AV Receiver Reviews

Sony Goes It Alone

Sony recently announced that it would begin selling its ES products only through A/V specialty retailers, from Best Buy’s Magnolia down to smaller independent retailers. No longer will you find these products online, not even through Sony’s own sonystyle.com. This will give Sony more control over pricing. More important to the consumer is the fact that Sony is reorienting its better AVRs to retailers who can give convincing demos and cater to the needs of custom installation and higher-end home theater.

A Bigger Boat

So the red-felt-topped pool table with the Bud Light (get it?) lamp suspended above it in your man cave doesn’t illicit “oohs” and “aahs” from visitors like it once did? Maybe it’s time to re-create that 1980s Crazy Eddie’s look by installing a showroom’s worth of speakers and driving them with the Onkyo TX-NR5008 AVR.

A generation ago, Sony ruled the consumer electronics world, establishing new market segments with every innovation and instantly owning whatever existing ones it chose to enter. Today, although it’s still a consumer electronics force to be reckoned with, Sony has to step into the cage and compete like everybody else.

Simpler Sounds Better

I’m not sure I qualify as an Anglophile, but I do like most things British—except for spotted dick. Even after you know that it’s just steamed suet pudding, it still doesn’t sound any better. So I expected that I’d feel a continually growing affinity for the new Azur 650R AVR from Cambridge Audio (that’s the “other” Cambridge for you Massachusetters). Since it began in 1968, the company has made a well-respected, high-fidelity name for itself. It even built the world’s first two-box CD player. After a tough time in the mid-’80s, Cambridge Audio was acquired by Audio Partnership, which currently owns a number of other venerable U.K. brands. As I hear them tell it, this economy of scale is a good thing for Cambridge Audio—and something that most higher-end companies don’t normally enjoy—because such a spread of brands lets the parent company employ an unusually high percentage of engineers on their staff (almost 40 percent). They happily tell the fact as if it guarantees them success and good cheer. Or at least good gear. I certainly expected it to be that way. I was initially impressed by the specs and build quality, so it surprised me when I didn’t keep that warm and fuzzy-logic feeling after I first set up the Azur 650R. In fact, I began to think that maybe Audio Partnership had hired too many engineers.

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Paring Down to Essentials

In this economically tough climate, we all have to trim expenses to the essentials. Just this week, I instructed my manservant to take my suits to the dry cleaner only if they’ve been worn for more than three hours. My nightly meals at five-star restaurants will be cut back to six nights a week at 4.5-star restaurants. During the summer, I’ll raise the thermostat in my 25-room summer house from 70 to 71 degrees (unless I’m actually there). The pilot of my personal jet will have to cut back the monthly Caspian Sea caviar run to every other month. And no more caviar for the pool boy.

Say Hi to Trinnov

The Sherwood Newcastle R-972 A/V receiver is the first to include a new player in auto setup and room correction technology. Say hello to the Trinnov Optimizer. Nearly two years after it was first announced, the R-972 has arrived. After endless behind-the-scenes tweaking, this product will surely trigger debate and discussion among surround enthusiasts.

What? No 8-Track?

I’m convinced that at a subatomic level, my DNA has begun mutating me into homo gadgetus. My dad was an electrical engineer, so naturally, hooking up a two-channel stereo was instinctual, hereditary, and manifest from the moment my little fingers could grasp an RCA connector. But setting up a multichannel, HDMI-equipped, Internet-connected AVR was a challenge until recently. I don’t think manufacturers have gotten that much better at their hardware and software design. I just think that as a subspecies (male), we’ve become more adept at new forms of hunting and gathering.