Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Sunfire Ultimate Receiver first impressions

My Sunfire receiver arrived Monday afternoon. I didn't get it in place until late, so I haven't had it to really high levels yet, but I did get a chance to breeze through select parts of a few DVDs. Since it was late, I don't have a lot of comments on the amplifier yet, except that I'm certain there's much more headroom than what was available from the Yamaha it replaced. I'm very happy with how little heat it generates, and the face and case are nice. I like the huge blue display, the lettering can easily be read from 15 feet away (a problem with the Yamaha was that the display was almost illegible from the listening position). I'm not thrilled with all the orange lighted buttons that are on all of the time, but I'll give it a few days looks-wise; it might just be the stark contrast to the Yasmaha it replaced. The remote is a URC MX-500, with which I'm familiar and enjoy for its simplicity, speed, hard buttons, and effective (and easy to engage) backlighting.

It's driving M80 mains, VP150 center, and Polk RT600i surrounds. There's a trio of QS-8's ready to replace the RT600i's, but I haven't had time to wire them yet. Sunfire True Subwoofer Signature, with the receiver crossover (global) at 60Hz for the moment and all speakers set to large.

One thing I noticed is that the subwoofer output is much lower than it was from the Yamaha. This is a good thing; the Yamaha output was so hot that I had to crank it down and run the subwoofer gain at near nil, which made it touchy to adjust.

I have read a complaint or two about noise levels, but I've had no audible noise problems. However, I haven't listened to plain old CD yet.

Ay any rate, with the Axioms, I've now got the headroom I needed in this room (and it looks like plenty to spare) for movies. The DSP also seems to be better than the Yamaha it replaced, at least in terms of DD and DTS. The Yamaha had more useful miscellaneous soundfields (Cinema DSP is good as far as these things go), but I never used them for audio and only rarely for stereo TV enhancement. I don't think I'll miss them.

Kudos to Sunfire for packing a wallop in a box that only weighs 35 lbs. and doesn't heat my family room. It looks miniscule compared to the Denon AVR5803, and combined with the MX-500 remote the WAF is very high. Kudos to them making their RS-232 control codes public too; I'm almost done with rudimentary control software.

You forgot to mention that it's the sexiest looking receiver in the price point!

Is the receiver male or female?

Compared to the competitors, I'd have to say it's female due to it's lack of unnecessary bulk. :-)

As far as sexiness goes... I like the case a lot, but I still don't like the gazillion orange lights that are always on. It looks better turned off than on, which to me is odd for a receiver. It'd be nice if the non-indicator lights could be turned off or on a timer (say 10 seconds after use of the front panel). However, considering how well it has worked out for me, I can overlook the orange lights. There are uglier things in my rack (ancient VCR that hasn't been used in over a year, for example). I shouldn't need a new receiver in the family room for a very long time.

The one thing it's missing... pre-out/main-in loop. I miss having the DSP8024 in the loop for 2-channel sources. Maybe it's time to burn all my CDs to mp3 and get the AES/EBU I/O option for the DSP8024 and just stick it between digital out on the HTPC and the receiver input.

Re: sexiest...
Hmm... But the front surface is, well, soooo flat! :-)

Re: orange lights...
What do they actually indicate?

Re: mp3...
At what bit rate would you consider it acceptable for "hi-fi" listening? Is the variable bit rate better or worse? How about the joint-stereo?

In reply to:

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At what bit rate would you consider it acceptable for "hi-fi" listening?

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I can tell the difference usually, but a 320kbps MP3 DOES do a pretty good job. 256 VBR is pretty good too. Below that...

In reply to:

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Is the variable bit rate better or worse?

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Define better or worse. It will result in a smaller file with largely equivalent sound quality to a higher bitrate file.

Oh, and ALWAYS encode with EAC + LAME!

I wouldn't consider an mp3 format given the choice. The Ogg vorbis is a better compressor.

I think the "LAME" encoding really needs a new name.

Good One !