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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Good Value. Good Quality. Awkward Controls"
Pros: Lots of I/O options. Sounds Great
Cons: Crummy manual, mediocre remote control
Summary: The last stereo amp I bought was a Yamaha AX-430 and I paid $319.79 in Dec. 1990. It had 2 channels and no AM/FM Tuner. I just bought the Sony for only $354, including shipping.
I've been having a lot of problems hearing movies for quite a while now and someone told me this could help since the voices come out on the center channel and you can turn the other speakers down. So, far this seems to be working pretty good, but I've only tried 2 movies. So, I'm not sure yet, but if I can cure my movie hearing problem for only $350, I'll be very happy.
The first problem I ran into with this Stereo/Receiver was with the sub woofer. There's a button on the remote that will switch the output to only the front, left/right speakers. When I first saw this option, I thought it was ideal since that meant you could switch to an ordinary stereo mode with one push of a button.
When you switch to the 2CH STEREO mode, though, it cuts off the sub woofer. Why did they do that!? Am I missing something here? According to the manual you can get sub woofer output if you press "A.F.D" and then step through the menu and select the appropriate 2-channel decoding mode, but this is sort of a pain in the neck.
However, since I had a sub woofer, without a built-in amp, I hooked it to the B output of the front speakers and that made things simpler.
The remote control menu-select functions are not well documented and the buttons are all to small. The remote strikes me as being cheaper than it should have been, but to be fair it's adequate.
The documentation really sucks. The user's manual should have been full sized instead of in a pamphlet format. The print is very small and hard to read and so are the pictures and diagrams. The table of contents is inadequate and the mini index on the back page is a joke.
There's a steep learning curve on the menu system if you try to use the built-in display. However, the on-screen (TV) display works very well and is easy to use. Sony did a good job on this.
In short, the manual sucks and the remote is mediocre, but those are problems I can live with. This is a great stereo, especially for the price.
