Great Deal Bundled with Speakers
Written: Dec 08 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Solid product, lots of features for a good price.
Cons: A little patience required to learn features.
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| guncoat's Full Review: Pioneer VSX-D409 5.1 Channels Receiver |
I was in the market for a surround system, looking first only at a speaker system (sub with satellites). I quickly discovered that for not much more money, I could get a complete multi-media package including receiver, sub and five speakers.
The VSX-D409 was bundled together with a self powered 100W sub, and five identical speakers (2xfront, 2xrear, 1xcenter). This was all on sale at Costco for $499 Can. I had not bought Pioneer since the early 80's car stereos and was a bit skeptical. However, features for price this system was just too appealing for a technology junkie like me. I jumped at it.
I was not disappointed. It did all is said it would do. It took about 3 hours to properly install, mounting the speakers on the walls and running all the cabling along the ceiling/wall joint. I recommend this if you have kids and a dog like me. I used my own speaker cable (18 awg) since I thought the supplied cable was a bit too light in gauge, and possibly too short.
The only problem I encountered on the entire system was getting the sub-woofer output on the receiver to turn on. At first I thought that the sub-woofer was not functioning. The manual states that the sub-woofer output is turned on from the factory (whoops on that one Pioneer). By toggling through the menus and having patience, I was able to figure it out. It must be told that the front speakers are small, thus requiring the sub-woofer to activate. (Easy once you know it). I dreaded having to pack the entire system back up and return it to the vendor, since all the rest was working so well.
Note that this system has the digital decoder built in. Don't buy one without it.
This system has more bells and whistles that I need at the moment. It also has plenty of volume for watching movies, or even playing music. However, don't plan to shake the house with rock music, as it is not designed to do that (at least not without buying larger front speakers).
One last feature that I like is the MIDNIGHT feature. This allows the surround audio and voice levels to be bumped up with respect to the regular action audio. This way if your household is asleep and you want to watch THE MATRIX late at night (which I have), you will not have to wake them all up to hear the voices and surround effects.
Its a good deal.
TAR
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
guncoat
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Member: Troy
Location: Alberta, Canada
Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 0 members
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