DD and DTS

Yes it is under powered but for $300 no problem

To be able to move "up" to the DD and DTS area for under $300 ($299.95 Costco) is simply amazing. For those of us who spent big money to get a Pro-Logic system back in the day, this provides a nice step as we save our pennies for the next big step.

Similar Products Used:

Denon 2700 pro-logic

cheap

Remote, power (100W! Yeah Right!!), lack of bass

I messed up in buying this baby. It was a hard lesson to learn since the shop i bought it from refused to give me my money back, on the grounds that there was nothing wrong with it, appart from the fact i didnt like it. I know now that you get what you pay for.

There is a real lack of bass in this unit. I have a pair of Cerwin Vega CVT-10 tower speakers and was expecting them to rip as Cerwin Vega speakers are renouned for bass. The bass from my old Sh**ty amp (tec) sounded way better on my speakers than this thing. In fact my old amp sounded better all round, and is 10 years old. This pioneer amp doesnt have enough power to run a decent set of speakers. 100W! Yeah right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A mate of mine brought over his amp (Denon) and we hooked it up to my speakers and entertained the neighbours for hours.

I dont like the way music or movies sounds on it and i played around with all the settings for hours. It doesnt sound clear at all.

The remote is hard to use and wont run all my equipment.

Im thinking about painting my Pioneer VSX-D608 yellow to reflect the fact that its a lemon.

I have boxed the pioneer up and set up my old amp. Im broke and cant afford to get a new one yet so its 2 channel analog dvd's for the now.

cheap

Remote, power (100W! Yeah Right!!), lack of bass

I messed up in buying this baby. It was a hard lesson to learn since the shop i bought it from refused to give me my money back, on the grounds that there was nothing wrong with it, appart from the fact i didnt like it. I know now that you get what you pay for.

There is a real lack of bass in this unit. I have a pair of Cerwin Vega CVT-10 tower speakers and was expecting them to rip as Cerwin Vega speakers are renouned for bass. The bass from my old Sh**ty amp (tec) sounded way better on my speakers than this thing. In fact my old amp sounded better all round, and is 10 years old. This pioneer amp doesnt have enough power to run a decent set of speakers. 100W! Yeah right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A mate of mine brought over his amp (Denon) and we hooked it up to my speakers and entertained the neighbours for hours.

I dont like the way music or movies sounds on it and i played around with all the settings for hours. It doesnt sound clear at all.

The remote is hard to use and wont run all my equipment.

If you do buy this, make sure you have a sub.

I have boxed the pioneer up and set up my old amp. Im broke and cant afford to get a new one yet so its 2 channel analog dvd's for the now.

alot for the price, plenty of power, nice surround for dvd's

not a thousand dollar thx unit

Of all the recievers I have used and been around I feel really good about the 608. I have had no problems, drives my vega's very nicely, enough to get complaints from all the neighbors. The gun scene on the roof of a building in the matrix made me realize when played through this reciever why you have rear channels. I have played with an Onkyo, a couple sony's, a yamaha, and another pioneer reciever that were all comperable in price and I think I have the most reciever with the most versatility. S-video out the wazzou along with 4 digital optical hookups and lots of other composite and assorted pre outs lets me hook up my 5.1 and lots of components. I have no idea why there is controversy about this reciever, a good buy.

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the sony

Full featured, excellent sound for home theater, ease of use

Still haven't figured out how to get good music out of it w/o using dsp

First off, for home theater uses, this A/V reciever has all the inputs and features (minus THX, but that's only in MUCH higher end equipment currently) you would possibly need. the 5.1 is strong, the bass boom in the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan alone would sell you on this.

Important caveat though. If you're running little bose satellites or jbl or some such for speakers, keep that in mind when hearing this reciever. A GOOD (NOT great) powered sub is also a necessity if you want to do 5.1 (read 5 speakers AND a subwoofer) Again, if you don't have this, you aren't doing 5.1 anyway. Put this reciever with good speakers and movies will REALLY come to life in true surround.

I can't agree with people saying this is underpowered, again I must think that someone's running very inefficient speakers. I'm running Vandersteen fronts and Infinity rears, and haven't been able to turn it up over -20 because it hurts. But it's still crystal clear.

The only complaint I have is that I can't get good stereo sound out of it yet (just started playing around trying again yesterday) It sounds great turning on one of the dsp modes (hall 2 or jazz) and turning off the rear speakers to get rid of the echo, but direct mode sounds completely hollow. Back to the manual again I guess, and running it through dsp shouldn't bother me, like I said, it sounds great, I'm just a strange purist.

Put simply though, you won't find a better (more accurate reproduction of sound) reciever in the sub $600 range if you are using this for theater. If you want an amp for music alone, you could probably do better, even another pioneer non a/v, and go ahead, this IS a/v.

Sony sounded too mechanical, yamaha didn't have the features and was too tinny, denon's low end is just that, has the denon name but little else and comes off very shallow IMO.

Hope this helped.

Similar Products Used:

Denon, Pioneer Elite, Cambridge, NAD, HK

Lots of inputs, DD, Dts, Pro logic decoding. Cool Remote. 5 S-VIDEOS! Clean sound.

Not that much power, no preamps for the rest of the channels,

Well, I've had this receiver for quite a while already, and to be honest, I really recommend this receiver to people that are on a budget or that just want to have a home theater.

Personally, when I bought this receiver I bought it because it had DD and DTS decoding plus all the S-Videos you could need, which I don't really need. The power is ok but not that good. I have some 180 watt Aiwa speaker for the front left and right channels and when I turn up the volume to compete with the neighbor that also has a stereo, I notice that the speakers are not "being all that they can be." But it does sound great with music. I watched the Bone Collector on DVD and it sounds great in DTS. Right now I'm planning to replace this receiver with a Sony STR-DB830 mostly because it offers preamps for all channels and binding post for all speakers, something that the VSX-D608 doesn't have. For the last year I've been happy with this receiver but it's time to improve. If you're a person the doesn't have a lot of money to spend on a receiver but want something goood, you should really considering this receiver but if you are too picky or have more than $500 to spend on a receiver, this will probably be the wrong choice.

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Kenwood receivers

loaded with features,good remote,simple hook-up

bass output

i recently bought the 608 and have been pleased,surround is good but i do have a question for fellow owners and that is what mode they use to watch regular analog television? remote is good and power increase was not distorted although sub output was a little weak

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jvc 888,sony 335

Built in DTS and Dolby Digital Decoder, and several optical inputs for future upgradability.

Pre-out for the subwoofer kinda sucks

I recently purchased this unit on the advice of a friend. I bought it to be used mostly as a home theater system, but I got more than I bargained for. I got it for $327 at Circuit City (they price matched it with another retailer who was out of stock, regular price was $349) I've had it for about a week now, and I've run it through the ringer trying everything out like a kid in a candy shop. My meager setup includes a set of 6 Aiwa speakers; center, front, and surround [came in a set(SX-AVR600)] and an Aiwa powered sub (TS-W50). I have a Pioneer D525 DVD player hooked up to it using a fiber optic cable. And through analog coax I have a Samsung Hi-Fi VCR (VR8805), and just about every videogame console ever released in North America.

I'm graduating from "bookshelf" stereos so don't make too much fun of me please :-)

I mentioned the sub pre-out as a weakness, and the reason is that the signal is so weak. It's barely noticable when not in Dolby 5.1, and even then it's pretty pathetic. My powered sub is only a 64 watt sub, but it thumped pretty hard using the pre-out on my Aiwa bookshelf system. So in order to get any decent bass sound (Which is awesome with this reciever) I had to run the front main speakers through the sub's built in crossover. I set the front main speakers to large then I set the surround speakers to small, and the subwoofer output off (Which sends all the bass to the front, including the .1 channel), and viola. (I tried setting the center channel to small to pour even more bass into the front channels, But the center channel didn't sound right after that (maybe my speakers suck?) but with the center channel on large it sounds great.

I really liked all of the different ways this reciever allows you to customize the sound you get. And having a digital to analog converter inside of the reciever instead of being stuck with the one in the CD/DVD player is also awesome.

My favorite functions are the 5-D theater which does a great job making Pro-Logic Surround signals sound more like AC-3 (Final Fantasy VIII blew me away); The Digital Noise Reduction. I have some CDR's that I made from some cassette tapes (Out of print and never offered on CD) and they have a little hiss on them which was unpreventable, but this thing does wonders with it. I haven't gotten much out of midnight mode, I know what it's supposed to do, but all it seems to do is make everything more bassy.

I've watched "The Matrix","The Fifth Element","Pokemon The First Movie"--(it's a guilty pleasure as my friend would say), and saving Private Ryan, and I was amazed at the reciever's clarity.

The remote is pretty cool in that it controlled my DVD player without even having to mess around with settings. (I know they're both Pioneer, but I still think it's cool) It does suck that you have to cycle through the inputs to find the one you want, and they chose the stupidest buttons to backlight, but it's still better than what I'm used to.

For the money, this one had all the features I wanted, and then some. I like the fact that it's got so many inputs, because it gives me plenty of room to upgrade and enjoy all the features of future purchases without buying new equiptment. I don't have any DVD's with DTS yet, but when I do, it's there, and When I get an LD player and the Playstation 2 I can use digital audio inputs for all of them (including a regular cd player if I ever get around to hooking it up). It's MSRP is supposed to be $550, but I wouldn't say it's worth more than $400. It's the perfect thing for an audio novice like myself who enjoys the sound of his music and movies, but doesn't necessarily want to have sex with it (meaning that I'm not an Audiophile).

The biggest problem I had with this system was setting it up, because it's more stereo than I've ever played with before. It took a while to get the DVD player set up through the fiberoptic inputs, and the instruction manual only hinted at the solution. But most of my problems were just because I'm a newbie to this component stereo scene.

And if you've made it through this novel that I call a review, thanks for enduring--you deserve that much.

Similar Products Used:

Aiwa nsx-A707

Awesome receiver for the price.

I would recommend it for everyday audio and for the occasional need for connectivity.

DO NOT COMPARE this receiver with models $200 - $2000 or more! This is a mid-level model! I am an avid audiophile and I do not express sympathy nor collaborate with those who trash the title and splurge their idealistic goals all over this site. If you need better sound you would have to go with a $800 or higher priced receiver. Since I bought this for ~$300 I consider myself lucky.

If you once had this model and sold it for a higher priced model, I ask you this... Why?? Of course when you go back into the showroom things are going to sound better for a higher priced model. Mostly it's the type of speakers that the salespeople use. They will often try to fool you by using big 15" speakers so the bass will be tremendous. They will use positive false encouragement to pressure you also. Truthfully you need a receiver with 2.4 times the power to get twice the loudness(log scale).

Anyway I agree this is a good one but I obviously don't plan on having George Lucas' engineers over to my place to THX certify the darn thing!! I hope people would spend more time praising Pioneer for a job well done instead of dissing other manufacturers by telling us how this receiver is close but slightly off compared to the higher priced models. Well duhh?!! Everyone has their right to speak out but I don't think that includes negative comments which in a sense load the gun for the rest of us.

Eveything> I love it!

Absolutely nothing! It's great!

It fit easily into its compartment because of its perfect size! It was 100 watts of pure joy per channel. The 6 DSP modes were each great. I was able to get the Simpsons with great surround with the Pro Logic decoder. The DVD player was perfect with it through one of the 3 optical inputs. The DTS was absolutely stupendous. I used this with my Bose AM-6 speaker combo and it was great. The bass was wonderful along with the voices and instrumentals. I had enough room to digitally input my CD player, DVD player, and satelite TV and still have room for more! I liked the fact that I could also connect the remote to seperate components. I'm at KennyBC@hotmail.com.

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Kenwood VR309, it was absolutly horrible!