How do you feel about Sovereign? (1 Viewer)

[Kevin_Kr]

Our store is just going to start carrying their lines and I was just wondering your feedback. They seem pricey compared to Denon without having more than 5 channels of Amplification in their receiver lines. So what do you guys think?

 

[Kevin C Brown]

You asked:
I think they are ugly.
This is *my* opinion, but if I was in the market for an HT receiver, Denon would be at the top of my list followed by Yamaha, Onkyo, and Pioneer in no particular order.
And, I can only back up that answer with the "touchy feeliness" I have gathered over the years reading reviews of all the above (and then some) from the major (and some minor) HT mags, audioreview.com Secrets, ecoustics, etc.

 

[Ted Lee]

i really like the concept behind the sovereign line, but i'm very weary of the execution...at least at this point in time. i think it's too early to really consider this a defacto standard.

the idea of being able to integrate all these different technologies into one system seems really appealing. to integrate and catalog your library is really neat. to control everything via one hub is a great idea. it's definitely the first step towards this type of ht.

my concern is the performance of the unit. i'm always concerned about components that have too many bells & whistles. i just don't feel they'll perform as well - i don't know if that's justifiable, but that's how i feel. i much prefer a "clean" receiver.

anyway, i know eventually things are going to go this way and i must admit that kenwood seems to have done a good job, but i seriously doubt i would buy this receiver.

 

[Alex Prosak]

I briefly checked them out at my B&M. The DVD players are nice in that they have the Sage chipset. I didn't particularly care for the receiver, neither did the salespeople. Every one of them complained that the remote was very difficult to learn. Only one guy in the store knew how to use it and he spent 8 hours learning how to do it.

 

[TylerN]

I have the Kenwood vr-4700. It is the last years model Sovereign 5700. It's got some nice features like universal video out, which upconverts anything to component video or s-video. I'm not sure if the video switching bandwidth is any good. It has a hefty power supply, this thing is built like a tank. It was pretty heavy. I think it looks quite nice, mine is silver and it came with black wooden side panels that were polished to a high gloss, some kind of fancy wood i hear. it looked pretty sweet. i had to take them off anyway cause it wouldn't fit into my rack. I find the sound quality very good, great for music and movies. It has some nice bass management, no adjustable crossover that i know of but it does have a sub re-mixer so that you can run the speakers in large AND get the bass through the sub. The remote SUCKS for regular usage. Its just too big and clumsy and the touchscreen is hard to see. the backlight is good though. I bring it out at parties so that people can look through the list of cd and song titles in my 200 disc kenwood (cd-425m). The songs get downloaded into the remote, pretty cool. What i did though is buy the same remote that comes with the kenwood vr-509/510. It works much the same (rf, 2-way) it downloads the song titles too. Its a hell of alot easier than using the huge touch screen one.

The way that the kenwood components tie together is nice, especially the 2 way remote with the cd jukeboxes. The remote can actually be wall mounted with a remote wire (if the RF doesn't work good enough) so that you can centrally control your multi-room environment.

I only bought this receiver because i got a great deal on it and it sounded great when i auditioned it. I compared it to a 2801 and a higher up technics, the kenwood blew them away. But the price on the kenwood was marked down about 55% off.

I would say if you can find a good deal on one go for it.