K-STAT rules I have 5 receivers and they are dolby pro logic dolby digitial THE K_STAT blows them away in two channel sound I have them connected to fisher 8 inch woofer speakers rated 50 watts a channel blew one woofer already

K stat well we as in me n my buddies refer to this amp as K-tel and are we all talking about the same amp AR 404? i purchased mine with a 800 watt12" powered sub woofer and hooked it up to my vintage bose using a matched kenwood cd player

ya hey a "sub out" HELLO awesome i understood fully when purchasing this reciever a sub was a MUST rolling my sub off at 70Hz which my manual specs says 70hz-20k not 40hz
we can produce near concert like sound (ears ringing/ skull shaking bass in the basement)

someone mention it produces well beyond 100 watts i can assure you yes it does way beyond it also can handle unusual ohms in 2 speakers best 200$ reciever ive ever heard to date

I bought this receiver on craigslist for $15 still in the original factory box! Well i wasn't that impressed with it when i played it! It has some power but something wasn't right! The bass is not that great! The highs are good but lack of bass! The menu is easy and simple! It will be good for people who don't care much about the bass but if you are looking for something professional this receiver is not for you! Otherwise I have no problems with it! I got a good deal!

Great value, good sounding mids and highs at moderate listening levels. Around 50 watts of good clean sound. Source-direct mode bypasses all tone controls for a cleaner sound. Great remote that isn't marketing as a multi-function remote, its designed for one thing only: this amp. Capable of producing 100 watts/channel (2 channels) of sound (not rms though). Fully discrete output stage. Sound comparable to home theatre stereo modes in units priced over $200. Subwoofer Pre-out Pretty Good tuner section Phono Input Energy Star Compliant, saves this poor college student money when I forget to turn the unit off :)

yes, 100/channel, but not the cleanest sound. Somewhat lacking in lower bass region (below 40hz), but this amp is only rated for 40hz. Whats does this mean? Well any amp produces the full sound spectrum of a recording. The difference is at what sound level and with how much control (related to damping factor) it can produce the sound. This amp can produce sub 40 hz sounds, but not very loudly or with much control (most people refer to this as 'muddy' sound). The fix? well the pre-amp on this amp is 20-20khz, so get yourself a powered sub and your low bass problems are fixed. Overall not as clean as my denon, denon fells more musical. Not as clean as my brothers yamaha at loud listening levels (concert level sound). Made in China Source-direct turns off everytime you switch between inputs, gets very annoying. Useless bass-boost, just turns up bass (at 100hz) control to max.

I've had this unit for a couple of years now, its been very reliable, even though the amp is made in china. I actually have the ar-304, the model made before the ar-404. Internally, they are exactly the same, the 404 just has a different face (Personally I think the 304 looks better, more classic looking). This amp also uses the K-Stat tranistors (the amp is totally discrete, 4 transistors for the speaker set a and b), which are used in kenwoods more expensive home theatre line-up. The result is that this amp does not heat up much, and is supposed to have improved sound. And yes this amp is capable of producing 100 watts/channel of power. take a look on the back of the receiver, you'll notice the power consumption is 2.8A. Well, to get theoretical maximum wattage, multiply amps by voltage to get watts, so this amp is capable of produceing 336 watts maximimum. Can it actualy reach this limit? Maybe, if you were running a multi-room set up (as in A and B speaker sets were being driven) driving the amp near max volume. But how would it sound? My best guess is distorted, not sure since I use it in a small room at low to moderate listening levels. This baby is powered by a decent power supply, nothing too fancy here. The two caps used in this amp are only 4800uf, so this is a definite limit as to how much RMS wattage you're going to get. The manual rates the amp at 50x2 at 1khz with .02% distortion, so expect around 40-50 watts of clean power from 40-20khz (clean ebing less than .1% distortion). Now on to how the unit sounds. Well, I've listened to my fare share of music hardware, although mostly home theatre. I've listened to creek 4330, and one of the sunfires, but this was at a local specialty shop. To be fair, I'm only comparing the kenwood to recievers which I;ve hooked to my own system. I did a side by side comparison, placed two speakers next to each other (Infinity RS5's), ran the left channel to each of them, and one powered by the kenwood, the other powerd by either my brothers yamaha RX-V630, my denon dra-295, and the other unit I bought for consideration, sony str-de185). Compared to sony's de-185 stereo receiver, this unit sounds more musical. This is also a very quite amp (noise level), unlike the hissing I heard from the sony at low levels, or running zero bit sound through it (a recording with no data(music), helps to identify ground/hiss noise, learned this from car audio junkies). In stereo, at moderate listening levels, this amp rates very closely to my brother's Yamaha RX-V630. The major difference between the two at this level was bass. The yamaha was more tight, and could hit lower than the kenwood (although this difference was minute, and while noticable was not large enough to make a drastic difference in sound quality). Once the volume was turned up to loud listening levels (concert level sound) the yamaha proved more clean, less distorted than the kenwood. How noticeable was this distortion, well a trained ear would notice it, kenwoods sound feels off-axis at loud levels, best way to describe this is that the sound is less centerd, its hard to pick out details in the recording that the yamaha could. Compared to my denon dra-295, this amp is not as clean. The denon has a softer sound than the kenwood at moderate listening levels. I listen to jazz (karl denson, Herbie hancock), rock (incubus, metallica, led zeppelin), and jam bands (greatful dead, widespread panic. Now lets be realistic though, my brother paid around $300 for his amp, and I paid somewhere around $250 for my denon a while ago (actually got it for my birthday do I paid nothing). how much did this little amp cost; a mesely $120. This is a great deal, because for me the sound difference between the denon is not worth twice the cost of the kenwood, it does not sound twice as good, or even close to it. But in the audio world, you pay a lot more for small improvements in sound. it's all dependent on what you're wiling to sacrifice in sound in order to get a better deal. In the kenwoods case, you're sacrificing some bass and clarity, but saving some money while doing it. With the money saved you could spend it on a entry level sub, which would much improve the low bass notes, making it sound much better in that region. I;m in college right now, and did not want to bring my expensive equipment to school. This unit was the perfect choice for me, and a good choice for anyone looking for a great deal.

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Yamaha, Denon, dads old marantz long ago, and auditioned audiophile level systems a shops. I'm a music minor by the way.

-Excellent build and sound quality -Discreet amplification using Kenwoods own K-STAT transistor. -Subwoofer preout -can be used with an equalizer -low price makes it an excellent value

-Rotary selection knobs are akward, a couple of buttons would be more reasonable. -small display is hard to read from far away.

Absolutely fantastic value! Uses kenwoods own K-STAT transistors which reduce audio distortion due to heat. Includes subwoofer preout as well as a "monitor" output for use with an equalizer. The source direct is a nice little feature as well, which will bypass any extra processing done to the sound before it is amplified (ie. bass and trebel ajdustments). I use this reveiver in combination with my Sony 300 disc changer, and a pair of JBL N26II speakers. The sound is absolutely crystal clear, even at extreme volumes. I've been reading through the reviews on this site and have seen people complaining about poor bass response or muddy sound with this reciever. As an electronics technologist, who has built a few simple amplifiers in my day, I can honestly say that any old 2 cent transistor can reproduce low frequencies. This reciever is FTC rated 40Hz - 20KHz at 100 Watts (0.5% THD). That isn't to say that is cant make a sound below 40Hz. The lower the frequency you make, the closer you get to making a DC signal, and I can tell you, and transistor can amplify a DC signal (that's 0 Hz ;)). Amplifying high frequency's is where a cheap transistor may fail, and this amplifier has no problems making all the trebel I ever wanted. All in all, this reciever is very well featured, well built, and is available at a very low cost. I am not a big fan of the 2 rotary selection knobs onthe front, however. I think a couple of more buttons instead would have been a much better choice. I must also note that the $225 purchace price is in Canadian dollars.

Pretty loud. Clear. Big bang for your buck.

Rattles your speakers if anything under 40hz is hit.

Donald Wheels, if you listened to anything other than rap, you would know that this amp hits audible lows. It has fair clarity from where I'm sitting, and it has plenty of useful features. I am 13, and I love speakers, i know plenty about them, and I say this amp is worth your while if you listen to music often.

THERE IS ABSULUTLY NO STENGTHS AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!PLEASE LISTEN TO ME PEOPLE

EVERY LITTLE THING SO PLEASE LISTEN TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!PLEASE??????!!!!!!!!

THIS PRODUCT IS NOT THAT GOOD IS SOUNDS LIKE CRAP AND THERE IS NO BASS AT ALL.IF YOU PEOPLE ARE LIKE ME AND LOVE THE SOUND OF COLD HARD BASS THEN YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO GET THIS PEICE OF JUNK.AINT YOU WOUNDERING WHY ITS SO CHEAP?SO THERE IS A NOTHER RECEIVER A COUPLE DOWN FROM THIS ONE THATS THE BEST ONE.CAUSE AFTER I HEARD THIS ONE I BROUGHT IT BACK AND PAID BOUGHT $80 MORE TO GET THAT ONE ITS $200 SO I HOPE YOU GO WITH THE RIGHT ONE.

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DONT USE ANY LIKE THIS ONE SO I HOPE YOU ALL LISTEN TO ME AND MY ADVISE SO LOVE YOU ALL PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEAS LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN TO TO TO TO TO TO TO OT OT ME ME ME ME ME ME PLEASE PLE

W/powered sub wired to sub/pre port the deep bass response was astonishing, considering that Kenwood only rates this receiver to 40Hz!

Still lacks the smoothness that I would want from my primary receiver, but at this price I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone short of a snobby audiophile!

This is the product update I promised when I first reviewed this receiver a year-and-a-half ago. I recently augmented my Polk R-10s with a bottom-of-the-line Sony powered sub (SA-WM20). The sound improved(to my ears) from tolerable to pretty damn good! It now fills my 12 x 14' exercise room with very satisfying concert hall ambience for me, and really rocks when my wife cranks up her disco CD's for her workout!

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Onkyo TX-8211 (almost twice the price, half the wattage, "prettier" sounding overall).

It sounds great for listening to techno and heavy metal. Does lack a bit of bass, but it''s not bad. I currently have it hooked up to my computer, which works great.

Good looking. Many useful functions. Good remote control.

Poor quality of sound

I have had it only 2 weeks and, lucky guy, change into the L40 from NAD. I have my real hi-fi set in my house but i needed something for my apartment close to my company. Something cheap but still good. I bought Kenwood from discount and from the beginning I wasn''t happy at all. Not clear high tones, hisses, dead, muddy area between low frequences and middle range. General - very foggy sound and lack of clearity. Comparing with NAD, Kenwood seems to be a piece of ..... And one thing more - about THD and what people write in their reviews. It is total misunderstanding. THD is mention few times in reciever parameters and please, be careful. If they write 1% together with rating max power (fx 100W/1%THD) it means only that if power achives 100W nominal sinus output than THD is still under 1%. Thats all and it is not so important. Probably THD are much lower around 1W and we usuallu use our amp. closer to 1W than 100W (1W it is terrible high loudness). THD for 1 kHz and 1W power looks usually much better (fx THD=0.05%) but still means not too much. Most of amp. have it quite good. Kenwood too. But forget it. The last one it is THD rated for whole hearable range. FX 20-20kHz and THD<0.05% and 0.3dB linearity - it means much more. Most of disortation we hear as unpleasant are not at 1 kHz. Much more important is how it looks in range 20-20kHz. And not many firms write about it because it is nothing for to be proud. NAD has only this stupid 0.05% but in the whole range :-). Kenwood have it only for 1W, 1kHz. It is basic difference and you hear it very clear! But what can we expect for 130$?

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NAD L40 - (CD receiver), Maranz