Pioneer VSX-D608 Receiver
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Amazing functionality for the price
Pros
DTS, AC3, 4 digaudio inputs, decent power
Cons
weak speaker connections
Recommended it?
Yes
I had a Sony STR-G3 before and needed AC-3, more power, 5 channel amplifier, digital inputs and a simple UI.
The D608 has been great! It has built-in AC3 and DTS decoding, but I have yet to buy a DVD with DTS, so all my experience has been with AC3 (aka Dolby Digital). I currently have a Panasonic A120 DVD player, Infinity R6, CC3, SU1, and built-in rear speakers. [ Addendum: I got "Saving Private Ryan DTS" and the sound was truly incredible. Significant parts of the movie (usually explosions) moved to the back speakers and you truly felt like you were in the middle of a war ]
Set up was relatively painless. I drove the single coax digital audio from a Soundblaster Live to enable MP3. The optical digital inputs came from: DVD, LD, and CD. The digital inputs can be arbitrarily assigned to nearly any of the labeled inputs using the setup menu. The only weakness was in the speaker terminals where instead of posts it uses levered (non-springloaded) push-ins.
Sound quality has been very good and video switching doesn't seem to add any noticeable noise.
When cranked up, it does get quite hot, but in more typical usage, it stays warm at most.
Midnight mode is a Pioneer-specific DSP mode that changes levels & frequency response to emphasize surround and low-frequency special effects when listening at lower volume levels. It sounds much better than the old "loudness" button.
The remote is OK, but I can't really evaluate it since I immediately bought a Pronto and use that as the only remote.
Minor inconvenience: when switching from a video input to an audio-only input, it blanks the video. This is logically correct, but is pointless and removes a small bit of functionality that my old receiver had.
The D608 has been great! It has built-in AC3 and DTS decoding, but I have yet to buy a DVD with DTS, so all my experience has been with AC3 (aka Dolby Digital). I currently have a Panasonic A120 DVD player, Infinity R6, CC3, SU1, and built-in rear speakers. [ Addendum: I got "Saving Private Ryan DTS" and the sound was truly incredible. Significant parts of the movie (usually explosions) moved to the back speakers and you truly felt like you were in the middle of a war ]
Set up was relatively painless. I drove the single coax digital audio from a Soundblaster Live to enable MP3. The optical digital inputs came from: DVD, LD, and CD. The digital inputs can be arbitrarily assigned to nearly any of the labeled inputs using the setup menu. The only weakness was in the speaker terminals where instead of posts it uses levered (non-springloaded) push-ins.
Sound quality has been very good and video switching doesn't seem to add any noticeable noise.
When cranked up, it does get quite hot, but in more typical usage, it stays warm at most.
Midnight mode is a Pioneer-specific DSP mode that changes levels & frequency response to emphasize surround and low-frequency special effects when listening at lower volume levels. It sounds much better than the old "loudness" button.
The remote is OK, but I can't really evaluate it since I immediately bought a Pronto and use that as the only remote.
Minor inconvenience: when switching from a video input to an audio-only input, it blanks the video. This is logically correct, but is pointless and removes a small bit of functionality that my old receiver had.
