Very strong-clean (and I mean clean and clear) sound.

none-this is a beautiful piece of equipment.

Short and simple---this unit puts out clean sound and when the music demands strong output-it proceeds without hesitation. very happy.......

Similar Products Used:

krell, adcom, mark-levinson, and carver.

Too much to tell

NOISE, Remote commander, Technical Assistance

This is a great processor, but it generates a lot of NOISE, why you don't tell this??? Sony's new Digital Volume Control is a total flop, I have noise since -30/-25 db and technical assistance says it is normal!!!
NORMAL for a 200$ system not for a 2.000$ Processor!

Similar Products Used:

TA-E2000ESD

Anthony --
Sounds like you're going somewhere with some pretty bad information. Buy the TA-E9000ES and you'll really like it. It more than a separate receiver. I also have the N9000ES amp and it's pretty good too. Sure, there are better amps out there, but for $1,000 it's a heck of a deal.

Also, no TA-E9000ES with 6 ch. input. Sony never changes products on the fly. If there's a major change, then the model number will change.

With regards to the 640Kb/s rate... you must have some old dodgy code because the DD 640Kb/s rate is only a test rate. Normal DD is normally 384 or 448.
RM

The Sony is a "good" preamp and an even better bargain but I really must say that I am more than shocked to see reviews saying that this unit not only compares but is better than units like the Sunfire Theater Grand, Proceed, or Theta Casanova. Yes, I recognize that a higher price does not necessarily mean a better unit but having auditioned countless preamps, that one can notice "detail" on the Sony on one hand and say that these other true high-end models are "grainy"...
Again, for the price and performance, this is an absolute bargain and deserves its high ratings if you base it on value vs. price performance alone.

Value: 5 stars
Performance : 3.5 stars
Ergonomics: 3 stars
Build Quality: 3 stars

Overall 3.5 stars

Reg, check your ears. I have listened to more pre-amps than you can dream of. The Sony will equaly perform as good as any of those expencive pre amp. Yes and I meen the Proceed and Krell, all are over priced and are not worth more than a 1000$. Whoever buys those pre amps are just being fooled by those greedy stupid manufactures who like to Rob the public on a piece of metal and some chips inside with a fancy name, cool look exterior design. Same goes with all those audio magazines who are afraid to speak the truth brcause they will loose buisness with companies like Krell, Proceed,etc... if they write the truth and simply say that a pre-amp like Sony is just as good as theres and maybe even beter. Lucky for me I had the privledge to see and hear most everything out there and my own brain and ears could not see or hear why an extra 5000-20000 dollars was needed for those fancy looking pre-amp which realy does not sound anywhere better than a pre amp like Sony TAE9000ES. Take the same speakers,cable,cd-player,amplifier and do A blind comparison and you will see that you are just like all the other fools. Goodluck and Stop trying to make us fall into the nonsence that other costly manufactures got you tranced on. Easy 5

Aragon 8008BB
Acurus A250
Acurus A150
D.H Lab cable
Sony TAE9000ES
Sony DVP7700
Paradigm Studio 80
Paradigm Studio 20
Paradigm CC450
HSU Research Sub

Just got the TA E9000ES for 2 weeks. I auditioned few pre/pro before decided on the sony, including Denon, Nakamichi, Lexicon and Sunfire. For the price this unit offers a remarkable package of technology, features, built and ergonomic elegance. It sounds superb in DD, DTS or just plain 2 channels stereo. Major drawback is the remote, hopefully sony will fix it soon.

This is one of the best sounding decoder to date. After upgrading to version 1.10C it is an even better decoder now. Trust me, you'll not regret this purchase provided your amp and speakers are up to standard. Currently I'm using it with all B&W matrix 803,805,HTM and ASW3000. The system rocks and is simply out of this world.

Have had this unit since December. Like several others I also have a unit that is infected with the "lip sync" and "hiss" disease. At first I thought I was imagining things or just being to picky. Then I thought that maybe it was the DVD itself. You know there must be something wrong when your wife, whoi could care less about home theater electronics, says, "How come their mouths move before you here what they are saying?"
To make sure, I hooked up my old Marantz DP870 and "bingo" everything lined up just the way it was supposed too. I told the salesman at the dealer I bought it from, and he said he notice the same thing when compairing the output of the new Sony HDTV when run through the TA-E9000 versus the TV's own output. He has ordered me another unit and my hope is that I just got a bad unit.

The hiss seems to be present in just about every TA-E9000 that I have listened to. I have very efficient Infinity Compositions which seems to magnify the hiss. When switching to a lees eficient speaker (mid 80's) the hiss is much less apparent. Since the hiss is never present at "real world" levels, I can live with it.

We all know about the remote, and Sony has ordered the new remote for me as well. And I thought the Marantz RC2000 ate batteries!

Once again Sony almost has a truly stellar product. My Marantz equipment on the other hand may not have all the "bells and whisltes", but it got the job done right the "first" time and every time thereafter. If my new unit takes care of the lip sync and remote, they will have a 5 star product in my mind. If not, then they will have come close (3.5 stars), but will also have a return on their hands!

Will, I'm not going to give my TAE 9000 ES a four or five star rating until SONY fixes the remote and gets the audio delay out of the Dolby Digital (DD) 5.1 processor. I wonder if DTS has the same delay? The picture and sound are great when taken individually without using the remote. The switching is all I'll ever need. I do miss the tape monitoring capability. I measured a random 8 milliamp current draw on the remote when it was turned off. This will eat the batteries within 3-7 days depending on how often it happens. I was unable to control the 8 ma draw turning on and off except when I cleared all memory--then the control is pretty useless and the 8 ma draw gets turned back on when you use any function.
I can hear the audio delay by running the analog outputs or the DD 5.1 outputs on my Toshiba SD 9000 DVD player directly to my TV set and listening to them at the same time as the TAE 9000 does DD 5.1 processing on the digital signal over the main system speakers. There is a very definite echo. You can also see the lip syncronization problems on speaking scenes, and the sound affects that need proper sync with the video are off. You can see the delay on a two-channel oscilloscope monitoring the same channels. It also happens on DD processing of laser discs. It does not happen on PCM stereo or Prologic processing. My wife needs to read lips and it drives her crazy. I have case files set up with Sony and maybe they will get a fix sometime soon. You can call Sony at 1-800-222-7669 then 5-2-3-3 and set up a case file too. In the mean time call or e-mail your dealer and tell them to stop selling defective merchandise.