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Submitted by
Gary
a Audio EnthusiastDate Reviewed: May 13, 2013
Bottom Line: I wonder how many SONY 1000/2000 pre-amp owners are aware that these units have a factory-programmed Demonstration Mode? Press DIMMER and VIDEO 1 together on the front panel to activate. This will cycle the unit through all its many functions. The demo lasts nine minutes and will repeat endlessly until canceled by pressing a source or adjusting the volume. Put on your favorite program, adjust the volume to a moderate level, and watch this unit do its thing. Not only useful for observing its functions, but for seeing just how those functions change the sound. Can be more instructive than the owner's manual, which, by the way, does not mention the Demo Mode. Pretty cool! You may also want to know about some experiences I have had with the SONY 2000. I have owned two of these units and I am convinced there is an engineering problem with them. And that concerns ventilation. There is a large number of heat vents on the top panel and you can see three small heat sinks just underneath. The 2000 only draws 38W, so you may be able to see that SONY thought that would thoroughly adequate. But reality seems to intervene. This unit gets very hot and can even burn your fingers by touching the top on a hot day with no a/c on. It thoroughly surprised me with my first unit, but the second does exactly the same thing. What's up with these units? On closer examination, I discovered there is NO heat vents on the bottom at all, except for a few miscellaneous holes. What' s more the 2000 is densely packed with circuit boards so that even if there were vents, air could not circulate upward to cool the admittedly small heat sinks. The result is that the heat sinks just sit there and cook. And cook and cook and cook. The longer the unit is used, the hotter it gets! But we/re not done. The power supply sits on the lower left side and it is oversized as you would expect in a SONY ES unit. However, that also gets very hot! And with no underside vents to let in air, we just get more and more heat. I thought it was very unusual for this pre-amp to get so hot, especially since my SONY 110 and 220 power amps hardly heat up at all. Even the SONY 55ES power amp only gets about half as hot. The SONY engineers must have been asleep in thermodynamics class. This ventilation problem may have been corrected on the later 9000 pre-amp. I don't know. But what to do about this? The first thing I did was to remove the wood side panels. SONY ES component owners are justifiably proud of these beautiful rosewood accents, but I think it is time to get back to earth. The bare metal case acts as an auxiliary heat sink and helps the 2000's situation. I have long been a believer in the "heat stove" engineering principle that disc players and tape decks should be located at the bottom of a stack of components, tuners and pre-amps in the middle, and power amps at the top. If any excess heat is produced the power amps are more likely to handle it. A disc player defintely will not. So accordingly, I placed my first 2000 pre-amp just underneath the power amp(s). In less than an hour of ownership, I noticed how hot it was getting. So I laborously built a special shelf over the pre-amp with 399 holes in the top and open-air sides as well. That worked pretty well for five years until the unit mysteriously failed. With the new 2000 I have gone to more extreme measures as I don't want to lose this one too. The heat stove principle is out the window and it now sits on top of the stack. But that still is not enough to keep it cool. So I bought a small, noiseless fan and turned it on it. Now my SONY 2000 is just as happy (and cool) as a pre-amp processor can be! A four-hour movie on a hot day? No problem. All day CD listening? No problem. Have fun.
Used product for: More than 1 year
Duration Product Used: Audio Enthusiast
Product model year: 2003
Overall Rating: Value Rating:
Submitted by
Joe Blow
a AudiophileDate Reviewed: October 17, 2001
Bottom Line: These reviewers are so lame. THIS PREAMP IS FAR FROM OBSOLETE - HOW MANY FU*CKING DVD DO YOU SEE AT YOUR LOCAL VIDEO STORE!!!!!!!!!!!??????!!!!
'Analog surround is dead' -yeah, tell me another one! LOL
Analog surround kicks ass with the 2000 - you really don't need DVD. You will NEVER find ANY DVD preamp with the flexibility of the 2000. It has independent EQ and very detailed reverb tweaking FOR EACH AND EVERY CHANNEL, IN 10 preset and 10 user banks.
This preamp has flexibility out the as*s!!!
Used product for: More than 1 year
Duration Product Used: Audiophile
Product model year: 2000
Price Paid:
$1.00
Overall Rating:
Value Rating:
Submitted by
Mike Sprecher
a Audio EnthusiastDate Reviewed: September 10, 2001
Bottom Line: Right now, as of september 2001, the Pre-Amp is disassembled into its parts.
After 3 years of more or less daily use, the unit started to have graphical artifacts in the display. all segments of the display were flashing and a few month later, the center channel stopped to work completely.
Dissassembling brought to light that the unit is of bad material quality. For the price, I would have expected more durability, less heat and better engineering quality.
I dont know as of yet wether I might be able to fix it. And I dont know if I want to fix it, it really is old. It cant handle DVD PCM streams, and analog Dolby is over in the days of DVD.
Used product for: More than 1 year
Duration Product Used: Audio Enthusiast
Product model year: 1995
Purchased At: local dealer in switzerland
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Submitted by
Joe Keller
a Audio EnthusiastDate Reviewed: September 9, 2001
Bottom Line: 2000 has digital inputs, unlike the 1000. As a result, all por-logic decoding is done in digital domain, resulting in smoother pans etc.
Used product for: More than 1 year
Duration Product Used: Audio Enthusiast
Product model year: 1995
Price Paid:
$1200.00
Overall Rating: Value Rating:
Submitted by
Blah Blah
a AudiophileDate Reviewed: August 23, 2001
Bottom Line: I just compared, in depth, the reverb capabilities of these two units - the 1000 and the 2000, and the 1000 DEFFINATELY have better sounding reverb! Absolutely certain. So if you want these things for the lush, realistic reverb - get the 1000 hands down. I tried messing with the 2000 it just has a fakeness to the sound - not 'bad' but not like reality. The 1000 really has the ability to make it sound 'real' - like the sound is REALLY in a church, etc - takes some tweaking but it will do it! :)
I have been getting these things like M&Ms lately - will be selling off the 2000 units and getting more 1000 for friends instead - they just sound a bit better for the reverb stuff. If you are using this preamp but NOT using the reverbs - you should sell them and get something similar becasue NEITHER one of them has the clearest dry sound. Go to something like a switch box for that LOL
The 2000 has a lot more "Yamaha tone" to the reverbs - the reverbs simply sound cheaper and faker than on the 1000 - they are even missing some of the tweakier parameter adjustments! In favor of making all of them more dolby adjustable - but who cares. Like I say if you want clean, you shouldn't even be getting either of these - these are for reverb!!! They are up there with lexicon and the rest no joke.
Used product for: More than 1 year
Duration Product Used: Audiophile
Product model year: 1997
Price Paid:
$160.00
Purchased At: Ebay
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