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Rating: 
Summary: Apartment dwellers delight
Review: At this price - entry level for surround sound - I did not expect so many ways to customize the sound to match your speakers and your room conditions. Great flexibility in that regard.One of these features has turned out to be essential for me, and may be for you as well if you are living in an apartment as opposed to a suburban house. I'll explain: "Midnight Mode" takes the softest parts of the movie (or CD) and elevates it a bit, so you get the full presence of the scene even if you haven't set the volume excessively high. When watching DVDs before I had this unit I'd noticed that many times I needed to turn up the volume during dialogue scenes, and turn it down during "explosion scenes". Midnight Mode (and a couple other methods of compressing the dynamic range) overcomes this problem. You simply put the volume at your favorite level (a level you will enjoy which won't damage your hearing, and which your housemates won't mind) and you will never have to be worried that a softly spoken scene will be inaudible. It will be audible - and sound very good indeed. To a lesser extent, this mode also reduces the excess volume of explosions, but I believe it is weighed more in favor of bringing up the quiet than in reducing the loud - which is why other reviews said they didn't notice it reducing the loud sounds much at all. (It is actually good that people think the effect is subtle -- if it drew attention to itself, it wouldn't be doing the job well, would it?) I think it is more intended to bring out the nuances, and it does so splendidly. Also works great for keeping music CDs sound full when played at background levels. All with a simple one-click change. Another nice things I've noticed: This unit doesn't get too hot. Maybe because it is only 60 watts per channel (which is double what I grew up with!). Perhaps it costs less to run, as well? In summary, I was concerned that at this price I'd be making sacrifices, that I'd be stuck with something that sounded one particular way. But it is flexible to your room conditions and your speaker sizes. No sacrifices here, except the lack of S-Video inputs (which might not be a factor for you at all).
Rating: 
Summary: Take the good with the Bad.
Review: Pioneer makes great Audio recievers, speakers, and components. Take this reciever. A great Price for Dolby Digital, Pro Logic, and DTS Decoding. But the power output at 60 Watts per channel is Not so good. I like loud Rock music. When you turn the volume up, the bass fades away. Which is another negative. The many different options of speaker setup and tone control is great. It gives the user Control over almost everything. If you want great bass, i recommend using large speakers as front speaker,or two 100 watt powered subwoofers. And a good five speaker system, made by sony, pioneer, or bose.
Rating:
Summary: best of the small ones
Review: the pioneer vsx-309 was a replacement receiver for a older model kenwood this receiver just blowed me away with the decoder and all it was eithetr buy a dvd with a decoder or a receiver so i asked the sales person at best buy he said the pioneer was a good buy at 210.00 love it only 60watts but i,m not goinng to blow my friends away sounds just like it is suppose to in the theare
Rating:
Summary: Apartment dwellers delight
Review: This affordable A/V receiver does both Dolby Digital and DTS decoding, making it ideal for a DVD home theater setup. It also does a better job of Dolby Prologic decoding than my old Pioneer VSX-455 receiver. Amazon's review above already mentions most of the features of this receiver. In addition, it has one coax digital input and one optical digital input (cable not provided) for your DD/DTS source. It also comes with FM and AM antennae. The receiver lets you fine-tune your surround sound setup by specifying speaker sizes (setting one to "Large" will send more bass to it if you don't have a subwoofer), set cutoff frequency for the subwoofer, set volumes of individual speakers, and set distances between the speakers and the listener. As mentioned in the Amazon review, the "Midnight" mode only helps "slightly". There is a separate "Dynamic Range Compression" feature that lets you select MID (middle) or MAX compression; but at either setting it makes barely noticeable difference to loud sounds. Like me, many people sometimes find it hard to hear movies at home -- dialogs too soft, sound effects too loud. The truth is that movies are made to be listened in an ideal accoustic environment like a theater, and most homes simply cannot recreate such an environment. Hence, many receivers include features like "Midnight" mode to make a movie soundtrack less overwhelming. But they often don't work well enough, and they distort the original sound way too much. The "DSP sound modes", which turn plain stereo sound (such as from CD or radio) into a sort of "fake surround" sound, are OK. They don't do magic, but at least they don't distort the sound into an unrecognizable mess like my old Pioneer VSX-455 did. One concern is there are not too many A/V inputs on this receiver. Besides the coax and optical digital inputs, there are just 3 video inputs and 4 analog audio inputs. This is barely enough to accommodate a TV, VCR, DVD player, LD Player, and CD Player. And it's definitely not enough if you also have satellite TV, audio cassette deck, turntable, etc. I find the the receiver's 60 watts of power sufficient, although I often have to turn up the volume to about -30db (0db is max, -94 is min), which is almost 70% above the minimum. The remote control is typically unexceptional: small buttons, confusing interface, useless as a universal remote.
Rating:
Summary: Good DD/DTS A/V receiver for the price
Review: This affordable A/V receiver does both Dolby Digital and DTS decoding, making it ideal for a DVD home theater setup. It also does a better job of Dolby Prologic decoding than my old Pioneer VSX-455 receiver. Amazon's review above already mentions most of the features of this receiver. In addition, it has one coax digital input and one optical digital input (cable not provided) for your DD/DTS source. It also comes with FM and AM antennae. The receiver lets you fine-tune your surround sound setup by specifying speaker sizes (setting one to "Large" will send more bass to it if you don't have a subwoofer), set cutoff frequency for the subwoofer, set volumes of individual speakers, and set distances between the speakers and the listener. As mentioned in the Amazon review, the "Midnight" mode only helps "slightly". There is a separate "Dynamic Range Compression" feature that lets you select MID (middle) or MAX compression; but at either setting it makes barely noticeable difference to loud sounds. Like me, many people sometimes find it hard to hear movies at home -- dialogs too soft, sound effects too loud. The truth is that movies are made to be listened in an ideal accoustic environment like a theater, and most homes simply cannot recreate such an environment. Hence, many receivers include features like "Midnight" mode to make a movie soundtrack less overwhelming. But they often don't work well enough, and they distort the original sound way too much. The "DSP sound modes", which turn plain stereo sound (such as from CD or radio) into a sort of "fake surround" sound, are OK. They don't do magic, but at least they don't distort the sound into an unrecognizable mess like my old Pioneer VSX-455 did. One concern is there are not too many A/V inputs on this receiver. Besides the coax and optical digital inputs, there are just 3 video inputs and 4 analog audio inputs. This is barely enough to accommodate a TV, VCR, DVD player, LD Player, and CD Player. And it's definitely not enough if you also have satellite TV, audio cassette deck, turntable, etc. I find the the receiver's 60 watts of power sufficient, although I often have to turn up the volume to about -30db (0db is max, -94 is min), which is almost 70% above the minimum. The remote control is typically unexceptional: small buttons, confusing interface, useless as a universal remote.
Rating:
Summary: super
Review: This product is a very good one indeed! Ive seen many of them but this one is one of the most afordable, good reciver that ive gotton to play with. I recomend it big time
Rating:
Summary: Not a bad receiver
Review: This receiver packs a lot of features for home theater that are really great when it comes to playback of your favorite movies. The price is one of the lowest out there for a good-looking and well functioning piece of equipment like this, but you may find yourself a little disappointed if you're the type that likes to crank it because this box only pumps 60 watts per channel. But hey, it's an overall good value for a well built receiver.
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