Harman Kardon AVR 325 Dolby Digital Receiver

Rating:
Summary: Excellent product
Review: One of the best receivers for the price you could buy.
Configuration:
AVR 325
HK CD Player
Toshiba DVD
JBL S312 fronts
JBL center channel
JBL S26 surrounds
Sound:
Sound is crystal clear. Best sound i have heard. Make sure you setup the channels right and the speaker to large if you have towers. This receiver gives you very precise control. EZ setup takes all the guesswork out but I prefer to do it manually.
I have a digital connect running from the CD player to the AMP, sound is perfect with a lot of depth.
Make sure you have in the least a 12 gauge wire to the speakers this receiver can drive 35 amps. Power is more than enough at 55 Watts X 7 channels. I only use 5, hope to use 7 soon. I cannot drive the volume even half way without the whole room starting to move. So these watts are high AMP watts and again no distortion, does not matter what volume level it is at.
Looks, build and functionality:
This puppy is very sturdy and looks are beautiful, you need a big transformer to be able to pump out those AMPS. You get what you pay for if you buy those toys from other companies which offer sleek models. There are plenty of ports at the back for all sorts of connections. A lot of modes and options.
One tip to consider when buying a receiver is the THD value, the lower it is the better. The receiver has a THD of 0.07% . Most cheap receivers will above .5% . Also consider there are 7 channels in this puppy.

Overall I just cannot get over the fact how clean and powerfull the sound is. Worth every penny if you ask me.

Rating:
Summary: First rate DACs, clean amp, difficult interface
Review: The sound produced by the Cirrus Logic Crystal 192KHz/24-bit digital-analog converters (DACs) is spectacular. The amplification is both powerful and low noise. I've never heard this degree of clarity before. This Harman Kardon is replacing a very nice Linn CD player and amp with 24-bit Burr-Brown DACs that sounded warmer than the Harman Kardon.

I bought this unit for its DACs and the number of digital inputs it accepted, its video switching capability, and its low distortion amplification. I might get around to buying surround or a subwoofer, but I'd prefer a unit with 1/4 of the electronics and a simpler interface; they're simply not available. I do appreciate the number of audio inputs. I'm plugging in optical input from a Turtle Beach Audiotron, S/PDIF input from a DVD/CD player, S/PDIF input from my workstation/home theater, and plan to plug in an optical input from a Sony Playstation 2. After all that, the input cables and a single stereo pair of speaker cables look lonely among the dozens of back-panel inputs.

I wanted this kind of processing for my home theater PC and my computer-based CD collection. The Audiotron is a wonderful device that allows MP3s or full CD-resolution WAV files to be read from a network and piped into a home-theater receiver like this one; CDs sound the same ripped to disk full resolution and played back through the Audiotron as they do from the DVD player or computer's digital inputs. My computer provides S/PDIF output, so DVD soundtracks (or CD audio) can be passed to the receiver for decoding the same way as they can be passed from the DVD player.

The downside to this receiver is that it is absolutely impossible to set up without (a) the manual, (b) the remote, and (c) an S-video monitor to display the menus you're navigating. Some understanding of surround sound and digital music encoding formats, crossovers, and room acoustics will help in deciphering the configuration menus. I haven't read the documentation on the remote, so most of the buttons and markings are meaningless to me. On the positive side, it's easy to switch sources once they're set up and there's a nice big volume knob, albeit one that requires a lot of spinning to move the volume significantly. I haven't tried other models, so these comments shouldn't be read comparitively; configuring a home theater is a difficult task to pack into a front panel and remote. And if that wasn't enough complexity, this receiver also features video switching, which I am using to route a DVD player, VCR, and soon, the PlayStation2 into my monitor.

In the end, the amazing sound and number of inputs won me over in the face of an extremely challenging interface.