A good start ....
Dec 23 '99
The Kenwood VR-209 (now VR-309) is the third Kenwood receiver I have purchased. I have stayed with Kenwood because I have a kenwood cassette player and cd player which can only be controlled via a Kenwood receiver. Each new purchase I have gotten a receiver with more features, and poorer quality. Kenwood's clean, powerful receivers have become more cluttered like the Sony and Pioneer models, becoming muddier and klunkier to use.
This model is the first in a the vr-*09 line, and has some quirks, dare I say even bugs? The back panel has multiple digital inputs, however, setting up the reciever to recognize inputs sources and channel them correctly is nontrivial. In fact, setting up the remote and channels is altogether difficult, the manual to use the remote is larger than the manual for the receiver (no joke.) If you cannot program you VCR, forget it.
Once you have it working though, the digital inputs come through clean, and the receiver does allow you to bypass the preprocessor on analog inputs (although while the kitchen sink IS on the remote, this is NOT.) The Dolby decoding from DVD-digital is pretty good, from analog is not as good. The tuner is not as good as the older Kenwoods, and the front panel interface does not overlap well with the remote.
Based on my experience with this receiver, the next time I buy a reciever I will probably spend the extra money to get something like a Denon, Harmon Kardon, or Marantz.
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Epinions.com ID:
jpomeroy
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 2 members
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