I've been a huge fan of H/K products since I acquired an AVR 80 MKII seven years ago. When speaking of sound quality nothing can beat their high-end receivers and amplifiers. The AVR 7300, which I bought to set up a Home Theater of my dreams, is no exception to this rule. It is built like a tank – heavy and commanding respect. It performs like a good set of separates. Power is abundant; sound is warm, clean and transparent. All DSP modes work flawlessly. Logic 7 brings an extra dimension to the tried and true stereo recordings, and the Faroudja video processing up scales and de-interlaces 480i video signals with flying colors. What else one could ask for?

The user interface and general usability leave much to be desired. The EZSet feature is very inaccurate. I tried it several times and it simply does not work correctly. The receiver does not have a “Master” channel level setup feature. To set up channel levels, one has to go into each possible DSP mode of each input and set channel levels there. And, in order to do this, one must make sure there is an input signal present while adjusting the channels, since there is no way to engage certain DSP modes when no signal is coming in. What a nightmare! I bought AVR 7300 for its 7.1 capabilities. Why does it always default to 5.1 decoding when a DD5.1 or DTS signal is detected??? It allows me to store my preference of Dolby DPLIIx or Logic 7 for two channel sources. Why does it insist on initially selecting pure 5.1 decoding with 5.1 sources then??? To make matters worse, when in DD 5.1 mode, it forces me to circle through six (6!!!) absolutely useless Dolby modes (2-SP, 4-SP, etc) and only then allows me to select "Movie" or "Music" post-processing (Dolby Digital PlIIx "Movie"/"Music"). Needless to say, it not only takes time, but also interrupts sound from the speakers every time a "Dolby" button on the remote is pressed! And, try to find this bloody button in a dark (so much for the "backlighting" they provided)! Speaking of the remote control, for a flagship receiver to have a remote like AVR 7300 has is simply humiliating. The buttons are absolutely indistinguishable in the dark even with the "backlight" switched on. Most of them have the same shape and size and the button names are written NEXT to them, not ON them so they are not lit when “backlighting” is on. The receiver does not display OSD when 480p or 1080i signal source is used. It does not want to recognize DD 5.1 EX flag on any DVD’s I tried. It drops audio ever so often for a second or so while watching some DVD’s with DD 5.1 soundtrack (“Star Wars Episode I” is one of those, for example.

I am really very sad. The AVR 7300 reminds me a lot of a classic American Muscle car – plenty of raw unadulterated power coupled with mediocre handling characteristics. Sure, that car can cover ¼ mile very fast but no one would use it in a World Rally Championship to compete on a twisty mountain road… Ironically, the H/K website has Dr. Sidney Harman's quote on their website: "We were determined that our products should look pleasant and be easy to use. I argued that if you could do it with one knob, what's wrong with that. The one knob idea is that the engineering-the technical part should be transparent. You use the brilliance of the engineer to make the thing very simple for the user." I wish Dr. Harman could have personally tried to use the “flagship” receiver of his company and give a user interface related feedback to the designer team (in strong words)… Anyway, H/K designers must roll off their sleeves and spend significant time re-working all issues pertaining to AVR 7300 usability if they want to keep the sales on par with the flagship receivers of other manufacturers. Until then – I give up. I returned the unit to the dealer after exchanging more then 30 emails with various H/K tech support people. I guess I’ll be looking for a deeply discounted now Denon AVR 5308 in a few days.

Similar Products Used:

H/K AVR 80 MKII, Denon AVR 5803

POWER, LOOKS, EASE OF USE 2 Channel is suburb HT is mind bogling ... oh and i consider THX certs sometimes a weakness.. this guy is not thx certed but blows any under 2500 away..

depth of unit ,,, must assure you have room .. otherwise not a one

all i can say is .. wow.. this guy has it all and sounds great ... also improves picture quality .. the 1st true a/v reciever .!!! has some video enhancement... i had the 7000 .. great power .. but lacked some features i wanted .. this guy has them and more .. and not to confusing to manage,, hands dowm the best reciever i've heard in stereo and HT ... compares to seperates!!! and i ve used high end separates ... unit is a monster .. coming into the ring at a whooping 62 + pounds .. built like a tank.. ive got it matched up with their dvd101 .. great combo.. so far harman has been better on service sound and all other standpoints compared to my old fav's such as adcom .. marantz etc... if ya got the $$ for this guy dont waste it on a tinny yamaha or a dull b&K .. denon ... ok a good fight but sound quality is hard to beat on the 2 channel of the HK ,, HT wise fairly close but the stereo is far better on HK

Similar Products Used:

DENON ADCOM ARCAM MARANTZ YAMAHA