Sony 5.2 Channel 4K HDR Receiver

I was using a pretty good Pioneer receiver to pass my HDMI devices through to my TV. Unfortunately this receiver started freezing. The audio would work, but no selections would. Checking around the ‘net showed this would likely be a bad capacitor, and since this is at least an 8-year old receiver, I decided to replace it (no schematic, and lots of capacitors to replace).

So, I bought a “renewed” (fancy word for refurbished) Pioneer through Amazon from a seller. That was a bad joke on me because this receiver didn’t work either. It would shut off a few seconds after being switched on (apparently this is a common fault with this model of Pioneer receiver). This is the second refurb I have gotten off of Amazon that didn’t work. I won’t try a third time. I checked online and found out that one Chinese company has purchased Onkyo, Denon and Pioneer. Considering all the problems Canada has been having with China lately and the fact that this supposedly refurbished receiver still didn’t work, I decided against purchasing another of these brands.

I have an older 46″ Sony TV that is older than my old Pioneer receiver, and it still works perfectly. This convinced me to go with this Sony.

Well, after reading the instructions (Gasp!) it was very easy to set up. It works perfectly with my old Polk Audio surround speakers and sub (5.1), and it sounds very good. I have only tried it on my cable box and the FM tuner, but the sound was every bit as good as the Pioneer was.

Turn it on, set the language and time/date and the receiver goes into setup mode. You plug in a provided microphone and place it in the most common sitting position and it sets up the speakers for you. Sounds good, and only took a minute. Once done, everything was perfect. My old Logitech Harmony universal remote even had the the correct device so I didn’t have to manually set up every button on the remote (however, the categories for listening to music do not include using the Bluetooth input as an option for some reason, so to use Bluetooth I would have to use the remote that came with the receiver). Note that I have not tested Bluetooth yet.

I think the price is comparable with what the Pioneer cost years ago, and hopefully it will last longer. It’s gotta be better quality than those brands that were bought out by China. That’s really too bad. The Pioneer brand used to be a very well respected brand.

Overall, I am happy with this purchase, and I respect Sony as a brand name. I would say this receiver is worth the price I paid ($348.00).

Let me start by saying I am pretty happy with this receiver but it gets four stars for lack of a simple tone control. I am powering 2 Acoustic Resesrch 3As from the late 60s for anyone who is an audiophile. I have an old Optimus center channel (yeah cheap RadioShack product but it works….simple as that) and a Onkyo sub. It rocks it pretty well. These 3As like real power to drive them with 12” woofers and Mids/highs. I can generate good volume levels with clean sound on the Bluetooth from my Apple Music. Works great with new tv and gaming systems on optical output. The outputs that support a low level sub out are lacking but no big deal. The main problem is I am ab audio geek so I want to tweak my tone controls for almost every song I listen to so I can get it just right. This receiver only has a bass and treble if you are using the AV controls through an onscreen tv adjustment. If u use it just for audio receiver then you are out of luck. Someone bring back simple bass treble adjustment knobs!! For the money I am very happy to use this as a bridge to my dead 25 year old Yamaha receiver but I see McIntosh in my near future…

Me gustó mucho el amplificador, es de muy fácil uso, la calidad y potencia de audio es excepcional, garantía de la calidad de SONY.
Conecté mi Televisión, Bluray, tornamesa, computadora, y con el plus del Bluetooth se conecta mi celular. TODOS funcionan excelente.

I needed something simple and strong for my outdoor pool speaker setup. Works great with Bluetooth and provides good music. Good choice for an inexpensive but good setup. If I were to buy again I would get one with direct wifi connection so I could control the music with my phone while still taking calls outside. Great system though and now I just connect my Chromebook to it and use that to control the music

I had unique needs and this unit met almost all of them and came in much lower than my max budget. Commentary below:

Dimensions: needed to be as short as possible for future cabinet building/fitting. This is the shortest unit i could find that met my other criteria.

Surround: needed at least 5.1 with MCACC. I built my system out of a variety of equipment at differing impedance levels and cone sizes per channel. The MCACC feature worked wonders and saved hours of fine tuning the sound field.

Performance: needed to perform at a variety of impedance levels per channel and rather low impedance for home audio. I make my stuff out of car audio equipment which is usually lower than their listed 4ohm value. Home audio is usually listed at 8ohm. This units amp lists a range of 6-16 ohm per channel. It’s driving 10 speakers (2/channel in series) each channel between 6.3 and 8ohms. I haven’t measured it yet but the amp’s subwoofer pre-out seems to be 1-2volts which is acceptable. With the preface that I know what I’m doing and 6.5in is my largest cone, this thing will hurt my ears before it clips. So, for me, wattage is a non-issue.

Features: it has MCACC. Use it. Bluetooth it works great. Dimmer: I use this in a bedroom and sometimes for looping thunder sounds to sleep to. The dimmer will cut the display down to 50% or turn it off entirely. It also turns off the blue Bluetooth light. Incredibly thoughtful engineering for sleeping applications. Processing: sony’s smart surround setting (HD somethingorother) will automatically pass through DTS and Dolby (and pressing display on the remote will tell you what its passing through so you don’t have to guess) and more importantly it will automatically play stereo sources in multi channel stereo (aka extended stereo)

Shortcomings (all easy to know from listing and photos):
Surround wire terminals aren’t banana plug compatible but the front channels are.
There’s no full range pre-out for another zone.
Volume: level is displayed in a unit-less value, would prefer actual decibel values
Network: ethernet port for basic smart home control functions would be nice.