Rich Wenzel
Supporting Actor
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2002
- Messages
- 556
Shortly after Christmas, my boss, errr girlfriend, said she would like some stereo equipment for her dorm room (she is in med school, btw, i hate baltimore, passionately, why couldnt she go to a nyc school?). We were still buying her Christmas gifts (basically I took her shopping for Christmas) and I said okay.
After of lot of thinking, and some actual listening, I decided that to meet her requirements of needing a tuner and a cd player and everything must be brand new, that the only "high end" brand that had a stereo tuner that I was willing to pay for was NAD, and that was the C740 and C730...Well online, you can get the C740 for $400ish...And I thought to myself, for that kind of money, I could buy her a decent AV receiver. I figure next year she will be moving into an apartment and I will probably be told to buy her a TV (hello samsung) and a dvd player (hello panasonic, maybe give her my denon 1600 so i can get a universal, yeah, smart thinking) and the receiver will have a decent shot of being used in a hometheater role.
So I decided to nuke the NAD C740 and look at receivers in the $400 to $600 range.
So I went to a few stores, did some research, and for what she needs, I have decided that there is one standout choice. And god, this choice is a horrible thing to bear, because this may be the ugliest receiver on the face of the earth. This is something that looks up to the outlaw 1050, and says damn you are ugly, but i wish, oh sweet jesus i wish i was only as ugly as you. Thats right, I'm getting her the H&K AVR 520. I mean seen roadkill with fewer clashing colors and more refined than the H&K.
I looked at the NAD T761, the AVR 525 (can get that shipped from 6ave.com for little over $600 now, but i dont like the fan, i hate fans), and a few others from marantz, yamaha, outlaw and others (in case you are wondering, i ruled out onkyo, denon, kenwood, panasonic, pioneer, jvc, and sony, i just don't like those brands).
Why the AVR 520 you ask? well, it is the most flexible inputs of these (except for the H&K 525, but it even has some flexibility benefits compared to the 525) . Probably, outside of the NAD, the best amp section, and given that my boss, err girlfriend, likes classical music and unbeknownest to her she has a decent collection of hdcd encoded cd's and the H&K's were the only receivers I saw that had that decoding in this price range. Also, they have logic 7. The NAD did not have assignable digital ins and my friend has it and I don't like the fan. It also had some quality control issues and no DPL2. In the end, I didn't care for the amp sections in the Marantz. And for the money I didn't think the Outlaw could compete with 520, no dpl2, only a few digital ins, no hdcd, etc.
So now, I am about to buy the little lady (she is little actually, 5'1) an AVR 520 and pair of PSB Image 3LR's for her dorm room, and when she is ready to move to her apartment in 9 months or so, i will get her some image 5T's or 6T's for fronts, a 9c and subsonic 6 all fairly cheaply. She will inherit my marantz 4000OSE CD carousel to go with her stuff (btw, i borrowed my friends integra carousel, bought that marantz, bought the rotel rcc 955, and borrowed a friends older kenwood cd caurosel, and DBT'd all of these cd players through my system and we (two friends and I) were not able to discern the difference between any of these cd players, i am not saying that there are no differences, but given my system and the somewhat poor room acoustics which I can't do anything about, buying those two "highend" cd players offered no additional utility, but i wanted to test them anyway, so i guess i got the benefit of knowledge, for whatever that is worth, oh yeah, about negative $900 on two expense cd players).
So here I am about to give her this decent stereo (for now) system, but god, that thing is ugly and the psb's are not that nice to look at either.
Funny thing is, I asked her to look at the H&K just to see if she complained about how it looked. When I asked her, she said, they all look the same. So I shouwed her a TGIII (which I consider to be gorgeous), a silver faced Rotel 1055, she has seen my black faced Rotel 1055, and that H&K and she just said, they all look like boxes with lights, none looks better than the other. Had to just stare at her for that. To say that there is no aesthetic difference between the TGIII and the H&K is rather disturbing to me. Made me realize, what the hell does she think of my looks? Look, there is a bear, does that look different than me? I cringe at the thought of her answer. "well, if the bear was fat and was prematurely balding, you could be twins" I expect to be her answer....
Btw, feel free to comment on the system. I wanted to keep it under $1000, and nothing is absolutely set in stone, and I can do this for $850 or so, all costs included (well, not the cost of the marantz, but thats a sunk cost anyway)
Thanks,
Rich
After of lot of thinking, and some actual listening, I decided that to meet her requirements of needing a tuner and a cd player and everything must be brand new, that the only "high end" brand that had a stereo tuner that I was willing to pay for was NAD, and that was the C740 and C730...Well online, you can get the C740 for $400ish...And I thought to myself, for that kind of money, I could buy her a decent AV receiver. I figure next year she will be moving into an apartment and I will probably be told to buy her a TV (hello samsung) and a dvd player (hello panasonic, maybe give her my denon 1600 so i can get a universal, yeah, smart thinking) and the receiver will have a decent shot of being used in a hometheater role.
So I decided to nuke the NAD C740 and look at receivers in the $400 to $600 range.
So I went to a few stores, did some research, and for what she needs, I have decided that there is one standout choice. And god, this choice is a horrible thing to bear, because this may be the ugliest receiver on the face of the earth. This is something that looks up to the outlaw 1050, and says damn you are ugly, but i wish, oh sweet jesus i wish i was only as ugly as you. Thats right, I'm getting her the H&K AVR 520. I mean seen roadkill with fewer clashing colors and more refined than the H&K.
I looked at the NAD T761, the AVR 525 (can get that shipped from 6ave.com for little over $600 now, but i dont like the fan, i hate fans), and a few others from marantz, yamaha, outlaw and others (in case you are wondering, i ruled out onkyo, denon, kenwood, panasonic, pioneer, jvc, and sony, i just don't like those brands).
Why the AVR 520 you ask? well, it is the most flexible inputs of these (except for the H&K 525, but it even has some flexibility benefits compared to the 525) . Probably, outside of the NAD, the best amp section, and given that my boss, err girlfriend, likes classical music and unbeknownest to her she has a decent collection of hdcd encoded cd's and the H&K's were the only receivers I saw that had that decoding in this price range. Also, they have logic 7. The NAD did not have assignable digital ins and my friend has it and I don't like the fan. It also had some quality control issues and no DPL2. In the end, I didn't care for the amp sections in the Marantz. And for the money I didn't think the Outlaw could compete with 520, no dpl2, only a few digital ins, no hdcd, etc.
So now, I am about to buy the little lady (she is little actually, 5'1) an AVR 520 and pair of PSB Image 3LR's for her dorm room, and when she is ready to move to her apartment in 9 months or so, i will get her some image 5T's or 6T's for fronts, a 9c and subsonic 6 all fairly cheaply. She will inherit my marantz 4000OSE CD carousel to go with her stuff (btw, i borrowed my friends integra carousel, bought that marantz, bought the rotel rcc 955, and borrowed a friends older kenwood cd caurosel, and DBT'd all of these cd players through my system and we (two friends and I) were not able to discern the difference between any of these cd players, i am not saying that there are no differences, but given my system and the somewhat poor room acoustics which I can't do anything about, buying those two "highend" cd players offered no additional utility, but i wanted to test them anyway, so i guess i got the benefit of knowledge, for whatever that is worth, oh yeah, about negative $900 on two expense cd players).
So here I am about to give her this decent stereo (for now) system, but god, that thing is ugly and the psb's are not that nice to look at either.
Funny thing is, I asked her to look at the H&K just to see if she complained about how it looked. When I asked her, she said, they all look the same. So I shouwed her a TGIII (which I consider to be gorgeous), a silver faced Rotel 1055, she has seen my black faced Rotel 1055, and that H&K and she just said, they all look like boxes with lights, none looks better than the other. Had to just stare at her for that. To say that there is no aesthetic difference between the TGIII and the H&K is rather disturbing to me. Made me realize, what the hell does she think of my looks? Look, there is a bear, does that look different than me? I cringe at the thought of her answer. "well, if the bear was fat and was prematurely balding, you could be twins" I expect to be her answer....
Btw, feel free to comment on the system. I wanted to keep it under $1000, and nothing is absolutely set in stone, and I can do this for $850 or so, all costs included (well, not the cost of the marantz, but thats a sunk cost anyway)
Thanks,
Rich
