Power, clarity, Grunt

Manual, Component Layout, Heat.

Let me first say I have only had this amp 2 days, and still havent got it running 100% owing to the confusing layout at the back and the confusing manual.Have a fair knowledge of HiFi, and have a background in electronics,and computers but nothing could have prepared me for this. still cannt work out how to adjust rear speaker volume and centre were I have a mismatch of speaker sensitvity 89 vs 92db mains.

Now the good points and why I chose this amp over all the others.

The Marantz lacked clarity when powered hard -10db.
But excellent for music I felt in stereo mode. Same thing with the Denon, too maffled and too smooth in the sounds and seperation was not that clear and defined when you crank up the volume from -10 to -5 db the sound is garbled like the amp is clipping.Turned me right off.Music once again was excellent smooth as silk. The Yamaha was harsh to the ears. So was the onkyo but not that much.

Now the H.K.510 or as we know in in Australia AVR5000. Is clear and defined with enough power for watching a movie without clipping. In my book run an amp past its normal operating range and your headed for some seriose speaker damage. So for me 70 watts of key word and take note HIGH CURRENT is what is required in home theater having headroom for all the crash, bang, wizz, and zapps.

Speakers also play a key roll in the amp so choose wisely taking note of sensitivity 91 + is sufficient and highly recommended.
My rigg is setupp as follows
Mains AR 510
Centre Warfdale (but this might be changed with either Cerwin or Klipch only for its sensitvity. Speach is excellent.
Rear Jamo ARTs
Sub No sub at the momment but what I have done is hooked up my cerwin vega 315 to an old rotel 50 RMS amp faced it against the wall on an angle, and boom she goes. Hopping to save up on a M&K 75 down the line.

Please note that this setup is only going to be used for movies not music I have a different setup so if you ar looking for a amp to do both go with ONKYO or Denon.

Similar Products Used:

HK PM 660, Marantz 8000, Denon 2801, Yamaha V800, Onkyo 939.

Loaded with feautres, looks great, sounded nice

Flakey Display Lights, confusing remote

The first AVR 510 I got worked for one week then the Panel mode indicatior lights (in green) would go off without warning. I returned it, and got a new one with the same problem out of the box. Called HK and they said I had bad luck with defective units (they thought it may be related to heat?) I thought about giving a third unit a try, but for such a big price, you should expect more. HK needs to improve their QC if they are going to claim to be such a premium brand. I was thinking about the DVD 50 but the AVR 510 was my first and last HK unit. Test it first and save the packaging...

Similar Products Used:

Similar Pioneer and Sony Recievers

Clean Power, Digital in and out on the front

Bad Remote, Some Glitches as in the AVR 500

The unit performed well until the power just turned off one day. Now it will turn off without notice in the middle of the song/movie. the model is from the factory after the AVR 500 Recall. Ive tried the Manual Reset More than once and it still keeps doing it.

Similar Products Used:

AVR 500, AVR 85

The first thing everyone notices: gorgeous looks. The high current amp is apparent when even my old KLH speakers sound good. Remote light up is bright and evenly distributed. Multi-room/Multi-source. Real surround modes that a person will actually use. MP3 decoding.

No 'B' channel, but this is washed out by the multi-room/multi-source

This is a helluva receiver. I am piece mealing my system together, and thus only have KLH speakers for my fronts. There is a lack of any audible distortion at any volume right up until it hurts (about the -10dB rating in my small bedroom). The AM/FM reception is excellent and everything from metal to classical to talk come in as crystal clear as if I had a CD player hooked up.

The VMax mode allows a better stereo imaging of your music, but seems to add something "artificial" to the sound. (I can't describe what it is; it just sounds different.)

The 5 video inputs, including 2 component, and digital audio inputs/outputs guarentee that this receiver won't be out of date for the next year or so. :)

H/K has kept the surround modes to a minimum, so you don't have to worry about sorting through 8 different 'Hall' modes and 10 different 'Theatre' modes (like the sony's).

The remote lights up bright and stays lit longer when you press buttons.

The sleep function dims the front display when activated, although the surround and source mode indicator lights stay on at full strength.

The front display shows which surround mode you are in, which source is active, and which speakers are being driven.

Similar Products Used:

Onkyo, HK, Sony, Technics, Kenwood, Pioneer, Aiwa...

Cosmeticaly stunning, pre-main couplers for every channel, HDCD decoder, pretty powerful

Poor sound quality, poor quality period, SATANIC REMOTE!!!, slow signal detection and switching

I don't wanna sound biased, so I will start off saying that I do own a Harman/Kardon CDR-20 CD recorder that I am very pleased with. However, this receiver is the most hideous thing I have ever heard, and operated. I don't know what everyone is raving out, this receiver sounds horrible. It had harsh high midrages, detailed highs(good thing), and very poor low frequency flatness. The amp was very powerful, but I could not stand to listen to this thing at even soft volume levels. On top of failing the most critical criteria on my list(sound reproduction), it had a few other suprises.

The receiver automaticly picks the type of decoding that is needed, and this would be ok, if the stupid decoder didn't shut off when there was no signal present. As a result, even in the small amount of time that my CD player took to change tracks, the decoder would shut off, and activate about 1 to 2 seconds after the track began causing about a second of the track to be cut off. Very very annoying.
The surround modes such as 5 CH stereo, Logic mode 7, Pro-logic sounded awful. The Bass was washed out, and volume gain was drasticaly reduced, and YES, I had my speaker config. set right. This led me to believe that this part was defrective. Dolby digital was tolerable, but was definately downscale of what I was used to. Every movie sounded dead and flat.

Now the best for last.....that remote, or is that what it's really called? I had another name for it. I repeatedly called it a peice of crap every single time I picked it up. The remote refused to control my DVD player and tape deck. It was sluggishly responsive to the touch. Evertime I would select a componet, it also selected the input for that component(very bad feature). Every input select button would turn the receiver on automaticly......not too good when you're trying to turn off your stuff. The receiver had one switched outlet, and the other was unswitched.....what moron engineered that?

Now for the good. Oh wait, there was nothing good about this THING. Ok, so maybe I had some defective guts, but that was only in surround modes.....plus I don't even know if it was defective or not. It functioned....I won't even say it played music, because the reproduction of 2 channel sound was anything but music to my ears. Every single reviewer that gave this receiver a great rating should have a hearing test and possibly a better set of speakers.

List of Equipment:
Paradigm Monitor 9s (front)
Paradigm Mini Monitors (rear)
Harman/Kardon CDR_20 (cd player/recorder)
Sony DVD player
Yamaha tape deck
Denon 2801 (receiver I just bought today in place of the Harman/Kardon I bought and took back a week ago)

Similar Products Used:

Yamaha DSP-E492 and Onkyo TX-8511, Denon 2801

Smooth sound, digital outputs, has pre-amp out/amplifier in connections for adding a equalizer, easy setup

None that I can tell

This is a great AV receiver. Solid construction and crisp, detailed sound. I had it set-up in an hour and it performs really well. It has great sound and a lot of features.

I wanted a receiver that I could use with an equalizer, if I wanted to. I also wanted digital outputs so that I could use a MD recorder in the future. I wanted front panel connections, and this one has digital ones too. I didn't care about lots of effects procesing, and this receiver has some but not like a Yamaha. Height was a consideration, since I needed to fit it in my AV center. This Harman Kardon 510 meets all my requirements.

It also has a nice feature where you use the remote's built in SPL tester to automatically configure the sound output level of all 5 channels in the surround sound setup. Very nice.

I've tried it out with CD and DVD material. The Fleetwood Mac DVD "The Dance" blew me away with the power it delivered. I have yet to try it out with a movie, but that will be this weekend. I have no doubt it will be great.

You should definitely give this receiver consideration in your search for an AV receiver.

Similar Products Used:

Onkyo

Great Design, Excellent Sound features, High Quality hardware and plenty of Video nad Audio Connecions.

Very heavy if this is considered a weakness :)

I never Bought a receiver before but I have tested many out there in the market even some that belonged to my friends and from all the experiences that I had listening to other borrowed receivers I think I learned a great deal as to making the right choice and the choice was my super excellent HARMAN KARDON AVR510. I have it over 4 months now and my friends use their own other brand receivers are being haters now. Friends simply gather at my home to enjoy the amplified clean sounds that it produces using my Klipsch system Home Theatre speakers using KSW 10 subwoofer. I am glad that I took a while to decide what type of receiver would be best for me and I made the right choice. So far for me is the best and even yet I never bought their higher end models this one would fit almost the best of the best Audiophiles out there. I will enjoy it for many years to come.

Power, SS modes, looks

None

I seem to be having trouble with the remote on learning capablilities. HK send me a new remote but it does not have the learning capabilities. Does anyone has any sucess with the learning capabilities.


Thanks
Gan

Similar Products Used:

Avr 85

- Sound Quality
- Appearance
- EZ Set

- Reliability
- No auto analog/digital switching (see below)

I've been using a Yamaha RX-V992 receiver for the last 4 years. I have two pairs of B&W 602s and a B&W center channel speaker, but I was always disappointed by the sound, especially when playing music. It just didn't engage me. I didn't even want to listen to music. I figured a separate 5 channel amp would help, but I wasn't really sure how much and wasn't willing to spend the money.

However, I recently had an opportunity to sell my Yamaha RX-V992, and I upgraded to a Yamaha HTR-5280 (same as the AVR800), figuring it was newer technology, TOPART, etc, so -maybe- it would sound better. Well, I was still disappointed. The sound was still poor. I then tried a H/K AVR510. Since I have two pairs of B&W 602s, I could do a direct A-B comparison. Well, there is a -very- noticeable improvement in sound quality. The bass is much more defined and "punchy" with the H-K; imaging is better and overall the detail of sound is much better. And this extends to its surround performance as well. I now find that I get chills watching movies, and that I actually want to listen to my music CDs now. There is definately something to be said of H/K receivers.

Now for the bad, the first unit I tried had a flaky center channel output-- sometimes it would work, other times it wouldn't. Also, the sub output does not work. Needless to say, I'm in the process of exchanging mine until I get one that works.

Oh, one other note, an annoyance. The Yamaha receivers I've used are able to automatically sense analog or digital signals from a single input. For instance, my digital cable box sends digital signals out the digital jack, but analog signals go through the RCAs. Yamaha receivers automatically switch between the two. However, the H-K doesn't, so, if I want to watch an analog TV station, I need to use the analog input for Video 1. If I want to watch a digital station, I need to manually switch to use the Digital input for Video 1. This is a real annoyance, but it's worth it for the improvement in sound quality.

Similar Products Used:

Yamaha HTR-5280, Yamaha RXV-992

Nice clean sound. Nick looking reciever w/DTS/Component switching.

None

This is an excellet unit for the price I have paid for it. It sells for $999 at circuit city still. Sound on this reciever is amazingly clean. I have never enjoyed DTS sound this much before. I found setting this unit up to be very simple. I won't go into the remote too much since I use my Sony Remote commander(learning remote) to operate all my equipment.
Only thing I noticed wrong with this unit is that sometimes I get no sound when the system tries to decode the Dolby Digital sound from my Direct TV reciever (sony). It only happens with some movies though and I am not sure if it is the HK or something else.
Overall I am very much satisfied with this unit.
I have it hooked up with set of Infinity speakers front and back w/a Polk Audio subwoofer and can't complain.

A great Looking Receiver with great sound. You can easily pay a lot more $$$$ for the similar sound with some of the other high end recieves.

Similar Products Used:

Yamaha RX-V992/ Denon AVR-3801