New Sony HD AV receivers - the definitive guide!

[Gerrardasnails]

kingnothing83:
The 2400es review arrives!! (WHF homepage)

Very impressive, I may be sold. Especially as this seems to be available for £400 rather than £500

Hmm i wonder how well it will play stereo, as my stero amp is a bit long in the tooth anyway do you think my sqeezebox duet plugged into this 2400es amp via my Beresford Dac will sound noticibly worse than plugged into my Arcam Alpha 8 via the Dac?

Cheers!

Simon

To be honest the review was pretty much as expected. My 3400es arrived this morning. I won't be connected her up until Friday when a few other things arrive. The Yamaha nearly sold me as I found it online for £500ish (can't remember the exact price). However, my first receiver was a Sony and it is so easy to work and I pretty much no what I'm getting. The 3400 was £700 so I'm expecting it to be pretty darn good! And now with HD codecs and enought hdmi for the future, I won't be changing for a while yet.

 

[kingnothing83]

Excellent im sure you'll be happy with it. Be interested to hear your feedback when you get it up and running!

I guess id need one of the reviewers to tell me this but it really would be useful if i thought its stereo performance via sqeezebox + DAC will be reasonably close to the performance of my arcam alpha 8 set up the same way. That way i could keep the arcam in the other room and get a £500 or so stereo amp to add to the mix next year

cheers

 

[Anonymous]

yeah the 2400es review was as expected, so we can assume the yamaha will be the award winner, but thats based on the 500 pound price tag of the sony, if you can pick up the sony for 400pounds it even better than their review in theory!

im gonna get on to stone audio today and purchase that bad boy!

 

[Gerrardasnails]

kingnothing83:
Excellent im sure you'll be happy with it. Be interested to hear your feedback when you get it up and running!

I guess id need one of the reviewers to tell me this but it really would be useful if i thought its stereo performance via sqeezebox + DAC will be reasonably close to the performance of my arcam alpha 8 set up the same way. That way i could keep the arcam in the other room and get a £500 or so stereo amp to add to the mix next year

cheers

I don't know much about the Alpha 8 other than that it's getting on a bit. I can't imagine there being much in it. I will let you know what I think of the 3400es when I play on Friday!! Assuming my BD player arrives as planned.

 

[kingnothing83]

great - if you dont mind, maybe you could plug your cd player straight into the 3400 and do a test compared to your 840a and see how it compares. Obviously your 840a will be far better but may give you some interesting comparison of how the 3400 does as a hifi amp. it would be great if i could just use the 2400 as my hifi amp at least for 6 months

 

[Gerrardasnails]

kingnothing83:great - if you dont mind, maybe you could plug your cd player straight into the 3400 and do a test compared to your 840a and see how it compares. Obviously your 840a will be far better but may give you some interesting comparison of how the 3400 does as a hifi amp. it would be great if i could just use the 2400 as my hifi amp at least for 6 months

I will try that but I wouldn't expect much - the 840A is a joy. By the way, I am going to be using my new BD player (Sony BDPS550) as transport and the new DacMagic from CA. Again, I don't think it will match my old Arcam that's in my sig but it will be better all round - I can link the DM to Sky for radio and an Aiport Express for PC music. Should be fun. I just played an album using my second dvd player and it sounded so much worse than my Arcam it shocked me!

 

[Gort1951]

The 3400 is £575.00+next day £5.95 del. at Stone Audio, better than paying £699 and considering the missing IR and trigger in/outputs.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Gort1951:The 3400 is £575.00+next day £5.95 del. at Stone Audio, better than paying £699 and considering the missing IR and trigger in/outputs.

I saw that earlier - yes I am a bit gutted. The only silver lining was I could pay part paypal with the shop I bought from and I've accrued a bit on ebay. Still, I have paid over the odds. One word of note, I bought a BD player from Stone Audio last week with the next day delivery. It hasn't been sent yet. Next day means when they have it it gets sent the next day! I could wait for the BD player but wanted the receiver soon as.

 

[Gort1951]

HiFI Confidential tend to add £50 or more to their prices.

I don't even know where RRP comes from, the 2400 has a rrp of £499 and the 3400 of £699 but no one sells it at that price or it never has been at that price.

You get the same situation with furniture shops. On Watch Dog they went into shops to see if they could get proof that a 3-peice suite was ever sold at the rrp but they couldn't find nothing. So when the adverts are telling you 50% off they are lying.

 

[Anonymous]

Hello I have just read your review on the on the Sony STR-DA2400ES and you mentioned a firmware update regarding the playback 5.1 on sky HD. I have an STR-DG820 and I have the same issue I was wondering were can obtain the firmware update for my STR-DG820 as I can't find it on any Sony Website.

Thanks Si22

 

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm hoping someone here can help me out. I'm looking at buying my first receiver and at the moment the 3400ES is at the top of my list. However Im having a very hard time confirming a few things about it.

I read a post on a forum somewhere recently from a 2400ES user that it downscales all 192Khz input as it can only output 96Khz. It even downscales the audio before sending to preouts. Now I know it can handle all the new sound formats but is it true that it just downscales them ? Also does the 3400ES have the same issue ? On the American Sony website it lists the 3400ES as supporting 192 Frequency, but I'd really like to confirm the 3400ES doesn't downscale the latest audio formats. I've emailed Sony and got no response. Something must justify the price difference between the 2400 and the 3400 ( not just the GUI ) ....

Anyhelp would be appreciated as Im pretty new to all this.

 

[Gort1951]

I wouldn't bother with the 3400 as it has been stripped down so much from the USA version that it doesn't justify the extra £200 asking price.

The only difference is the GUI for the UK.

The USA gets zone 2 through speaker terminals and non-amplified output through RCA/phono.
Also trigger output, remote input and serial input.

If you want these features you have to buy the 5400 which also has the av streaming over cat cable taken out as well.

 

[Andrew Everard]

But then again the STR-DAx400ES models we get here have been tuned for better audio performance...

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Gort1951:
I wouldn't bother with the 3400 as it has been stripped down so much from the USA version that it doesn't justify the extra £200 asking price.

The only difference is the GUI for the UK.

The USA gets zone 2 through speaker terminals and non-amplified output through RCA/phono.
Also trigger output, remote input and serial input.

If you want these features you have to buy the 5400 which also has the av streaming over cat cable taken out as well.

Gort, seriously, how do you know that the GUI is the only difference? Have you lifted up the lids and checked all the components? That's like saying that the only difference between the BDPS350 and S550 is that the one is 1cm shorter and cannot decode HD Master Audio!! When in reality, Claire has said today that the bigger one is much better with cds. That wasn't written on the spec or shown on the back of the box!!

 

[Gort1951]

Speaking to owners yes.

You can soon dig up the specs. I have already posted rear pictures of the UK and USA models.

In the UK we get a blank plate where the IR and trigger in/outs are. Also missing are the zone2 outputs. Sony seem to think that the UK doesn't have more than one room in their house.

I can't believe that the UK version is gonna sound better than the USA version or secondly how much better will the 3400 sound better than the 2400.

If you put the 3400 up against the Onkyo 706 which has zone 2 and trigger/ir then ugly Onkyo is gonna win. Sony always take out important features by the time they get to the UK, no other brand seems to. If you compare for example the Onk. 706 to the USA and UK version the only thing that is missing is the satellite radio which we aren't lucky enough to have in the UK although you do have to subscibe to it.

If we had the USA specs. of the 3400 then I would have bought one. I hate Treasure Island.

 

[professorhat]

Was that an unrelated book review at the end there?

 

[Andrew Everard]

professorhat:
Was that an unrelated book review at the end there?

Book review fine - it was the spec review, totally unrelated to anything to do with performance, that concerned me.

 

[Anonymous]

Andrew Everard:
professorhat:
Was that an unrelated book review at the end there?

Book review fine - it was the spec review, totally unrelated to anything to do with performance, that concerned me.

And we consumers measure performance how ?

I don't see a review of the performance differences between models anywhere on the internet.

I do see a spec that shows the guts ripped out of the 3400.

Based on the information available to us I have to agree that the 3400 looks like a fancy version of the 2400.

 

[Andrew Everard]

LordBrian:
I do see a spec that shows the guts ripped out of the 3400,

What a charming image, but the 'guts' are still very much there, it's just some of the ancillary stuff that's been removed. Most manufactirers make different versions of the same model for different markets.

 

[Gort1951]

I don't understand why Sony didn't give us the same 3400 model as the USA version. I can't really see the 3400 being a winner in terms of specs. The 2400 will no doubt be popular.

To get zone 2 with control and trigger it puts Sony out of the competition with Denon, Yamaha and onkyo for amps of the same price range.

To get Zone 2 on Sony you have to buy the expensive 5400.

 

[professorhat]

LordBrian:And we consumers measure performance how ?
I think that's what's termed as "an audition". Something sensible consumers do before they part with their cash. Rather than deciding on some information written on a piece of paper.

 

[Anonymous]

professorhat:LordBrian:And we consumers measure performance how ?I think that's what's termed as "an audition". Something sensible consumers do before they part with their cash. Rather than deciding on some information written on a piece of paper.

Yes ... but ...

Not everybody lives near or can get to a place where they can audition these amps. Where I live the good hifi shops I spoke to were not getting or would not get these Sony amps. I am sure there are some people that can test every model they are interested in but most of us rely on peer review and sites like this.

Now when I first looked at the 3400 it looked ideal, of course this was the US spec but I didn't expect to many changes. How disappointing to then find out that the "guts of the functionality" I want are not in the 3400 and Sony UK's amp division does not provide UK specs on their website.

 

[Gort1951]

Yeah, no specs. on the sony site. The 2400 and 3400 are the same as far as audio/amplification are concerned.

What annoys me is that all of the UK retailers who advertise the 3400 on their websites is that they are listing the USA 3400 specs. touting the zone 2, IR in and trigger out. Anyone buying this amp who has not done any research is gonna get a surprise and end up by returning it due to the above missing functionality and price difference thinking what am I paying £200 more for?

There is no UK zone 2 support on any sony amps unless you spend £1200+ on the 5400 which is a big leap in cost. It would have been better for sony to give us the 4300.

Bad sony, they know the score over here and now if you want to send sony an email you have to register.

I have noticed that the ugly Onkyo tx-sr706 is now available - I was thinking of biting the bullet and getting one however everytime I look on websites and blow the picture up it looks even more uglier than the last time I looked.

If only the Denon avr 3808 would come down in price instead of going up...

 

[Gort1951]

Hi Andrew.

"But then again the STR-DAx400ES models we get here have been tuned for better audio performance..."

What proof do we have of this, has anyone put a uk and usa model side by side and had a listen?

Enjoying your working horrible time in Japan? Ah, the long socks !!!!

 

[Anonymous]

Gort1951:
If only the Denon avr 3808 would come down in price instead of going up...

Well so disappointed with Sony's Amp Division (there PS3 div is fantastic) that I bought a Denon AVR-2309. Not exactly everything I wanted but have to say the sound is very good.