not a bad setup.... This is a great reciever with enormous potential, if you don't mind not having s-video and component switching, then I cannot recommend anything more......

Similar Products Used:

Denon, Yamaha, Sony etc..

Good basic Dolby Digital Receiver with 500 watts total power and a very useful remote

No s-video inputs or outputs, only 1 power outlet on the back.

This receiver is also sold by Radio Shack under the Optimus brand (STAV3790).

It provides nice switching capabilities, has adequate power for most speakers, a subwoofer output and some fairly useful "digital sound fields". I got it on sale at RS for $299.

Great sound, Excellent Bass

Difficult to set to the right levels

Great unit. I would recommend it to anyone. A little difficult to configure, but still excellent deal.

Value

Took a lot of tweeking, not really 100 Watts x 5, Relies too much on the remote

Well one of the speakers was busted in my home theater that I bought at best buy so I traded in the whole home theater for this reciever. It was an open box with no remote and Manual. And you know what, I think its a great deal. I plugged my old dinky 40 W KLH 970A speakers (great value speakers) in and at first it was REALLY quite. I did have to crank it up to -15. I thought it very absurd, but still it sounded nice. It wasn't until I bought my newer 100W KLH's that I realized the power of this reciever. If I get it near the teens, I can hear it outside of my house fairly well. The impedence of the speakers and type seems to be very important. With my smaller speakers, I heard a drop from stereo mode to prologic. Although the drop is still there, it is much less. For getting it for virtually nothing, (two hours in line in customer service and $2 in gas to get it there) I think its wonderful.

Only thing I find annoying is that the remote cost $60!!! and I can't do everything on the face plate that I can do with the remote (like fix the levels) But even for the price it was listed at ($200) I think it was a great buy.

I posted this correction before, but I didn't check to make sure it was up. Guess I get to give the product a 3.5 over all after all.

I got something mixed up in my previous reveiw. Every 2 ohm drop shouldn't produce a doubling of power. Its every halving of the ohm load that should produce a doubling of power. The Onkyo does this, not a doubling of power every 2 ohm drop. That would be one remarkable amp.

Anyways, like I said before, check out the Denon, Onkyo and Marantz receivers. If you can't afford those then check out the Yamaha and Technic ones. If you are still past your budget you can't beat the Pioneer VSX-D508 (now the VSX-D509s).