Not sure of the exact year that I purchased the Citation 5.0 AV but when I got it I mainly used analog interconnects. It wasn't until years afterwards that I started using digital hookups. I wanted to cash in on the technology that I thought my Citation 5.0 had, i.e., Dolby Digital and DTS. Boy was I in for a supprise. Ever since then I have had nothing but problems. I became well aquianted with the manual book. The problem was this; whenever I used my Citation 5.0 for an extended period of time my audio(sound) would disappear and then return mysteriouly. And this only happened when I used the digital inputs, coaxial or toslink(optical). I sent it off (unfortunately after the warranty was over) to Audio Labs to have it checked out. Sent it twice! Guess what? You guessed it, I'm still having the same problem. I lab said it could not find any problem with it. Hmmm. Well I got so disguested with the Cit 5.0 that I went out and bought another unit, Onkyo TX-NR 3007 . As unfortunate as it may sound I had to send the Onkyl off to be serviced as well. However, that problem was caused by me. So while I was waiting for the Onkyl to fixed I pulled out the Citation 5.0. And as a result this has now caused me to write this review. The old problems have resurfaced and it frost my butt to no end. I would appreciate any help that anyone could give. Thanks.

Sound in Stereo and DD. Prologic is also good.

Useless on screen menus since its a nightmare to walk through. Programming to change modes. No tone controls.

If anybody is a hard credit about anything it is me. And i really played with this unit until I decided it was just a piece of over priced junk. But wait. Its not cause it didnt sound good. Its cause the unit didnt do what you told it to do. First of all the unit looks cool. It went perfect with the rest of the Citation amps I had. The sound was very clear and detailed. Some of you may say Bass and treble controls are enough to tailor the sound of any speaker. Thats bull. Back in the day units came with Bass Midrange and Treble. This unit has NO controls which sucks. The best it can do is a bass eq like a boost and something like a re eq of a THX processor for the Highs. The remote hardly ever worked. I found later after buying the unit that all Harmom Kardon products (even todays units) still suffer from poor remote control capability. I had the latest upgrade and it still didnt work right. The sound would sometimes pop when switching between surround modes. the unit stayed hot. But It sounded sweet like I said but at what expense would you take? I had to get up sometimes and manually change the setting cause the remote wouldnt change anything. The company said it wasnt the remote, rather it was the unit that had problems thinking of what information it was recieving and couldnt decide what to do with it! The coolest thing about the unit was the stereo mode cause it has stereo subwoofers plus a good crossover for mains and sub. These days to get a stereo with sub out you have to spend big bucks. Then if you want stereo subwoofers you need to ask for a miracle. Why? its not hard to make. The surround modes sounded great. I tried the 6 axis mode on all kinds of songs and movies. I found it sucked. The center channel sounded about 6 db lower than the other channels even when calibrated with pink noise. DD was fine. All the other modes played great. 6 Axis just sounded like a glorified all stereo mode where the surrounds had echo effect on them. To be honest the prologic sounded better than 6 axis. And I had a model with no bugs according to Harmon! Thast just the way it was suppose to sound they said! I think people subconsciencely wanted to justify the high price so they stated the 6 axis was awesome. LOl save your money. Buy a new Yamaha system. This thing is a pain in the bung hole. Trust me you will sell it a month after you buy it. Everyone else here said the same thing. The programming is all wack.

Similar Products Used:

Yamaha DSp-A1 which was better as far as useability but not sound.

Sound Sophistication Flexibility Appearance Support

Initially daunting complexity

After deciding a Lexicon MC-1 or perhaps an MC-12 was going to be my major move to upgrade my HT, I stumbeld on an old review online about the Citation 5.0. Intrigued by the possibilities, I jumped at the chance to purchase one locally through ebay. I have no regrets and am enjoying saving thousands of dollars. Madrigal has been super in helping me by sending me a PDf of the manual and getting me the 1.55 eprom software upgrade ($20) to help me through an otherwise totally inscrutible set up experience. Thank goodness I asked the seller about the remote and he found it before I left! The 5.0 immediately improved every one of my HT pieces, except my DVD player, which now has to go. By adding a Monster Power 5000 Conditioner at the same time, my SharpVision LCD picture is improved 100%. Set up was mind blowing (in a bad way) using the installed 1.54 software, but with 1.55, life is good. The DTS and DD services are fantastic and Axis-6 is unreal. Party mode, however, is the bomb when doing karaoke (don't smirk at me. I'm NOT an audiophile). Overall sound improvement is notable even to my aging, nonaudiophile ears. The high end especially is improved, and the low end is tighter and more tonally specific. Midrange will knock you on your rear if you don't watch out. Based on the money saved, flexibility of the unit, excellent support on the used unit even aftter discontinuation, and the wonderfully clean sound, I give it two 5s. Did I mention that it's attractive, clean, and simple on the rack, too? Citation 5.0 Soundcraftsmen PCR-800 amps (4 of 'em) JBL L7 (4) JBL L5 (2) JBL SVA 1800 (center) AudioSource Passive Sub SharpVision XV120ZU Sanyo LD/Karaoke (really!) Pioneer DVL700 Panasonic S-VHS HiQ VCR DD/DTS DVD/CD player (name withheld) Monster Power Reference 5000

Similar Products Used:

Lexicon DC-1/JBL Synthesis, Parasound, B&K 20, Carver (when still Carver, if you know what I mean), Rotel, Adcom (from better to worse), Kenwood, Technics AC-300

Clear powerful, wonderful sound, With Great looks and a great pedigree.

Sometimes Flakey inter-action with remote/front panel operation. And not really enough S-video inputs to be useful (only 2)

Simply Great sound, I had always liked fosgate products (pre-Citation) and decided to go back and try out a Citation. I was looking at Citation 7.0's (to be used with a separate digital decoder) but the lure of dolby-digital, DTS and a digital 6-axis encoder in one box for an extra couple of hundred of dollars managed to sway me to the Citation 5.0. Setting the unit up is straight forward and simple, no problems what-so-ever and it has worked faultlessly for me. The sound is awesome with great clear highs and powerful tight bass, stereo Sub pre-outs are a welcome addition. You simply become totally immersed in whatever you are watching/listening to. Wonderful stuff. The only real downside to all this is the inter-action between the remote/front panel buttons and the Citation 5.0, sometimes it responds instantly and at other times it can take a second or two to acknowledge a command. Not a terrible flaw but annoying on an otherwise great product.

Similar Products Used:

Marantz, Pioneer, Fosgate, Lexicon, JBL Synthesis.

Extremely clean, especially highs.

Weak bass and unbelievably difficult to setup.

Pros: Very clean sounding. Maybe as clean as Ive heard. Nice looking unit. Cons: A nightmare to set up. They had to work at making this as difficult as it is. It has a habit of forgetting its settings so you have to reset things. The bass response is very weak. What bass it produces is very nice but it cant produce the punch that the original recordings intended. If you dont care about geat (not strong overpowering) but just great tight bass this is as good as it gets for the price. The highs are as clean as it gets. Be prepared for a lot of stress when setting it up, though. The setup difficulty alone is worth a full point off the rating. The weak bass is worth another point. Since you can pick these up for less than $1000 I would only take one pont off for value. I would rather give it a 3.5 overall but cant so it gets a 3 because of the 2 major flaws

Similar Products Used:

Most high end gear at one time or another. Current system: Citation 7.1 amp/5.0 pre-amp. Maggie 3.6 speakers (main) Maggie 2.5 speakers (surround) Rogers LS 3/5 (center) Vandersteen (sub woofer)

OK, it's an ergonomic nightmare! If your criterion for a GREAT unit is ease of use, foget it! However, if you are willing to live with some of this unit's "quirks" you will be richly rewarded.First: it's expensive-- $3400 brand new. I paid $2300 for a demo unit. Seriously consider other units if you are forced to pay full price.
Here's what you need to know: Dolby Digital is quirky: do not rely on the unit's "automatic" detection of a Dolby Digital signal. You must "overide" this feature if you have a DVD player; if you don't, you will find that this unit is unable to "lock" onto Dolby Digital signals. This causes serious problems with playback of DVD's-- there is popping and hissing that happens very frequently, making this IMPOSSIBLE for DVD unless you overide the "automatic" selection of Dolby Digital.
It's other quirks include delayed resonses to commands from the remote; a front panel whose various displays turn off and on at will, and the fact that it must always be left on (in "stand-by" mode), making it impossible to use it to automatically power-on an amp.
Also, the front-panel buttons do not respond well-- there is no advantage to using these over those on the remote-- you still never know exactly what this unit will do.
So why would I put up with this? Very simply-- for the money, you WILL NOT find better actual performance. This pre-amp just plain gets out of the way of 2-channel recordings, and seriously enhances 5-channel movies.
Prior to this, I auditioned the Nakamichi CA-1 and found that the NAK caused an annoying level of hiss through the speakers that was entirely absent from the Citation.
I have NEVER heard superior Dolby Digital or Dolby Surround from any pre-amp.
Once you get accustomed to this unit's "features" you will be in for an EXCELLENT performer.
Also, you will find that the customer service for Citation is second to none; they immediately Fed-Xed me a new microchip to replace that in my unit, helping to alleviate SOME of the performance problems. I fully expect that in the months to come, Citation will make available an even newer microchip that improves on this even more, finally addressing all of this unit's quirks. i will keep you posted... 5 stars for performance, 3 for ergonomics.

This is a follow up review to my earlier post. After many long months of suffereing and problems, Citation finally relented and sent me a new unit. What was wrong-- Where to start?
1. Analog quirks. Be careful changing interconnects with this unit. If you unplug any connection from the unit to an amp or change speaker wires from the amp to the speakers, all hell may break loose. As a "tweak" I was always upgrading, but as I did so, the Citation would cause problems in analog modes. You do not want to turn the unit completely "off"--if you do, you risk losing your pre-sets.
After switching interconnects, the rear channels would cut out. They would not work in any Dolby surround or 6-axis modes, but would come to life in the 4-channel "party" mode!
2. Be careful and beware when turning on the "pink noise" to calibrate speaker levels with this unit. If you've been mucking with interconnects and then try to muck with speaker levels--BEWARE. This is when HORRIBLE screeching noises may come from this unit! This was my experience.
3. It would require contant turning on and off of the unit along with re-setting all the modes, to get it functional again. For $3200 you expect a bit more!
I finally sent the unit back in disgust to be fixed and to add a DTS upgrade ($300). I was told that the entire digital section (Dolby included) would be upgraded with the change. I got the unit back and boom-- same old problems. After giving Citation a hard time, they cheerfully agreed to send me a brand new unit, fresh off the assembly line. To be fair, their tech support was excellent and friendly throughout--thank you Chris!
This new unit IS NOT the same piece of equipment. My original had a serial # that was around 250 and dated from about March of '98. This new unit had a serial # around 550 and was "factory fresh". A quick glance through the vent on top at the exposed topology of its innards revealed that this new unit clearly had a different layout. I began to suspect that my first unit (purchased before any ads for it showed up) was a "beta" unit, and that this new one was the "production" version.
In analog modes, this new unit is COMPLETELY different and VASTLY SUPERIOR to the old version. Furthermore, despite continued "tweaking" of interconnects, I have not experienced the original problems. I am flabergasted by this unit now. It was worth the wait for this product to mature and I urge you to consider it now. All the "quirks" have more or less disappeared (OK, it is still a bit slow in switching from analog to digital sources and in turning up the volume). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

I OWN A CITATION 5.0 RECENTLY PURCHASED APR.14 AND AM MORE THAN HAPPY WITH IT IT IS A SUPERB AUDIO GEAR IN MY HOME THEATER SET UP JUST BE SURE YOU FOLLOW THE MANUAL CAREFULLY AND AUDIO NIRVANA IS HERE THERE IS ALSO A GREAT REVIEW IN THE MAY 99 ISSUE OF HOME THEATER.

Clarity of mids/highs and Soundstage
VERY QUIET PRE-AMP

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

I got a good deal on a brand new Citation 5.0 with dts containing the newest software rev (1.55). I must say that it does not disappoint in the least. I have owned an HK AVR65 (one without the quirks) for two years connected to a Citation 7.1 amp and while the HK is a good unit (sound wise) the comparison between the two isn't even close. The Citation is completely quiet and the detail is nothing short of stunning. I have demoed all the above units in my system and the only one that is on par with the Citation is the Proceed (also made by Madrigal). The proceed and Citation are nearly identical in terms of sonic quality. The EAD is a good unit, but doesn't present quite the richness of sound the Proceed or Citation does. The Citation presents such a large soundstage that it almost takes a few hours to get used to after using a receiver for years. If you can get a good deal on this gem, do yourself a favor and pick one up. It is truly audiophile by any definition and can compete with the best in the world. On a final note, it is outstanding on home theater as well! 6-axis really rocks for regular TV viewing and other non-digitally encoded shows. This unit gets the highest possible rating that I have ever given a product on audioreview. I have included my system below, so feel free to email with questions as necessary.

System:
Paradigm Reference 100s
Paradigm Active Reference Center
Infinity Reference rears

Citation 5.0 Pre-Amp
Citation 7.1 Amp
Sony S550D DVD player
Panamax Conditioner

Cardas Cross interconnects (fronts)
Cardas Microtwin interconnects (rears)
Tara lab RSC Prime 1000 bi-wire (fronts)

Similar Products Used:

EAD Encore, HK AVR65, Yamaha 995, Proceed AVP, Classe SSP-25

Unit does have some quarks, but many-- if not most, have been alleviated by free software updates from Citation. Sound is fantastic, audiophile quality by any definition. I find the 6-axis mode, an upgraded supercharged version of ProLogic, is _fantastic_, for music and movies alike. I've had mine for 9 months or so and am very happy with it. If you are planning on using your preamp for music as well as HT, this unit should be at the very top of your audition list.