|
Review 1 of 20
Price Paid:
$35.00
from Pawn 1 Summary:
Well, I feel like it was Christmas all over again. I recently decided that I was going to peice together another surroundsound system after selling off my last one over three years ago. I wasn't really expecting to be able to get anything even worth really listening to, but I was wrong.
The first part was the speakers. I've heard speakers that range from garbage like Bose to pure gold like Wilson Audio. My first and most important goal was to find a speaker that let the music come through as clean as possible and kept the musical dynamics in tact. The one I ended up on was the Wharfedale 9.1 monitors. Excellent speakers for $250/pr. The little speakers won the product of the year in 'what hi-fi!' magazine out of the UK last year.
After those speakers I only had $50 to get me some pile of junk reciever to get me by for a month or two, so.....off to the pawn shop!
I had never seriously looked at a Yamaha receiver before. I had always owned and sold Marantz, Adcom, B&K, Denon, etc... but I only was looking for a temporary solution. The pawn shop had this reviever marked at $80, wich was the cheapest they had, and I was just trying to find faults with it to get a discount. It had no remote and the balance knob was missing, so I asked them what kind of a discount they could give me. The guy said, "how does $40 sound" and I replied, "$40 out the door, and I'll buy it". Needless to say I had a new reciever in my peanut price range in less than 10 seconds. Mind you, I was assuming that this was a prologic reciever with maybe 75 watts to the mains and 35-40 watts for center and surrounds. It wasn't till I was walking out the door that I realized that it had coax and optical digital inputs on the back, and I though, "I thought only Dolby Digital revievers had those". When I got home I looked up the model number on Yamaha's website and saw that it was 100x5, dolby digital, and had all the other list of goodies along with it. I then new that it had to have retailed for around $700-$800.
To make a long story short, it is THE BEST $40 I've ever spent. The sound is very respecable and it has plenty of power for my Wharfedale 9.1's. I just wish I had the remote now. I think I'm going to turn my IPAQ into a pronto remote for it. Strengths:
plenty of power, decent sound, price paid Weaknesses:
cumbersom navigation, no binding posts on rear and center channels, not enough digital inputs for todays use sources, digital inputs are assigned to pre-determined sources (not assignable) Similar Products Used:
none, only higher-end equipment
| 
4 of 5
5 of 5
