Recent content by eddieZEN

Panasonic sa-xr55 is about $250 shipped from jr.com and has all the features you listed. It's a digital switching receiver so totally different animal than the usual boat-anchor analogs...only downside is that you need to be a little careful with your speaker selection. Many cheap speakers are...

LOL I have to agree with Mylan..."Zensonic" just screams "white van!"

That 45x6 HK135 is probably about equivalent in REAL POWER to most mass-market receivers claiming "100 wpc" --- so no, I would not worry about not enough power esp. with your low-level needs. What % music to HT is your usage?

max budget, room size, % HT/gaming/TV to music use? I agree with the other posters on the mostly superfluous and gimmicky nature of "THX"

1. Yes. Most Dolby Digital receivers are backwards compatible to older formats. 2. Yes you can go without a sub (though once you've heard a decent sub you probably will not want to) and yes a receiver should be compatible with most speakers. The exception being say 4 ohm speakers on a...

ok, I'll agree that you ARE an optomist. : ) I just have a hard time believing that the Audioholics staff could be such hard-core groupies of Denon and Yamaha, esp. if they have been exposed to high end HT separates. But we can agree to disagree of course. I appreciate the civil and...

All true. On the other hand, such a blatant product placement or spam-like practice is in my mind far more harmless PRECISELY because those pages are so little-read. In contrast, I would bet that the "Recommended Systems" page is probably among the most popular, if not THE most popular, page on...

You have a point there. I should not stoop to their level. If you read their postings on the Ascend thread you would understand what I'm talking about. Ugh!

I do not question Audioholics' reviews based on the responses of their staff. Those responses, which have been almost uniformly obnoxious and nonsensical, came after a few people began raising questions about their practices, before I even posted the number-crunching.

Ditto!

Brad/Judy, I appreciate your informative post, esp. the industry-insider angle. However, I find that the numbers I came up with during my count are still difficult to shrug off. I mean, 16 out of 24 articles/reviews about AVRs are on the same 2 manufacturers both of whom just HAPPEN to be...

You seem to have also missed the last two paragraphs of my conclusion in that analysis piece: "...I feel that for the most part Audioholics does have its redeeming features and hold no personal ill will towards its staff. My goal in this discussion is to simply provide a reality check for...

Terry, You have some of the picture but not all, IMHO. You're missing a 3rd point: a suspicious large proportion of products RECOMMENDED by Audioholics come from advertisers...75% of the Electronics, Speakers/Subs, and Cables/Interconnects in the "6 Recommended HT Systems" come from their...

yeah, local shops know full well that Internet-direct brands are a lethal threat to their bread and butter. The scaremongering you received is fairly typical, I'm afraid. Personally I'd put more credence in conclusions drawn from lengthy research and interaction on a wide number of forums...

Well, it's obvious that your reading skills leave a little to be desired. I'll excuse that because as you have stated elsewhere, you are an awfully busy person running such a huge and vital website as Audioholics. Here, let me restate some of my points in the analysis you quoted: 1. I said...