Pioneer SC-1523-K 9.2-Channel Network A/V Receiver

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Price: $1,299.00    

Product Feature

• THX Select2 Plus Certified
• Dolby TrueHD/Dolby Pro Logic IIz/Dolby Digital Plus
• HDMI 9 in/3 out
• 3D Ready (Blu-ray Disc, Broadcast and Games)
• Ultra HD (4K) Upscaling and Pass-Through

Product Description

9.2-Channel AV Receiver Featuring Class D3 Amplifier, THX Select2 Plus Certification, 4K Ultra HD Upscaling/Pass-Through, HTC Connect Certification, and SABRE32 DAC.

Pioneer SC-1523-K 9.2-Channel Network A/V Receiver Review

I give this a/v receiver 4.5 out of 5 stars. I dinged it half a star because bluetooth support is an additonal plugin adapter and wifi is also another plugin adapter. At this price point, I just don't see why these weren't built in, as nearly every other network device on the market today has built in bluetooth and wifi support.

That being said, this receiver has absolutely everything else you could ask for. For my setup, I have a cable box, a chromecast and a computer plugged into 3 of the hdmi ports. I have no analog devices connected nor any blu-ray/dvd/cd players. I am a strictly digital household and don't keep any optical media around. With the chromecast plugged into an hdmi port it does a nice job of filling in any network play options that this doesn't support natively. For instance, I don't use bluetooth to play from my phone, but instead I use chromecast to play music from phone, so it makes the lack of built in bluetooth less of an issue. Music and movies played thru chromecast are flawless. The only problem I ran into with setup is that my computer is connected thru a dvi to hdmi cable and I ran a seperate spdif out for audio, but I can't get htis to recognize the audio. I had it working on my old system, so I'm not sure exactly what the problem is. When I ran the setup, I told it spdif for this connection's audio and it appears to be setup that way.

Which brings me to another issue - complicated setups practically require you to use the included a/v nagigator software - I couldn't see how to manually set an input up for hdmi video in with spdif audio in But the software is really easy to use and walks you thru all the connections and prompts you to label each connection, which is super. The only problem I've found with this is that is the receiver loses power, it loses the input settings and labels. Hopefully they can fix this with a firmware update. The manual is also easily accessed thru the a/v navigator software if you need to go back and look something up - which you will, and brings me to the third con...

Because of the numerous input/output options, this receiver can be very complicated and time consuming in getting everything setup, but once it is setup, it is well worth the effort. Also, the remote takes awhile to get used to because it has a crazy amount of buttons on it. After nearly a week, I feel like I am finally getting oriented with the remote and the way the a/v receiver works. Other simpler receivers only required a day to get oriented with.

Now onto the pros - and there are many. The sound from this receiver is excellent - very crisp and clear even at high volumes. Playing the soundtrack from the nutcracker ballet sounded as tho I was in the theater with a full orchestra. I did have to buy a new subwoofer to go with this, as my old one was a passive subwoofer, so I have it matched with a polk audio psw110 (I know this is considered a budget subwoofer, and I may end up upgrading it down the road but for now it serves my purposes perfectly) with my existing Sony 5 channel speaker setup . Using the mcacc auto calibration, it adjusted all speakers perfectly for surround sound. I have tried the auto calibrate with my older sony receiver before and found myself having to go in afterwards and tweak the settings some, while this was perfect from the initial setup. Movies played with full surround sound feel like being in a movie theater.

I consider this receivers biggest selling point to be the full network cable play options - I love that fact that on my windows laptop, I can right click an album and select play to and then choose this receiver and it will immediately start playing on the receiver. You can also use the push player to push music from your phone or tablet to the receiver, which is also super convenient. Pair it with a chromecast, and you can also use chromecast to stream your music to it. And it is DLNA compliant so it can also find and play music from your dlna servers. All of these options work flawlessly - I wish it could do the same with video. It also has pandora, which I love - but if you want to set up a pandora account or enter your login info, I can tell you don't even try to do it with the remote (and the app for some reason won't let you do it there). Instead enter your receivers IP address into a browser window and use its web page setup to enter you info - very fast and very easy. Internet radio seems like a neat idea, but there are so many stations, it's hard to find one you like, and for some reason when I tried playing internet radio, after about 60secs on one station it would switch to the next station - not sure why. This isn't a big deal, because with Pandora support, I don't see myself bothering with internet radio, or even hooking up the included am/fm antennae. If you do want a local station, you can usually find their web stream and you can stream it via chromecast. At least that's what I'll be doing.

One of the cons of this a/v receiver - the remote - is easily remedied by using Pioneer's iControlav2013 app that can be find in marketplace for ios or android. I use this app on my android phone to control the receiver 99% of the time - basically only using the remote to quickly turn up or down the volume. The app is a must have for changing inputs, finding internet radio staions, choosing your pandora stream, setting equalizer and sound field settings and especially for multi zone playback. I have my outdoor speakers hooked up to zone 2 via the speaker connection, and using the app, it is super simple to switch to zone 2 and have it play pandora or digital music outside on my patio. And now my outdoor Bose speakers sound about 100x better when hooked up thru this receiver - actually everything sounds quite a bit better thru this receiver than thru my older Sony receiver. This receiver's muti-zone audio works so well, that I may hook up another set of speakers in another room so that I can play audio to 3 different rooms. I really love that I can have the tv video and sound in the main zone and then send seperate audio outside for music outdoors.

All in all, sound is exactly what you would expect from an a/v receiver in this price range, as well as the number of inputs and outputs that it supports. The network play options are what I think set it above the rest. The fact that is 4k ready means that it should last for long time before needing to be upgraded.

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