Two-channel CDs played through the Kenwood in System 2 sounded much better than you might imagine, given the inexpensive Outlaw anchoring the setup. But the Outlaw-Revel pairing had impressed me in the past, and I was pleased to find that the Kenwood did nothing to alter my high opinion of this unlikely combination. I marginally preferred the Kenwood's digital output to its analog, but the difference was barely perceptible. The digital link sounded just a little more open and transparent.

And what about DVD-Audio? I set up the Kenwood's bass manager for all Small speakers plus subwoofer. Despite the excellent bass capabilities of the large Revel F30s, I preferred directing all the bass to the subwoofer, particularly given the Outlaw's modest power output.

My DVD-A collection is relatively skimpy so far, and for this review I concentrated on three new titles fresh from their shrink-wrap. The disadvantage of using new recordings for an evaluation is that you have little basis for comparison. The advantage is that you have no preconceived notions about how they “should” sound.

All three of the new recordings sounded excellent through the Kenwood, and what flaws they displayed clearly originated in the recordings themselves. Béla Fleck's The Bluegrass Sessions: Tales from the Acoustic Planet, Volume 2 (Warner Bros. 47332-9) had instruments strumming away distractingly in the rear channels and too much ill-defined bass, but the mids and highs were open, sweet, and even a little soft. You're the One (Warner Bros. 47844-9) may well be the best-sounding release I've yet heard from Paul Simon, and I've heard them all. This was the only recording of the three new DVD-As that didn't make use of the center channel, but its phantom center imaging was sharply focused. The recording itself was smooth and silky, with no trace of harshness. Some discrete activity was directed to the rear channels here as well, but in this case it involved subtle percussion that I did not find at all distracting.

The best recording of the group was Ton Koopman's Organ Spectacular: Famous Organ Works by Bach (Teldec 8573-82041-9). While a little short of the sort of profound bass we normally expect from anything with “organ” and “spectacular” in its title, this disc nonetheless presented the organ front and center, with the surrounds reserved for creating a terrific sense of ambience. This is the sort of effect that makes the best use of surround sound for music, though it's doubtful if this alone will be enough to lure the mass market to the DVD-A format. For that, we'll have to rely on material like Bluegrass Sessions, with the musicians front and rear, much as some of us dislike that perspective.

I found a few quirks in the Kenwood's bass management. Tested in Dolby Digital with the main left and right speakers set to Large and the subwoofer setup designated Off, the low-frequency effects (LFE) bass (the 0.1 channel) is discarded, not redirected to the large front speakers. This was likely a design choice made to protect the main speakers from excessive excursions. In DVD-A, I found at least one recording (The Bluegrass Sessions) in which a connected subwoofer received bass even when the subwoofer setup designation was Off. And when I played 2-channel CDs using the Kenwood's 5.1-channel analog outputs (with only the left, right, and, theoretically, subwoofer channels active on such material), the left and right speakers ran full-range whether they were set to Large or Normal (small), and no bass came from the sub. In other words, bass management did not function on 2-channel CDs played from the Kenwood's multichannel outputs. The only way to get bass management for CDs would be to use the Kenwood's digital or mixed audio (2-channel analog) outputs and perform the bass management in your A/V receiver or surround processor. But some audiophiles may welcome this arrangement; it's an easy way to get two channels of full-range sound with no subwoofer. Just play your CDs with the 5.1-channel analog inputs of the A/V receiver or surround processor selected.

One dubious feature of the DVD-Audio format is its ability to provide onscreen images, generally in the form of menus for selecting the music tracks and slide-shows stills relating to the music or artists (full-motion video is possible, but only in small doses; it consumes too many data). But if you engage the Pure Audio Mode button on the front panel, the menus come up only long enough for you to make your selection, then go blank while the music is playing. This is not only less distracting, but also avoids the risk of a stationary image creating any phosphor burn in CRT and plasma displays. And if you prefer to listen without a video display at all, you can change tracks “blind” by using the remote's Chapter Skip control—but to get to the first track, you might have to push it a few times to pass through the unseen menus.

I experienced one significant operational problem with the Kenwood. Playing a CD and with the Proceed AVP surround processor, I often heard a one-second burst of noise from the player's digital output just before the music began. This didn't happen with the Outlaw receiver, or at any time with DVD-Video material. The AVP had never before exhibited this behavior with a DVD player.

Conclusions
If you exercise reasonable care in setting up the Kenwood Sovereign DV-5700's picture controls, avoiding the urge to turn up Sharpness or Enhancement much past their lowest settings, you'll be rewarded with a picture competitive with anything on the market. The built-in deinterlacing alone is superb—good enough, in fact, that we wish Kenwood had designed the player with auxiliary inputs that would have allowed the deinterlacing to be used with other sources. But such a feature is nonexistent with other popularly priced players, so this is hardly a criticism.

The Kenwood's sound quality is solid. Its DVD-Audio capabilities are a real plus, not to mention its DVD-A bass management. It won't equal the performance of a high-end CD player, but we haven't yet found a DVD player in this price range that will. Nevertheless, the DV-5700's CD and DVD-A performance kept me involved in the music and reluctant to stop listening. That's really all that need be said.

In short, this is a fine player all around, and I highly recommend it.