Pioneer 509S Receiver

I bought this receiver totally on impulse, contrary to all my beliefs about shopping. It was the big day-after-thanksgiving sale, and Best Buy had this receiver on sale for only $199, and this was the most expensive Pioneer model they carried. Well, somebody must have messed up there, because the usual price for this receiver is around $349, and their next lower model, the VSX-D409 was priced at $299. I walked out of there thinking I had gotten a pretty good deal, but I wanted to be sure that the Pioneer was the one for me.

When I first took the receiver out of its box, the weight was quite light, much lighter than my old Aiwa receiver. Though the Aiwa's sound quality wasn't that great, it weighed a ton. This receiver was light, and that again made me doubt how good it may sound. The back has many many inputs, and it took a good half hour to get everything connected. But once you've connected it, it's probably going to stay that way till you move it or get new components, so it's a half-hour investment for a good long time of good listening. It has two optical and one coaxial input. It also has one optical output, to connect to your digital recording equipment (MD, CD-R). Though the unit has a neat appearance, it's not going to win any fashion awards. It doesn't look flashy, and good receivers don't look flashy, they just sound good.

I am a stickler for stats, and I found out that the 509s had lots of features and inputs, but its THD was a tad high, at around 0.8% at rated output. That worried me, because I knew that good receivers produced much less THD than that. Its THD in stereo mode was only 0.2% though. Whatever the stats, the receiver plays plenty loud with any source, digital or analog. The volume is by db level, so even though it may seem like you're going up a lot of numbers, decibels aren't directly related to sound volume (the numbers go from -80db to 0db). Thus, -40db is not the halfway point... It comes with a nice remote with mostly well laid out buttons. It does not glow in the dark nor does it have a backlight, so it's impossible to see the button labels in the dark or when you're watching a movie. It can control most functions of the other components in my stable, but it had major problems controlling my VCR. I finally figured out the code that gives the remote the most compatibility with the VCR, but everybody's using their VCR less and less these days.

After I set up the remote, I next setup the receiver itself. It asks for the distance of the listening area from the speakers so that it can adjust the sound accordingly. You can also pick the size of the speakers so that it doesn't sound low bass sounds to your small satellite speakers. This was a bit difficult to setup because I do have large front speakers and a subwoofer, and it didn't provide proper options for this setup. Also, the subwoofer pre-out doesn't always send the bass to the sub. Some fiddling is required to get it to work the way you'd like.

All the fuss is worth it because the very first DVD I watched was Demolition Man, and it sounded wonderful. I knew DVDs sounded good, but to hear them in Dolby Digital 5.1 was really an experience. American Beauty in DTS was also quite impressive. In my opinion, DTS seems to be louder in overall volume than Dolby 5.1, and I like that-the louder the better. Even animated movies with Dolby Digital sounded great. I never realized that studios spent so much making such good sound for kids movies.

While its DVD sound is flawless, its stereo sound could use some help. When playing CDs it seems a little quiet, so I always use the loudness function. While it sounds much better with loudness on, the overload signal sometimes comes on. I haven't had the receiver cut off or anything, but there's a little light in the display that denotes signal overload, and that sometimes comes on. The receiver also has many DSP sound modes, but they don't seem to be very useful, and the effects they produce aren't that significant. Movies sound best in DTS and Dolby 5.1, and other audio sources sound good without any signal processing. I've owned this receiver for about 4 months now, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. The price allowed me to step into the wonderful world of Digital sound for a value price, and I have been very satisfied with its performance and reliability. It produces a fair amount of heat on some of the more dynamic movie soundtracks, but it has been working without any problems. I highly recommend this one if you're looking for a value receiver with lots of features and great home theater sound.