Technics SA-DX950 A/V Surround-Sound Receiver -- Can I Pay for it with Food Stamps?
Written: Jan 20 '02 (Updated Jan 25 '02)
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Pros: Covers all the basic home-theater surround modes, great price.
Cons: Lightly-built, not the easiest to operate.
The Bottom Line: This Consumer Reports "Best Buy" may not be the best for you to buy.
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| radioguy's Full Review: Technics SA-DX950 5.1 Channels Receiver |
Excuse me while I wax nostalgic. Back in the turntable daze (intentionally sic), me and my pals all tried to outdo one another in stereo-buying competitions.
For humble children of the lumpen bourgeoisie, the mathematics of self-financed audio equipment necessitated a search for maximal value. This search often led to the choice of receivers, turntables, and cassette decks from Technics.
In those innocent days, we didn't know that Technics was just a cool-sounding corporate tentacle of Panasonic (itself, if I am not mistaken, another arm of the Japanese corporate conglomerate Matsush1ta Electric -- love that Epinions obscenity filter). All we knew was that Technics receivers provided low-distortion output at a minimal price. And our Steve Miller albums sounded darn cool, as well as providing excellent backup for air-guitar jams. Especially "Space Intro/Fly Like an Eagle," "Keep on Rockin' Me Baby," and "Take the Money and Run" (if Miller wanted to update that last song to keep up with current events, he might have called it "Take the Money Enron").
This was all before the days of distortion being measured at hundredths of a percent. If a receiver could run from 20Hz to 20kHz with something like 0.8% total harmonic distortion (THD), we thought that was pretty good.
The receivers' guts were less complex than they are today. There were almost no LSIC's (large-scale integrated circuits). You could actually see individual resistors, capacitors, and inductors laid out on one or two printed-circuit boards. But some things haven't changed. The dictates of the laws of physics, then, as now, required the pair of power-amp transistors to be fairly large and mounted on heat-sinks, finned aluminum plates which help to carry off the excess degrees generated by a working final-stage transistor.
Power Levels Trend Toward Neighbor-Crushing Extremes
Speaking of power, the advertised levels were generally much lower than with today's gear. With a modern receiver, such as the Onkyo TX-DS494, reviewers will generally caution the reader that the amplifier's 55-watts-per-channel output might fall short when used for speakers in a medium to large room. When you get above the $300 level with current gear, it's rare to find a receiver that puts out less than 70 watts per channel and most claim 100.
But back when my friends and I were trying to outdo each other with our Technics receivers, 55 watts-per-channel would have been considered pretty ballsy. I'll admit, my Technics receiver had 35-watts-per-channel. Hey, it was loud enough to almost get me kicked out of my dorm in college. One of my friends, however, handily outdid me by buying the 45-watts-per-channel Technics model. This seemed impressive at the time, considering that there were models with 25 or even 15-watts-per-channel.
The Technics receivers of yore were not what you would call "overbuilt," but they were sufficiently sturdy for their required task. The front-panel switches, for example, functioned perfectly well, but they did feel as if an overly-emphatic push might make their internal parts snap. My Technics receiver worked for over a decade, right up to the day it was stolen. It's probably still blasting out hip-hop in some cinder-block apartment on Avenue D.
The Technics SA-DX950
Technics still makes receivers and their products are still lightweight and cheap-yet-functional. As a case in point, consider their SA-DX950, the second-from-the-bottom in the Technics line of home-theater surround-sound receivers. If you look around a little, you can find this receiver selling for $200, or even a bit less. On top of that, Technics has had a $50 rebate going on this receiver for quite a while now. The rebate was supposed to have expired for sales after the first week in January, but if you check out the jandr Web site (J&R Music World) there's a downloadable version of the rebate that's good until March 2002.
They're GIVING Away Receivers!
J&R also has a good price on the SA-DX950, selling it for $200 versus the $250 price tag you'll find on it at Circuit City, Best Buy and similar "we (almost) never discount" superstores. If you live close to J&R, by the way, they'll give you free UPS ground shipping now so you can avoid the constricted streets around their store which is just a couple of blocks from where the World Trade Center towers used to stand. B&H Photo/Video has the SA-DX950 in their catalog and at their retail store for $190, but their Web site is not quite ready for prime time.
Keeping Up with Modern Times
The price:performance ratio of Technics receivers remains advantageous for the buyer. In addition, the company has managed to add the features needed to keep their receivers competitive in this digital, surround-sound era. While their older receivers had to do nothing more than accept analog stereo input from two or three sources (typically, a turntable and a tape deck), modern receivers are tasked with accepting digital input and amplifying it to feed a set of five surround-sound speakers (while sending a low-level output to the integral amplifier in a self-powered subwoofer).
Build Quality
The SA-DX950 is a lightweight box. All sides except the front are thin-gauge metal. The fascia is plastic. More adventurous and aggressive marketing copywriters tend to call it something like "injected-molded polystyrene," but it's still plastic. When you tap your finger on the front panel, you hear a hollow ping. If you want a receiver that's built like a tank, you'll have to spend $50 to $100 more and go with something like an Onkyo TX-DS494 or a Kenwood VR-507. On the other hand, as long as you're not going to do something like whack it with a hammer, the fascia of this receiver is adequately sturdy.
Dolby Digital, DTS, and Dolby Pro Logic
In any case, the SA-DX950 covers the home-theater basics. For your DVD's, the receiver will handle Dolby Digital (DD) and Digital Theater Surround (DTS) datastreams, accepting them via one of its three digital-audio inputs. The SA-DX950 also handles regular old Dolby Pro Logic surround sound for your appropriately-encoded VHS movie tapes and TV broadcasts.
There's a new permutation of Dolby Pro Logic out now known, appropriately-enough, as Dolby Pro Logic II, or DPL II. This new mode lets you get a quasi-surround effect, even with sources such as stereo VHS tapes and CD's. If you frequently view VHS tapes in your home theater, DPL II would be a worthwhile feature for your system. At the moment, the cheapest receivers in which you'll find DPL II are models such as Onkyo's TX-DS494 and Kenwood's VR-507, both of which sell for about $300. However, there are many receivers which sell for twice as much as these and only have the original version of DPL. It looks like this new mode is destined to migrate down to just about all the A/V receivers on the market but, for now, unfortunately, you don't find it on the real rock-bottom-priced models like the SA-DX950.
Lies, Darn Lies, and Power-Amp Specs
The power output of this receiver is rated as 100 watts to the five channels (front left, center, front right, rear left, and rear right), though Technics only claims this at 1 kHz and with 0.9% THD. Technics, by the way, is not alone among receiver manufacturers in rating their 5-channel surround-sound output at just the 1 kHz level rather than at a given bandwidth (such as 20Hz to 20kHz). For stereo output, the claimed power stats are somewhat better: 100 watts-per-channel from 40Hz to 20kHz, again at 0.9% THD. The reason the power ratings are so unimpressive (and frequently misleading) in these inexpensive surround-sound receivers is that many of them use a single power-amp transistor for more than one output channel. Thus, it is desirable to have a receiver which, unlike the SA-DX950, uses discrete amplifiers (transistors) for all the surround-sound outputs.
Despite the cost-cutting power-amp design employed in the SA-DX950, the sound quality is okay. In fact, with the inexpensive speakers most people will use with a receiver like this, the power level and audio accuracy should be just fine, especially if you'll mainly use the receiver for listening to DVD soundtracks and pop music and you employ a self-powered subwoofer to handle the deep bass. In addition to the surround-sound modes (Dolby Pro Logic, DD, and DTS) there are a number of digital-signal processing, or DSP, modes. The DSP modes try to use digital processing to recreate the audio ambiance of various listening environments such as a jazz club or a concert hall. If you don't expect too much from the DSP modes, you'll probably be pleasantly un-disappointed.
For use with a DVD-Audio player, the receiver has a set of preamp-level inputs (front right, center, front left, rear right, rear left, sub). Technics also claims that the SA-DX950's S/N ratio of "more than 100 dB" and bandwidth of "up to 70 kHz" makes the receiver suitable for reproducing the potentially-wide bandwidth and low-noise output of a DVD-Audio player. You could use the same inputs for connection to the output of a SACD player or any other device putting out appropriate line-level six-channel audio, such as a DVD-Video player with its own DD or DTS decoder.
Not a Product for the Technologically Faint of Heart
One thing you're not likely to get for $150 is a great deal of user friendliness. For confirmation of this phenomenon, see my esteemed Epinions colleague Ahab1973's review of the Aiwa AV-D57 A/V receiver. The SA-DX950 certainly bears out this truism. Once you get past the helpful rotary input selector switch (just like on old Technics receivers!) and the manual bass/treble/balance click switches, things get intricate and tricky. There are no on-screen (for use in conjunction with a TV) menus here. In fact, there isn't even a "menu" button. You cycle through various choices, which are spelled out on the LCD display, by alternately pressing the A + B speaker switches. Input choices are controlled by a small knob to the right of the volume control (which is smack dab in the middle of the upper level of the front plate). While all this is spelled out in the owners manual, it takes persistence to hack your way through the dense verbal foliage and make your way out of the dark jungle of SA-DX950 operation. This receiver would not make an ideal gift for your uncle who has trouble programming his answering machine.
Inputs and Outputs
The SA-DX950 does include one luxury often left off low-priced receivers: a phono (L/R) input. It's even got the accompanying ground screw, to keep you grounded. Maybe this is a carry-over from the old days of Technics' receiver manufacturing.
For the FM antenna input, there is a pair of spring clips. A screw-on F-type connector is preferable, but you can simply strip your coaxial cable, twisting the outer braid into one thin wire to go into one spring-clip holder while you run the center wire into the other spring-clip holder. If your cable company provides an FM radio feed (be persistent in trying to ascertain this, as many customer service reps won't even be aware of it), you can use this same method, running a coaxial cable from a splitter on the coax going into your TV and then attaching the receiver end of the cable as described above. If you have a flat-wire antenna, you can just strip the wire and plug the bare ends into the clips. Likewise, there are a pair of spring-clips to take an AM antenna.
To take the input from your DVD or CD player, the SA-DX950 has three digital-audio inputs: two optical TOSLINK and a single coaxial. It's nice that, out of three digital inputs, they went for two of them being optical. There are a rather high number of models of electronics gear, such as some DVD players and just about all satellite receivers, which only have optical TOSLINK output.
Other connections, all L/R phono plugs unless otherwise mentioned are: CD, tape record in/out, tape play in/out, VCR audio record in/out, VCR audio play in/out, DVD, and TV. As mentioned above, there are a set of DVD-Audio-ready six-channel phono-jack inputs (front right, center, front left, rear right, rear left, subwoofer). To allow video switching through the receiver, there are composite-video phono jacks for TV in/out and VCR in/out. There's a single input labeled DVD. It would have been nice if Technics had included S-Video ins and outs, but you just don't find that anywhere at this price level. Besides, you'll assure better image quality by running your VCR and DVD video straight into your TV (which will hopefully at least have S-Video input) and using the TV's remote to select between the two video sources (assuming your TV has more than one video input, that is).
For the front left/right "A" speakers there are heavy-duty binding-post connections. All the other speaker connections (front left/right "B," center, surround left/right) are handled through spring-clips. Technically, spring-clips are not as good as the heavier types of speaker connections, but at the power levels involved in a speaker connection the spring-clips don't create a significant level of resistance. Note that Paradigm, a highly reputable speaker maker, has used spring clips on their well-regarded Atom speakers up until the last couple of model years.
Rounding out the rear-panel connections, there's a single switched A/C outlet. This will allow you, for example, to have a DVD player turned on and off, or at least into standby mode, as you power up and power down the receiver. In fact, with many DVD players and other newer pieces of video gear, you can only really turn them off by cutting the power. As long as these units are plugged into a live power source, they'll stay in standby mode, though they only burn about one watt of juice in this mode.
Remote
The remote is medium-sized and will control other gear made by Technics and by Technics' parent company Panasonic. As this unit has a large number of tiny, closely-spaced buttons, you might want to consider replacing it with a decent universal learning remote.
Provenance
The SA-DX950 is manufactured in Malaysia.
Caveat Emptor
As always, I recommend that you avoid buying an extended warranty with the SA-DX950. If you do decide to get an extended warranty, a.k.a. a service plan, keep in mind that these are products, just like any other products, and you should shop around and carefully read the fine print and decide if a particular plan makes sense for you. Be cognizant of the manufacturer's warranty on the receiver and remember that many credit card companies will double the length of the warranty period. You don't have to buy the service plan from the store where you buy the receiver. Some retailers, such as J&R Music World, have much more competitive prices on service plans than you'd get at a so-called superstore.
As for the cables you use to connect the SA-DX950 to speakers and other gear, politely demur when a salesperson tries to convince you that you need high-priced premium cables for your new receiver. Instead, buy the cheapest product you can find from a reputable manufacturer such as Radio Shack, Recoton, or RCA, making sure, of course, that you buy the appropriate type of cable with the proper plugs at each end. For speaker wire, you don't need a fancy brand, but you do need the proper gauge. You will find 16-gauge wire fine for short speaker runs (ten feet or less) and for longer runs it's best to go with 14-gauge wire. If you'll be using long speaker-wire runs, you might consider buying a spool of speaker wire from Home Depot.
As well as being careful about what you buy, it's crucial to be careful about where you buy it. Unfortunately, I must report that New York City is a hotbed of quick-buck-artist Web merchants who pull all sorts of scams, such as vastly inflating shipping charges (these shady operators do not, of course, include the above-mentioned J&R Music World and B&H Photo/Video). You can find ratings of online merchants here at Epinions and at other Internet sources.
Conclusion
The SA-DX950 succeeds in fulfilling its mission in life. It will provide you with a decent, basic A/V receiver, ready for both music listening and playing soundtracks over your surround-sound speaker system. It does all this at a quite reasonable price, especially when you factor in the rebate. The phono input, two optical digital-audio inputs, and manual input-selector knob are all nice features. On the other hand, the owners manual is pretty stripped down and you'll have to approach initial operation with organization and diligence, expecting a somewhat-steep learning curve.
By the way, Consumer Reports gave a "best buy" rating to this receiver. But this doesn't mean it's the steal of the young century. Consumer Reports tends to chalk up all the features (Dolby Digital, DD, DTS, DVD-Audio inputs, etc.), divide this number by the price, and come up with a rational, scientific value rating. The highest-value receiver wins. Unfortunately, Consumer's Union seems not to have mastered the art of precisely quantifying things like audio response and ease of use. Thus, you should take their ratings with a small-to-medium-sized grain of salt, especially with audio products like speakers which require the assessment of less-tangible qualities.
Final Thought
Overall, things weren't so bad in the old low-tech days when, to, let's say, switch from having a receiver in the tuner mode to the tape deck input you just turned a rotary switch a couple of clicks. In all fairness, the complexity of modern A/V receivers would make things somewhat unwieldy if everything was still controlled by manual click switches. Plus, digitally-controlled functions, operated via an LCD screen and controlled by a couple of buttons, are much cheaper than having actual physical switches for all the functions. You certainly can't accuse Technics of not passing the savings along to the customer. Take care, and take care of each other.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 200/150
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