Harman AVR 125 5.1 Channels Receiver
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- THX Certification: No
- Number of Channels: 5.1 Channels
- Type: Receiver
- Surround Mode Power: 45 Watt @ 8 ohm, 20 Hz - 20 kHz, THD: 0.07%
- Stereo Mode Power: 55 Watt @ 8 ohm, 20 Hz - 20 kHz, THD: 0.07%
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Great sound and lots of features
Pros
Good sound replication, attractive looking, versatile, generally inexpensive.
Cons
Power is a little lacking. Difficult remote
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
I would highly recommend this receiver. It is relatively inexpensive and well worth the money. You get good sound and lots of options.
I have now owned this receiver for almost two full years. It replaced a Sony stereo receiver that quit on me right after the warranty ran out. The Harman-Kardon has served me quite well these past two year. Although it doesn't have as much power as the Sony it does have a much better sound quality and frankly I have never had the problem of needing more power.
While the RMS power rating is lower one advantage the HK has is that its power is the same over the whole audio spectrum. The basic idea is that it takes more current to produce the same power at lower wavelengths. The engineering of the HK is meant to avoid such a dilemma. While there are only 45 Watts available they are very steady consistent watts no matter what kind of music you are listening to.
I also opted for a surround sound receiver. Since I'm a poor college student I don't have all the components to set up a permanent surround sound system so I don't have a ton of experience in using in such a situation but I have set it up special thanks to parts my friends have and I must say it does very well for a small dorm type room. We enjoyed the whole Alien saga in surround sound and had no complaints. The 45 watts per channel did very well and with all the options for surround sound decoding I can't imagine you would have trouble finding one you liked. However if/when a newer/better surround sound decoding comes along the AVR 125 has got you covered. It has a six channel input so that you can hook up your future DVD player which will decode in some futuristic awesome way straight in channel by channel and still get the same great sound.
The AVR 125 is very versatile and has more settings than I'll ever use. It can emulate surround sound for those movies that are too old school to be encoded as such and it can also emulate surround sound for music which it really pretty cool. One beef I had with it was that it only had one set of stereo outputs. This is to be expected it being a less expensive surround sound model and I have found that with some clever setup you can pretty much achieve dual room separate stereo sound. Alright so I agree with the others who say the remote is a pain and it is they are right. It sometimes can be frustrating to work with.
While the RMS power rating is lower one advantage the HK has is that its power is the same over the whole audio spectrum. The basic idea is that it takes more current to produce the same power at lower wavelengths. The engineering of the HK is meant to avoid such a dilemma. While there are only 45 Watts available they are very steady consistent watts no matter what kind of music you are listening to.
I also opted for a surround sound receiver. Since I'm a poor college student I don't have all the components to set up a permanent surround sound system so I don't have a ton of experience in using in such a situation but I have set it up special thanks to parts my friends have and I must say it does very well for a small dorm type room. We enjoyed the whole Alien saga in surround sound and had no complaints. The 45 watts per channel did very well and with all the options for surround sound decoding I can't imagine you would have trouble finding one you liked. However if/when a newer/better surround sound decoding comes along the AVR 125 has got you covered. It has a six channel input so that you can hook up your future DVD player which will decode in some futuristic awesome way straight in channel by channel and still get the same great sound.
The AVR 125 is very versatile and has more settings than I'll ever use. It can emulate surround sound for those movies that are too old school to be encoded as such and it can also emulate surround sound for music which it really pretty cool. One beef I had with it was that it only had one set of stereo outputs. This is to be expected it being a less expensive surround sound model and I have found that with some clever setup you can pretty much achieve dual room separate stereo sound. Alright so I agree with the others who say the remote is a pain and it is they are right. It sometimes can be frustrating to work with.
