I had that very Sony amp with a home cinema system insider and sold it to a colleague. I ran it with Tannoy Mercury m3’s. It used to glow blue with multichannel bar, and had a flip down front panel. Very good for multi channel processing. I remember buying it at the first richer Sounds on London Bridge and halling back over the bridge and onto tube. I think it was about £500 in 2002.
Frankly I never found it that good for 2 channel, used it with some better tannoys I bought, before swapping to a basic Cyrus amp (6 dac) with less power and it was night and day to the Sony for the better. Also with later onkyo home cinema amps I had, same story as Sony.
taught me that a decent dedicated audiophile amp performing well, even with less power, can outshine compromised av receivers with too much in the circuit, too many compromises to just do one thing well (sound quality) with no bells and whistles and blue lights etc.
id be looking at a good amp from an audiophile make if buying used, which could probably be had for similar money. An old Rega, cyrus, arcam etc. I’d be confident it would outshine this Sony av receiver.
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