Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater best best receiver?

dollar for dollar which is the best receiver denon 4806?or the pioneer elite vsx 84? or something else?

I'll be honest, I haven't heard the Denon. However, I own the 84 and I love it. I haven't found one thing about it that I don't like. The MCACC auto audio setup works great. Upscaling works great and having 4 HDMI inputs is awesome. I don't have a 1080p tv or HDDVD/BD, but according to other owners, this unit passes 1080p to the TV from the source. There is a known issue with the LFE channel if you use PCM from HDDVD/BD, however, Pioneer will be releasing a firmware update within the next month to address it.

I don't have HDDVD or BD yet, so that doesn't affect me anyway.

Of course when you consider that the list price of the 4806 is 2500 more than the Pioneer, I'd have to see some pretty substancial evidence to spend that extra cash.

I can't really speak for any other brands. I chose the Pioneer as for me it was the best bang for the buck.

Everyone's opinion will be different, just like speaker favorites. I prefer Denon, but that is just me. The 2807 - 4806 Denons now have the Audyssey MuttEQ XT setup built in, which is the best offered at this time in my opinion.

Geez, if you're looking to drop that kind of dough, you should be looking at separates.

Gwan, welcome. What should be given more weight, "dollar for dollar" or "best"? If it's the former, I'd suggest that you consider something like the Onkyo 504 refurb available for around $151 on sale at ShopOnkyo. You appear to be willing to spend much more, however, with some consideration of price. A better combination of the two factors you mentioned might be the Denon 3806 or the Yamaha 2700. None of these have any sound characteristic added, but simply amplify transparently. Pick the best combination of price and features to suit your needs; there's no "best" as a generality.

I've owned the VSX-82 for 3 months now, replacing an HK AVR310. It's a very good unit and I like the video processing. I have 2 x Component Video IN converted to a single HDMI OUT to a Pioneer Elite Plasma. The only thing I don't like is that the multi-channel audio IN only works with SACD and DVD-Audio. I have a collection on concert DVDs and use Coax IN to the receiver.

There are tons of options at a reasonable price point. I'm driving M60, VP100, QS8 and EP350 with no problems at all.