Thoughts on Pioneer SC-57

[blargman]

Has anyone on this forum had the chance to listen to this with their Klipsch gear? I recently bought a pair of RF-7 II's with a Denon 2112. I'm considering getting something a bit more power and the SC-57 sounds like a fairly interesting solution. It has a high output per channel, so I'm thinking it would probably make it so that I don't need a separate for quite a while. I don't plan on going past 3.1 for the immediate future. I have a Rythmik FV15 on the way and will be getting an RC64-II when the budget allows.

[Quiet_Hollow]

As of now myself, not yet. Oddly enough, I'll actually be heading over to the local brick and mortar tomorrow for a listen. If I'm lucky, I can get them to let me audition one in-home.

[Quiet_Hollow]

Okay, just got back from the store. They didn't have the SC-57, only the SC-55. The 55 sports the same amplifier and is what I was interested in checking out anyways. The crux was that they had it plugged into a Mythos SSA5 sound bar, so it was boiled down to a near-field listening session. I doubt they had the MCACC configured. I made sure it was getting a digital source, HDMI in this instance, and dropped in some familiar stuff on CD. Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Dire Straights...Very good. Then I tried a couple tracks I knew weren't produced very well. Bjork "All is full of love" and Lenny Kravitz "Can't get you off my mind" Checking to see if it would BBQ the already nasty mids and treble of these two. No glaring issues there. Then I dropped in some Chemical Brothers "Another world" and Skrillex "With you, friends" to see how it could resolve the complex synth of these melodies. They came across as smooth as a dome tweeter will let them.

All in all a very pleasing sound. That's it sports an honest 20 dB of power gain is simply gravy. The receiver itself is huge. No point in being that large IMHO other than to support the half-billion interconnects on the rear panel I suppose. The one thing I was looking for was that liquid midrange and treble that is the hallmark of the XR series which I currently employ. Although I couldn't hear any fault, only strapping one into my system would tell me for certain.

Interesting to note that Pioneer christened their D3 chip amp AVR's with the same jersey numbers of the acclaimed Panasonic lineage.

[psg]

I'll just repeat my AVS post the the benefit of the discussion here:

The Pioneer is a pretty expensive receiver. You might consider spending
the same amount of cash on an amp (Emotiva has a holiday sale on and
the XPA-3 is $599) and a cheaper receiver with similar features but less
power. The amp will outlast several receiver upgrades and will be in
your system for decades.

[derrickdj1]

The top of the line Pioneer's are excellent receivers. They are large and they are heavy, lol. I have an SC 35 and have no major issues that appear to be a problem for music listening or home theater. The MCACC is so good that it makes up for room imperfections. Power is not an issue and I have not notice any distortion in my setup. I got the SC 35 for around $700, new. I use many of the extra features and do not need a lot of separates with this avr. I took home two Denon for 3 weeks each and took them both back. I have also owed an Onkyo Flagship avr that was almost as good as the Elite avr's . These avr are as good as it gets under $2000.00. I use the internet radio feature coupled with my BD for pandora radio, netflix and other HT applications. The Pioneer avr's can extend HT to another level. This avr also works well with All Share on my Samsung TV for music and video streaming from my laptop. You can't set individual speaker X-overs but this is not really an issue if you are using a sub.

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