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.
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.
What's the make and model number?
