Price Paid:  $500.00 from Goodguys

Summary:
I probably should post the review when I have more time to play with it but it seems there are some interest in the fourm on this model and it is a close out deal, an early post may be more timely.

My Denon 3300 died over the July 4th weekend after four years of services. After a rush to look for its replacement, I brought this one over Yamaha 640, H/K 330, Onkyo 701 and Denon 2830.

Since I only use the receiver as pre/processor with a 5ch power amp, the power amp section of the receiver was not a considering factor.

For the limited time I have, I would say it has more details than the Denon 3300 on digital audio input. This is probably due to its newer and higher resolution D/A. The 5ch pre-in from the SACD player are also very clean and detail and is on the par or slightly better than the Denon 3300.

It does however seems has a bug in surround sound decoding on some 2ch DVD movie. The front and surround ch. are reversed. While DVD in question may or may not be authorized correctly, the same DVD was decoded correctly on the Denon before it died. I don't have time to figure out if there is any settings to play to fix it but it should work out of box as is by default.

Movie decoding on 5ch DD or DTS are very good and agian edge out the old Denon. I don't have any problem on 5ch DVD I ran so far.

The remote is probably the best bundled remote of all the A/V devices I have. It has decent functional design with a good set of presets for other A/V devices. It does however, lacks builtin preset for Zenith HDTV tuner.

There is also an auto caliberation for surround speakers. If you are good at it, you probably can do it better manually. If quick setup is what you are after, it works ok. I use it for the first cut and manually fine tune it.

As I have mentioned, I by passed the power amp section and am not able

It looks to me Pioneer is discontinuing the high end modles so that they will not compete with their Elite series. In fact, you can not find product info on this model on Pioneer's web site (not even under older model list). For $499.95, this is a great bargin. If you are interested in this model, you probably should get it before they are all gone. I do not however see it nearly as good value if one has to pay the price they asked for on the Elite model.

Strengths:
o Good detail and clean sound.
o Auto surround sound calibration.
o Front panel digital audio (optical)input
o Decent remote design and presets for other A/V devices.

Weaknesses:
o Bug in surround sound decoding.
o Remote does not handle Zenith HDTV tuner.

Similar Products Used:
Denon 3300
Sony STR-DA50ES

Price Paid:  $545.00 from online

Summary:
This is a great receiver. It has been said In many mags that this is the twin to Pioneers $1800 flagship receiver,also(www.audioadvisor.com). While I cannot confirm this,it sure sounds like a flagship receiver! The auto calibration works great and the sound can be tailored to any speaker thanks to the built-in equalizer(which can adjust all seperate speakers in a 7.1 setup).
Their is to many features to list. Worth your while.

Strengths:
LOTS of bells and whistles. HEAVEY and a great buy!

Weaknesses:
No gloss front as with the elite(who cares)....other than that..none

Similar Products Used:
Pioneer 55txi,harmon 7200,ect