My new Pioneer Elite SC-05 review

I received mine Tuesday. I was able to easily peel off the front labels. As you know it is LARGE! I had planned & did cut the back out of my shelf to gain an extra 2" depth. It does get warm but so did my VSX D912. The SC 05 has a fan on the left side.
I replaced a Pioneer VSX D912 with no HDMI. I was very impressed with the MCACC setup, very much more detailed than my old AVR. I did need to change the Front speakers to small so I could have the Sub on for stereo too. I set the Xover at 80 -- Was forced to use 100Hz with my old AVR. 80 is much better since my Fronts can go to 70 according to the specs. I am quite impressed with the sound quality. I wasn't sure I would be able to tell the difference. THere is much more dynamic range & that surprised me. I didn't realize that was a possibility. From very quiet dialog or background sounds to thunderous explosions. I am also hearing stuff I don't THINK I heard before in the same movies. Ambient noises. One thing is I need to turn the volume higher than I expected. On my old AVR which went to 0 as loudest setting, I watched TV at -25 & movies at -15. For CDs in a CD player -30 or -35. With the SC-05 I need to go to -10 for TV & movies (DVD or BD) & -15 for CDs. I haver gone as loud as -7.5 for TV or movies. (It also goes by ½ dB increments.) It does go to +12 but, -7.5 is as loud as I have needed. My test was Incredible Hulk BD which had caused my old AVR to overload/shut down. No problems with this beast!
I don’t know if this is due to class D or ICE or the +12 scale but, I absolutely do not believe you can take two AVRS & set both to the same dB & claim they are equally loud as a sales person at Ultimate Electronics told me when I compared two AVRs. I’m going to play around with the stereo options more later. After the 1st day of use I reprogrammed my Harmony 890 remote so it works very easily now. I didn’t like scrolling through so many input choices to find the correct one for BD, TV, etc.

I love having the display tell me exactly what the audio is so changing TV stations I know which are stereo & which are Dolby 5.1. Also, I have noticed some DVDs & BDs have the default Audio less than the “best” I can see immediately what is selected w/o having to go into the BD menu if say, I want DTS vs, DD.

I do not like the fact that unlike my old Pioneer AVR, it will not remember speaker settings (A+B) for a specific input. I called Tech support & they said it does not. On my old AVR I had CD input always use A+B speakers & everything else just “A” speakers. Later I will see if I can make the Harmony remote force this since I got the speaker settings code from Pioneer. (I can program virtually any button press either as I turn on or turn off a device. Including volume)

Also you can have 5.1 & SPeaker B or 7.1 & no speaker B which stunned me. My much cheaper VSX D912 had 7.1 + speaker B terminals. I have no plans for 7.1 but for $1800.00 MSRP this is surprising. Have no use for zones but it has zone 2 & zone 3 as well. I guess you cannot wire speakers for Zone 2 or 3?? I thought different zones were so the same AVR can power completely different set ups in different rooms so they can play different things; movie in main room, TV in bed room & music in other BR? I didn’t even read that section of the manual.

Re: My new Pioneer Elite SC-05 review

I have an SC-05 too. I used the Zone 2 & 3 output to feed a UHF TV modulators. Along with the wireless remote extenders I can watch a movie in the shop.

I wasn't too happy about the upconversion from component (DVD) to HDMI. Lots of jaggies. I haven't figured out how to get the component output through to the TV. I was hoping to have just one HDMI line to the TV to make it simple for others in the house to operate.

Definitely has lots of power and very clean. Remote is goofy. I like the older Pioneer remotes that had groups of buttons for each component. Lots of buttons but easy to operate not having to remember to flip switches.

Erik

Re: My new Pioneer Elite SC-05 review

Out of the box, I was able to have the SD/480 sources fed with composite video feeds upconverted through HDMI, so I do only have 1 HDMI connection from my SC-05 to the TV. I was also able to pass the component video from my cable HDTV box through the SC-05 and send it through the HDMI cable feeding the TV.

I made sure all the different inputs (with the different input types) were used only once so the receiver would have sources with the same "name" but not connected with 2 different inputs (composite video, component video or HDMI), since that might confuse the receiver if you haven't fiddled with the re-assigning of inputs (which I haven't done yet).

Re: My new Pioneer Elite SC-05 review

I've never owned a receiver with a digital power amp, so the following is second-hand info.

Based on what others have said here and elsewhere, compared to traditonal class A/B amplifier designs, many digital amps don't like very low impedance loads, and when two pairs of speakers are connected in parallel (which is what better receivers do rather than in series) when A+B is chosen if all those speakers were rated at 6 ohms, then the amp would "see" a 3 ohm load for each channel. Ouch!

I bet it has phono jacks for additional amplifiers, amps that will then power speakers in those other zones. Pioneer sells the Elite A-35 integrated amp for $200 - respected in many stereo music circles BTW and not just because it includes a phono input - that looks like it can be used for that purpose: "Amp Mode provides seemless integration into existing A/V system" and a power amp that is specifically made for such a purpose: "2 Channel Power Amplifier for Multi-Room / EX Amplification".