Harman/Kardon AVR 500
Written: Jan 08 '01 (Updated Jan 08 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great sound, a lot of features
Cons: seems to be problem prone
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| sagan's Full Review: harman/kardon AVR 500 Receiver |
I bought this receiver about 6 months ago when I began setting up my home theater system. I chose it because it had great sound, a lot of features, and had a nice look.
When I first got it, I only had to front channel speakers but the sound was still great, especially in comparison to the cheap 10-year-old Technics speakers that I had. So far, my only complaints were that the menu system for the setup was very difficult to use and that when you adjusted the volume there was an annoying but slight clicking noise. I judged these to be tolerable, though and went on enjoying my new receiver.
Last month, I finally purchased the rest of my speakers. I was very disappointed when I hooked everything up and played by first DVD and there were skips in the sound and occasionally the speakers would crackle. After playing with it for a long while, I was finally pretty sure that the problem was with the receiver.
I brought the receiver back to the store and returned it for store credit. It turns out that with this model there is a common problem with the DTS decoder, which is what was causing my problem. I looked around on the Web a little bit and it seems other problems, such as problems with volume control and problems with the receiver turning itself off, were fairly common.
I replaced the receiver with an AVR-510, which is basically the same thing just a slightly newer model. The menu system on it is 100 times better than the old one and they got rid of the annoying little click from the volume control. It also has some extra inputs that the AVR-500 didn't have. The best part is, of course, that I can now listen to my DVDs in surround sound with DTS. The downside of the AVR-510 model is that it costs a little more (it's worth it) and it has these ugly gold buttons on the front.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
sagan
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Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 0 members
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