SONY STR-DE597 A/V Receiver for Surround Sound

Rating:
Summary: Excellent value
Review: I replaced a pieced-together home theater system with this as my new system's centerpiece. Before, I had a DVD player that had its own decoder, then output in 5.1 separate analog channels, then ran to two separate amplifiers- one for front speakers, the other for center and surround. Although the Sony has multi-channel analog inputs which could have allowed me to keep my old DVD player, I decided to simplify my system. Now one optical digital cable connects the DVD player to the Sony amp, then the amp sends the juice to all my speakers- much better! The Sony will decode any and all formats including DTS and up to 6.1 channels. There seems to be plenty of power per channel and a remarkable clarity from bass to treble.

I wouldn't call setup easy or simple, but after 2 or 3 tries with the menu I was able to select the proper number of speakers attached. One nice feature is that the amp can be set to A.F.D., which automatically reads the best digital format from your disc and powers the speakers accordingly. So once it's set up you can pretty much not adjust it again except for volume. For those who want custom sound you can adjust the amp to account for how far away your speakers are- the factory default is 10 feet which seems fine to me.

My only complaint is the manual didn't come with instructions for how to teach the remote to control the DVD player- especially frustrating since I bought a Sony DVD player!

Overall, this unit does everything I wanted, is straightforward to operate and provides a lot of power for the money.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but nothing special.
Review: I've been running my home theater on this receiver for about three weeks now.
(1) The sound quality output to my Polk RT loudspeakers is just as good as I've come to expect from Sony. Good for both movies and music.
(2) The design is very clean and fairly simple.
(3) The set-up is not as intutive as the Sony STR-DE525 that I also have, but once I read the manual, it was not difficult. In fact, the "easy set-up mode" is quite...easy.
(4) There is NOT the traditional wide-variety of DSP options on this receiver. There are three proprietary Sony DSP modes for movies in addition to the usual Dolby and DTS options.
(5) The BIG Drawback--I was excited about the "headphone theater" DSP option as I often watch movies with my Sennheiser HD280Pro headphones. However, this mode makes the mids (including voices) muffled and tinny, and distorts the bass. So I'm using the traditional 2-ch. stereo mode for headphones, under which movies sound great. A headphone amp might help and solve the problems here, but I doubt it as it sounds like a processing problem and not an amplification problem, but I haven't tried a headphone amp yet.
Overall, I'd say that this is a good receiver, and is inexpensive since the 6.1 format has now been surpassed by 7.1 format. But if you're planning on running only 5.1, as I do, then this amp is a great value.