For those of you who were wondering what happened to the price of the STR-DB830 at onecall.com in previous posts, it is listed on the www.onecall.com as $499, but if you call them and said that you have seen it posted at news group for a lower price of $382, they will honor that price (plus shipping, of course, of $30 for 2-days FedEx). This is a best price so far that I have seen. The only draw back is that they have a 15-days DEFECTIVE ONLY return policy (meaning if you return the item, they will check it to see if it is defective. If so, you get your full refund, else you get charged a 15% restocking fee plus associated shipping costl.) I haven't bought anything from them in the past, so I wouldn't know about their customer service. But, they seemed to have the lowest price thus far. If anybody knows a lower price, please let us all know.
Good hunting ..

DD, dts decoders, 5.1 inputs, 5.1 pre-amp outputs, beautiful solid construction, banana-plug speaker connections, heavy high-current power supply

no 96/24 DAC's, flip-open remote may be prone to breaking and is inconvenient, no s-video input for TV/Sat, no digital input for CD player.

Beautiful

This unit is visually striking, when compared to the cheaper DE line (like the STR-DE835 or DE845). It has an aluminium front panel, volume knob, and source selection knob. Most front panel controls, including the A/V input with s-video, are hidden behind an aluminum flip-down door which is released at the touch of a button. Nice :-) Very comparable to the ES line. The chassis is heavy, and has the PCB mounted on an angle, to reduce vibrations and resonances. This is the great stuff that the ES line is made of.

The power supply is very good, and very heavy; again it is of ES quality. There is a 4/8 ohm switch to match the output of the power supply transformer to the speakers that you use. Selecting 4 ohm reduces the voltage to the amplifiers, but also reduces the electrical resistance in the transformer, by using a fewer number of turns of wire than the 8 ohm setting. This increases the current available and reduces the heat produced in the transformer. Very few receivers in this unit's price range have the ability to safely/properly drive low impedance speakers (which actually I own). My receiver runs very cool (in the 4 ohm position) with only about 3 cm (1 1/4 inch) of space above it for air circulation.

The amplifier is of great quality for a unit in this price range. I won't even compare it to other receivers costing thousands of dollars, but it is a great amp. It uses all discrete transisitors on the output stages of all channels and can drive all 5 channels to full 100 Watt output at 0.09 % distortion. Compare that to the 0.7 % distortion rating of the DE line. The heatsink is extruded/machined aluminum, not shoddy folded sheet aluminum like some others. The amplifier also includes 6 (5.1) channel pre-amp outputs.

Digital Audio processing is impressive. This receiver does Dolby Digital (and digital Dolby Pro-Logic too of course), and dts decoding. With the increasing popularity of dts DVD's, this is a nice feature. Unfortunately, most dts DVD's these days use a crippled 768 kbit/s bitrate, instead of the original spec of twice that, 1.5 Mbit/s. This is done in order to squeeze in the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack as well. Oh well. This receiver will decode whichever soundtrack you choose to play. This receiver has Digital Cinema Sound, Sony's DSP modes for watching movies. They work OK. I find that the Virtual Multi-Dimension and Virtual Multi-Rear modes can add a lot to certain soundtracks, especially plain old Pro-Logic decoded ones. The equaliser is done digitally, and is independantly adjustable for Front, Rear, and Centre. It is 3 band with shelving type curves for the bass and treble and a fixed-Q bandpass midrange. All have adjustable frequency and level. Dynamic range compression is adjustable to 12 levels, but contrary to the manual, is only available when playing a Dolby Digital or dts soundtrack. It is not available when using the analog inputs or digital inputs with PCM sound.

The setup is easy. You enter your speaker sizes, subwoofer (yes/no), distances to speakers, and location of rear speakers (high, low, side, behind, etc.). All delays are calculated automatically for optimum sound. If you do not have a centre channel and/or rear speakers, then the receiver will create "virtual" ones to play back corresponding sounds through.

Somewhat suprising is the inclusion of a Phono input for a turntable, with built-in preamp and RIAA equalisation. This is a welcome addition to many audiophiles/enthusiasts/purists.

The North-american model of receiver has full S-Link capability (unlike the Euro model). That includes Control-S jacks for every video component (except the front-panel Video 3 input), and a Control A1 II jack to connect to all of your audio components (they 'daisy-chain').

Although I find that the D/A conversion may be slightly inferior to that found in many higher-end CD and MD players (like my MDS-JB940 - review forthcoming!), I found that the unit did not produce any appreciable hiss. This is contrary to some reports here. In no mode, with any combination of EQ/DSP settings, could I hear any hiss from my listening position, with no music playing, and volume set to 6 or so. BTW, I could not possibly listen to music at a setting of 6. The walls and fixtures start to rumble at 4, and my SPL meter registers 110 to 115 dB at that point. And I am not pushing the amp hard then - there is still a lot of headroom.

I have used this receiver for over a year now, and am quite impressed by it. There are some things that I wish it had, and my wishlist is in fact addressed by the newer model replacing it, the STR-DB840. It adds 96/24 sound capability, a DSP-bypass feature to bypass the A/D - DSP - D/A process, and more s-video inputs.

Similar Products Used:

Many

Nice sound quality and power.

The unit is not geared towards heavy usage. If you keep it on for 10 hours in a row (say you do a big party and you pump 4 large speakers), with the volume near the max, it becomes super hot, and at times will overheat. Remote is also quite poor. Difficulty of finding optical cables in London.

1.5 years after my purchase (and the end of the manufacturer's guarantee) the unit stopped working. The visual display says "PROTECTOR" and the manual states this means that the unit has short circuited.

I have only bought Sony's my whole life, but this is the same error that I had with my previous Sony Receiver/AMP. I thought that upgrading from a $300 model to a $500 model, I would have better circuitry. The previous unit lasted 3 years, before showing the same error.

Similar Products Used:

Same Receiver/Amp but 500 series. Only use Sony units, TV's, VCR's.

JUST GOT THIS RECEIVER AND IT IS BETTER THAN THE 835 OR 935...THIS RECEIVER WAS BUILT FOR THE EUROPEAN AND ASIAN MARKET...WITH BETTER COMPONENTS...IT HAS ALL THE ANSWERS ....6CHANNEL INPUT AND OUPUT....100WPER SIDE ALL CHANNELS DRIVEN AT 00.009THD...I LOVE IT AND HOPE YOU GUYS CAN GET IT...

JUST GOT IT AND IT IS GREAT...SONY CORRECTED ALL THE MISTAKES ON 835 SERIES...1. 5.1 input and pre-amp outputs
2. front supervideo and audio jacks
3. 0.0005 THD
4. 0.0009 surround THD
5. SOLID SPEAKER SONNECTIONS ON ALL CHANNELS
6. GOLD PLATED AUDIO JACKS
7. SOUNDS VERY GOOD....GIVE IT A TRY..REMOTE AND POWER SPECS REMAIN THE SAME THIS UNIT WAS MADE FOR EUROPE AND ASIA HOW IT GOT OVER HERE IS A SURPRISE..BUT HEY...WHY NOT....

I was looking at buying a Sony STR-DE series Receiver from OneCall.com. I saw other models listed that I haven't seen/heard before. I checked out the specs and got back here to see anyone posted reviews on STRDB835 or STRDB935. Eventhough there were couple of reviews on 835, I did find several excellent reviews on STRDB935. Considering that both are similar designs, I ordered DB835 for $380 at OneCall. I spoke with someone by name Thomas who was very helpful. Eventhough I ordered a Digital Coaxial, they forgot to ship it with the receiver. I had to wait few more days for that to arrive.
I hooked up the receiver with a sony 550D receiever. For few days, I couldn't figure out why the receiver was only shoing ProLogic in the display when I was playing a 5.1 Dolby Digital movie. Nothing has changed when I replaced a/v cables with coaxial cable. After speaking to a friend about it, I verified the settings on the DVD player. DolbyDigital was set to off may be because my previous reciever was ProLogic. I was thrilled to hear all 5.1 channels of sound.

I also replaced my old Sony center/rear speakers with KLH. The sound quality is very impressive. Overall, I am very satisfied with this receiver from Sony and I highly recommend it to others. If you want few more features and a good remote, you may want to consider DB935 for about $450. I didn't like the remote that came with the receiver. But that's a minor thing.

My system:Toshiba SD-2108
Paradigm Monitor 9's, CC-350, Mini-Monitors

Let me first say that this receiver is just about as good as I could have hoped for. It only cost me $400, and it had every feature I needed. I'm using the receiver's internal amp, but it has preamp outputs for all 5 channels (and the subwoofer, of course) for when I eventually get the money to upgrade that. That said, the sound as is, is spectacular. I've had a DVD player since last November,but have been watching (listening to?) movies through the analog outputs into my Monitor 9's. Now that I have surround sound, the thing I notice more than anything else is the dialogue from the center channel. This seems to be the most used speaker, so make sure you get a good one. The STR-DB830 has plenty of power (100W/ch X X5), and the remote really isn't as bad as I've heard. If you're not an idiot like some of the people who post reviews here, you should be able to handle it. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to use it, and how to get it to control my t.v., and DVD player. The setup for the receiver is also easy and flexible. If you live in an apartment, like I do, this is all the receiver you'll ever need. Even if you have a big space, this receiver should do the job nicely,and you could always upgrade the amp. Highly reccomended. Upon watching the battle scene in Legends of the Fall I almost had a heart attack when those cannon shots started. This made me very happy! 5 little speakers from me.

This is a terrific unit for the $. One minor shortcoming: There's no tape monitor loop so that if you have a three head deck, you can't monitor your the sound of the tape recording as it is laid down. Had to use the headphone output of my tape deck to perform that operation. Otherwise, a great buy!

I purchased the Sony STR-db 830 from One call about two months ago. I had originally ordered the STR-DE 835 but is was on back order and after two weeks, they told me about the DB 830 for $50 more (total about $370). The most obvious difference is the appearance of the front panel, the DB830 is more like the Sony ES line with its door panel that hides many of the controls, and the addition of an extra S-video input on the front panel. It's also supposed to have lower distortion levels and better construction though I can't confirm this.I purchased it to replace my Harmon Kardon Pro-Logic receiver. The improvement in sound quality was astounding! I thought Harmon Kardon was supposed to be audio-phile quality (I should note that it was bought refurbished) but the sound from the Sony was much more realistic and three-dimensional compared to the HK, both playing in stereo mode. As for the Dolby Digital functions, everyone knows it's a dramatic improvement over Pro-Logic, as is with this Sony Unit. I can't comment on the DTS quality since I don't have any DTS encoded disks. The universal remote doesn't duplicate all the essential functions of my DVD player remote (Toshiba 3109) nor my cable box controller, so those are still on my coffee table. I also want to mention that I haven't had any problems with overheating, though I have plenty of ventilation in the area (no other component sits on top of it, nor is it in an enclosed cabinet).
The bottom line is that this is an excellent receiver, especially considering the low price.

Great Receiver.Sony really knows how to build em.I was looking at the 935 but got reference to this receiver from this site.
Love the DD output... Just got Super Speedway today in the mail and looking forward to watching it this weekend.I am now in the market for a powered sub.
RONIN DVD clipped my fronyt speakers on the explosion scenes..
I am set for the future with this receiver.Pre Outs for any new technology that comes along..Audio DVD rings a bell here.......

Paid $304 delivered thru buyingedge.com....They were giving a $50 rebate to the first 500 purchases thru them.
Got the receiver delivered from UncleStereo in New York.
I will vouch for their prices and service being great.
Later,
Phil K.