Sound Quality, power.

There is not an adjustable parametric EQ. This is handy when you need to compensate for lower quality speakers. If your budget means you can't go out and buy quality all at once keep that in mind.

Nice reciever, excellent at its price point. If you just care soley about sound quality and not bells and whistles, it compares favorably to more expensive Receivers. The jack pack is fairly complete with pre-outs for all chanells, and bannana plugs for all channels. At the time of this review, this reciever is more than a year old, so it does not have handy new features like HDMI, or up-conversion of the vaious inputs.

plenty of power, lots of in/outs, easy to setup and use, LOVE the remote

warrany issues, tech support is long distance, and they dont know what theyre talking about anyways, too many little quirks, but lots of people seem to get bad units....maybe im one of the unlucky ones?

Okay. Here is my story of the AVR-430. BTW, cost is in canadian Dollars. NOT American. A little over a year ago, i was interested in starting to build a home theater for music/movies. and i started with the Amp. looked around and finally decided on an HK avr amp, and after talking to several people, i was told that the AVR 430 would have sufficient power to run paradigm studio 100's as well as the rest of the 7.1 setup. so I found one on Ebay for $600, plus shipping, tax, and import duties. this was my first mistake. it was not explained to me, that since the unit was shipped across the border, the warranty was void. Although this reciever DOES have some serious juice, it also has some issues. just like a hundred little things that will annoy you. to list a few: when you change from logic 7 or any other multi-channel mode to stereo, the power of the fromts goes from 65 watts to 80. so they get louder......what this reciever fails to do, is to increase the sub pre-out to compensate, and this must be manually recalibrated every time you change. Another thing, every now and then, with certain songs, in Logic 7 mode, it will send a MASSIVE amount of power to my surround right channel. and randomly go back to normal a minute or so later, havent figured out why. Also, im not sure that it is sending full sub signal, as i have a paradigm pw-2200 that is supposed to shake the foundation, but it cant keep up with studio 20's as the fronts. i am going to investigate this further, trying other recievers when it is more broken in (about 20 hours on it so far) and possibly another sub

Similar Products Used:

none.

SOUND!, Features, upgradability, remote

Haven't found any yet

I love H/K! I had a 2001 AVR 310 it worked great for the entire three years I had it. On a trip I stumbled upon a new AVR 7000 got it for th ebargain price of 436.00!! brought it home and it didn't work :( I contacted H/K and they agreed to replace it for this AVR430 I love it!! It has many features the 310 lacked (DPL2 for 1) I especially like the RS232 port can you say flash upgradeability??? he he This unit sounds worlds better than tehe great sounding 310. I love the remote (hat learning the new button placement)and the cool blue volume knob looks great!!!

Similar Products Used:

Luxman, Sony, Kenwood, Harman Kardon

7.1 channel decoding. High current power. Removable power cord. Overall capability for the price.

None.

When I bought my first house last year, my first priority was to build myself a home theater in the basement. I've been a proud owner of Harman International products ever since being introduced to them in my college years in the early 90's. Since then I've amassed various electronic "toys" ranging from HK AVR to JBL S to Infinity Kappa to JBL Synthesis. For the audio portion of my HT, I opted for the HK AVR430 and a 7.1 channel Infinity speaker setup (6 x Kappa 400, Kappa Center and CSW-10). I will limit this review strictly to the AVR 430. I purchased a factory refurbished AVR430 from Harman Audio (Harman International's Outlet) through ebay.com. I won the bid at $580 and promptly received the receiver a few days later. I plugged all my Infinity Kappa's into it and powered it on. As soon as I commenced to play a CD source, I noticed clipping in my speakers. I turned the AVR off and on again and the issue remained. I proceeded to carry my bedroom AVR230 down and hooking it up to my speakers. Even at high volume, there was no clipping. I called Harman Audio and explained to them my issue with the AVR430. The first technician wasn't very helpful. He insisted since the Infinity Kappa's were rated at 6 ohm's the AVR430 was not powerful enough to handle all of them. When I explained to him that I was able to power all of them (minus 1 Kappa since the AVR 230 does only 6.1 instead of 7.1) with my AVR230, he was clueless. He proceeded to transfer me to his boss. The so-called "boss" explained to me that the AVR430 is most certainly powerful enough to drive all 7 Infinity Kappa 400's and offered to send my a brandnew replacement unit along with a shipping label to return the defective unit. A week later I had a brand-spankin' new AVR430. As soon as I had plugged in all my speakers, I played several CD's to ensure this unit was in tip-top shape. This time around the clipping was gone, and only natural sound frequencies emerged from my speakers by way of the AVR430 and my Sony SCD-222ES. I've had this unit now for several months, and I'm amazed how clean and natural the sound is (now that it and the speakers have had a chance to burn in properly). Even at loud sequences of DTS encoded movies (like Jurassic Park), the receiver never runs out of juice in powering all 7 of my 6 ohm rated speakers. I have friends call me middle of the week to ask if they can come over to have "movie night" at my place. In summary, as with the previous purchases of Harman International products, I'm very pleased with the HK AVR430 and its capabilities.

Similar Products Used:

HK AVR10, AVR320, AVR230, AVR65. Yamaha, Sony, Kenwood.

great sound when it works

IT SHUTS OFF ITSELF

Model: AVR 430 I bought the AVR430 and the 5.1 HK speaker system about 4 months ago. After working fine for about 3 weeks it started to shut off itself without any reason. After about a week it got worst and it shuts off itself after 1 minute of being on. I tried taking the speakers out and then all the other connections and it still would shut off after a minute without anything being connected. I exchanged the AVR430 at the store i bought it for the same exact one. After about 3 weeks the same started to happen with the brand new unit. I took it to the service center and they told me there is nothing wrong with it. When i got it back after a month, it worked fine again for about 3 weeks and then same story again. What is the problem?? If it's a speaker how do i find out which one? How do i reset the unit to factory defaults the same as when i bought it? Why does it start shutting off after 3 weeks of using it and then gradually shut off after a minute? I'm really unhappy with my $1500 purchase that DOESN'T WORK!!!

Remote (backlight,LCD,learning,SOLID!!!) Impressive sound quality (ROCKS!!!) Looks great (Blue Light on volume dial)

Instruction manual leaves a little to be desired. Not a problem for me (set up lots of systems). A few features of remote not in manual.

Upgraded from my Sony STR-DE935. Great sound, great remote. Was debating on the Yamaha RX-V1400. Wife liked the looks of the H/K better. Unfortunately, no up-convert from composite and super video to component (Yamaha has that feature). Will have to play with the features a bit more, but for now, very happy all around. Best feature, the remote. One of the best I've seen in a while. Would recommend Visions to buy it as I ended up walking out of International with a little more than planned. I shopped around extensively and should have bought it at Visions.

Similar Products Used:

Checked out Denon 2803,Yamaha RX-V1400, Sony STR2000ES, Yamaha RX-V740