Nakamichi AV-10 A/V Receivers

Nakamichi AV-10 A/V Receivers 

DESCRIPTION

Audio / Video Receiver - DOLBY DIGITAL AND DTS SURROUND DECODING -Seven analog audio inputs plus four composite video and S-video inputs - Three composite video and S-video outputs, including monitor output - Stereo Mode: 120 watts/channel - Surround Mode: 100 watts x 5 channels

USER REVIEWS

Showing 31-40 of 123  
[Jan 27, 2000]
Lonnie
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Ease of Setup and Use! Awesome Sound quality.

Weakness:

Haven't had it long enought to truly find any!

I have the NAK AV10 hooked up to Monitor Full metal Theatre series speakers.
Fronts-Silver 3
Rears-Silver Surrounds
Center-Silver Centre 10
Sub-ASW 110

I couldn't be more satisfied. I hear the fan if I'm standing within 3ft of the receiver but I have yet to hear it when watching a movie or listening to CD or Cassette. I have seen other reviews and say that listening level of 10:00,that is too bold for me, so it is beyond me how you can hear the fan. The deepest sharpest sound I've heard in a long time.

I like it so much that I ordered the DR-8 Cassette Deck and what a pair.
Nakamichi keep up the good work!!
Quality and not a lot of bells and whistles.

Similar Products Used:

Well auditioned the RXV Yamaha, and there is no comparison in my opinion. The NAK AV10 has me wanting to get home from work as soon as possible so that the CD player can come on and destress this old body.

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Jan 22, 2000]
nao
Audio Enthusiast

A piece of warning:
This product is best avoided for those who are into classical music.
The fun is so noisy that it is audible when the music is in pianissimo.
I had to return it in a week.

Similar Products Used:

Marantz SR-19

OVERALL
RATING
3
VALUE
RATING
2
[Jan 14, 2000]
Bill Millard
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Lots of Power to spare. Rarely push it above 10:00 o'clock position. Simple to setup and operate. Very tight sound.

Weakness:

Fan noise is audible from a few feet away, but it doesn't distract from the sound, even at the lowest volumes. Some Hum appears at about half volume on up but I can't push it to that level and keep my hearing very long anyhow. May be just line noice from crappy wiring as well.

Remote is simple, maybe to simple. Has nice learning feature but as others have mentioned, backlit would have been nice. A very good value at around $1200 although I did get mine for under $1k.

Similar Products Used:

Marantz, Dennon, Onkyo, Sony.

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
4
[Mar 26, 1999]
Joe
an Audio Enthusiast

I decided on this reciever after auditioning the B&K AVR202, Sony 90-esg, Denon 3600, and Yamaha RX-V2095. The sound quality on the sony was not good at all. The Denon had 5-channel stereo which I liked, but not enough power for my purposes. The 2095 had a million and one dsp's which tend to annoy me. The 2095 also sounded like crap when compared to my Nakamichi. This Nakamichi unit has good clean power and has the best sound quality of any of the recievers I auditioned. This unit has the sound quality of a B&K AVR202 at half the price. This Nakamichi is an excellent value. I recommend it highly.

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
[Feb 26, 1999]
George
an Audio Enthusiast

After auditioning receivers at home recently (Denon 3200, Yamaha 2095), I have purchased the Nakamichi AV10. No, it doesn't have many DSPs and no 5 channel stereo; but what it does have is clean power - 100 WPC x 5 or 120 WPC x 2 @ 25 Amps - enough to adequately drive my NHT 2.5i's. Auto DD, DT, DPL switching, incredible straightforward interface, and did I mention how clean the power is? Do yourself a favor and audition this receiver. It is an absolute pleasure to listen to, for both music and HT.

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
[Feb 26, 1999]
Francis J Cherukara
an Audio Enthusiast

I was looking out to upgrade my home theatre system and after much consideration was about to decide between the Yamaha RXV 795 & the RXV 995. That's when the ad about the Nakamichi AV-10 was brought to my attention by my brother-in-law. Went down to the shop - listned to the demo, had no doubt that I found what I really wanted to hear! very superior in clean theatre sound-both out of the Audio CD's and the DVD's it played. The simplest way I will describe the performance of this unit - "absolute perfection" of pure power!!.
The unit does not come with unnecessary "extras" like a dozen DSP modes etc etc which is really misleading - who would want to listen to music and watch movies other than in its natural unadulterated mode. That's exactly what the AV-10 guarantees.

I use it with a JBL PSW-1000 Sub, Bose Main / BW Centre and JBL pair as rear. It's sheer pleasure - of sound.

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
[May 24, 2001]
Joe G
Audiophile

Strength:

Great sound quality, lots of power

Weakness:

Poor quality control

Overall, I think the AV-10 is a pretty nice reciever. Sounded great, easy to use, etc.

My complaint, has been mentioned before on this board - The damn display is crooked! For a product that retails over $1000, this is flat out unacceptable. I'm not one to buy a product for "looks", but, I've seen $100 receivers at K-Mart appear to be better made. I don't understand why they couldn't get something as obvious as that right.

Its not just being nit-picky, its VERY not subtle. A non-audiophile friend of mine came over about 20 minutes after I hooked the thing up, he didn't even realize I had a different receiver (He's TOTALLY not into this sort of thing), but, the first words out of his mouth when he sat down were "Did you break your reciever?") ...

Anyway, like I said earlier, the thing sounds great, if you can live with crappy cosmetics. Personally, I tried to deal with it for 2 weeks but it finally bothered me to the point I had to return it.

I've also read alot of reviews here about people saying not to buy stuff from ubid.com, however, I am pleased to report they actually surpassed my expectations. Not only did they give me a 100% refund (including the original shipping costs), but they paid for its return postage. So, since their return policy is this good, I would highly recommend, if you want one of these recievers, watch ubid. They go pretty cheap. (remanufactured)

On a side note, I replaced it with a Harman Kardon AVR7000, which seems like it has more power (very lightly),noticably better sound quality, and a STRAIGHT display. I'm very happy with it. (well worth the little extra money)

Gotta give it 5 stars for value (a solid 100x5 Reciever, great sound quality for music and HT), but only 2 stars overall. I just can't believe quality control is that bad - Makes ya wonder what else might "slip" by.

Similar Products Used:

Harman Kardon AVR100, 200, 300, 7000, Sony ES series, various Pioneer Elite series..

OVERALL
RATING
2
VALUE
RATING
5
[Jan 19, 2001]
Patrick
Audiophile

Strength:

Almost everything including: Great sound, pretty smart in design and function, nice face plate and controls, A+B speaker jacks, nicely sized, audio source can be selected independently of video source, power rated in continuous - not peak, and can stack components on top if necessary.

Weakness:

Though mostly minor: Remote, crooked display, no cooling-fan failure indicator, speaker binding posts, no digital outputs, no S-video pass-through to composite-video RCAs, weak power cord, no left+right audio outputs for TV, RCA jacks have a tendency to pull out with tight cables, and Nakamichi tech support. When put all together can make the price hard to swallow.

Overall I am pretty pleased with this unit. Did sound better than a modified Harman/Kardon 210 which does sound really good. Not as good as Parasound, but for the price a much better value.

The remote is very similar to Pioneer's. The smartest thing about the remote is it is strictly a learning remote. You will never have a device that won't work with this universal remote concept. Other than that the Nakamichi engineers should have been shot. Its flaws are numerous and NOT worthy of the price you pay for the AV-10. It does not have nearly enough memory. It was designed to control five additional devices, but in some senarios at best you can only program 3.5 devices before getting a memory overflow error. The AV-10 controls that should work in either audio or video mode only work in audio mode, and you cannot select audio mode independent of video mode.

There are many factors that can make it hard to justify the price. Most are listed above in Weaknesses. The most frustrating is the slightly crooked display. Every one I have seen has a slightly crooked display. The only one I saw with a perfectly mounted display would not respond to a remote, so I had to exchange it. The second one's display was so crooked I had to exchange that too. I am now on my third unit and its display is just slightly crooked, but it still just chaps my hide. For this kind of money, a properly mounted display should have been standard.

My MAJOR concern is NO cooling-fan failure indicator. You would think that such a critical component would have a failure indicator of some kind, but not so. So if a $5 fan fails you overheat a $1000 unit. How incredibly stupid is that? I will likely end up making my own alarm.

Speaker posts are the typical cheap ones found on many of today's receivers, but it does not justify why Nakamichi put these type on the AV-10. They should have used the kind that accept 10 gauge wire through a hole in the post itself. This type simply provides a better connection and more connection options for EVERYTHING.

The Nakamichi tech support guy for this unit can be rather frustrating to work with. He has a tendency to be quite defensive rather than listening to your question.

When Nakamichi came out with their DVD-15, they never updated the AV-10 to match their latest design concepts such as display/led brightness and color, power button, and standby/on indicators to name a few.

Other than correcting the AV-10 weaknesses, I would really like to see Nakamichi build an AV receiver with a 5x100 torroidal amp. I would also like to see it WITHOUT the DTS/THX/5.1/7.1/ProLogic decoders, but rather with 8-channel inputs. Since many DVD players, like their DVD-15, have these 6-8 channel outputs, it eliminates the need AND the cost of having these redundant decoders on the receiver.

I give this unit 4 stars. If it wasn't for all the weaknesses this unit would easily score a solid 5 stars. Because of their quality control and tech support, at that price overall I can only really justify 3 stars.

Similar Products Used:

Harman/Kardon, Pioneer Elite, Parasound separates, B&K separates, etc.

OVERALL
RATING
3
VALUE
RATING
4
[Jan 21, 2001]
Michael
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Great sound on 2ch amplification and on Dolby Digital / DTS movies!

Weakness:

No direct power amp inputs... (what to do about DVD-Audio), not the best Speaker connections

Let me say first I love this unit very much!!

My main "Theatre Two" system consists of the DVP-S7000 going thru a nice pure copper coaxial input to the Nakamichi... Also am using an external DAC since the one in this receiver sounds a bit off.

For movies, I'm in heaven! My speakers are relative *crap* AR 310s but you know with a competent subwoofer in my case the Velodyne CT-12 it makes 90% of the movie houses I've been to sound like sh*t.

One weird thing I found out this weekend about the poor speaker '5-way' posts -- the left and right surrounds are not orientated like the mains and do not accept standard banana plugs. Their off by around 1cm. That's not acceptable.

Also, Nak could have done a little better after Yamaha's book and spent more time "future proofing" our investment.

Similar Products Used:

Sony, Pioneer, Nak RE-10

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
5
[Feb 27, 2001]
Rich
Audiophile

Strength:

Sound

Weakness:

Not really

Crystal clear sound. Powerful. Both music or HT is amazing.
The true power is incredible. I have old Cerwin-Vega speakers and i never heard a sound like this before.

This receiver will simply blow you away into the wall with is power and sound reproduction.

Similar Products Used:

Rotel

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
Showing 31-40 of 123  

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