when the 7.1came out me being on a budget for 220 dollars that can hook up seven channels my only negative is what you see is what you get there is no calibration you hook up seven speakers and a sub go to the menu on the receiver adjust levels to your liking and that's it the good thing is the HDMI switching and sound quality is good up to a volume of about 35 which is a little less than half of the 75 full volume before you hear increased distortion but up until that point you home throw in avatar or expendables its sounds decent also as a negative all the speakers should have banana plug inputs not just the front and the rest are spring loaded but once you get everything hooked up it does have a nice sound with both movies and music without a whole lot of extra features but started at the bottom I will eventually work my way to the mid point roughly around $600 dollars and it will be a sony 7.2 reciever

I had this receiver for one day before deciding to return it, sadly. I thought I could get away with a decent amp with HDMI switching for a decently cheap price, but I neglected to think about audio quality. I sort of assumed it would be adequate for my needs.

I guess I'm more picky than I thought. I hooked this amp up to my ADS L520's and was stunned at how average it made them sound, and this comparing them to my puny Sonic Impact T-Amp that I was using as a temporary hold-over. Treble was muddled, bass was inconsistent and also muddled, mids were just not clear sounding. But then, this is what you get for around $150 new -- what did I expect?

For those looking for a decent home theater system for smaller cheap speakers, I can recommend this as a decent quality receiver. One flaw is that the HDMI ports do not send audio to the receiver - you need a separate audio input for that, either from the TV or from each HDMI device. Not terribly useful - essentially you have an HDMI switch that happens to be tacked on to your receiver.

However, if you have good speakers and good ears, save yourself the trouble of learning the lesson I did - that the amp is as important as the speakers, if not more so. I will be getting a higher-level Yamaha receiver used, or perhaps a simple AudioSource dedicated amplifier, to replace this for around the same price.

Until then, I will continue to use the T-amp. If anything this has opened my ears to how impressive that little plastic toy really is...