Harman Kardon Receivers?

[Guest srobak]

However, right now, their flagship, the AVR354 (at least until their 654 and 754 come out in North America), is only pushing 75wpc.

The 645 has been discontinued in the last 6 months, but the 745 is still a current model, and would be the flagship unit.

A Harman Kardon 50-watt amplifier will sound better, louder and cleaner
than most 100-watt amplifiers from other companies.

I would agree with this. HK and NAD are the only companies for the most part that you will hear folks make these sorts of comments about. They are both the most under-rated power-houses and best bang for the buck that you can buy.

Because of this, and because of the help from so many members of this great forum, I've settled for and bought the HK AVR354 receiver with 75wpc.

Great news. Congratulations... you will not be disappointed. HK's are also touted as having a very full and warm sound when mated with just about anything from Klipsch, vs. many other amps. You will enjoy this a lot Gratz again.

[Vital]

HK makes awesome receivers. I have an HK that is 50x7 watts and a Denon that is 75x7 watts and my HK just kills the Denon. I would imagine your new HK with 75x7 will be pretty serious. Not to mention the HK sounds warmer than the Denon IMO.

[Zen Traveler]

HK does make some awesome AVRs and I agree that others seem to overstate their numbers. That being said, a 75x7 WPC Denon would be their bottom of the line AVR whereas the HK 325 is their mid to upper end and imo really isn't a fair comparison, except for comparing stated WPC.

Fwiw, the Denon AVR 38XX series is comparable in performance to the upper end HK's and something to consider.

[Vital]

Yes it's not apples to apples. My HK is at a higher price point.

[Colin]

HK receivers are NOT weak in wattage! They are accurate.

There is a report floating somewhere around this forum that lists hundreds of receivers and compares their stated power ratings to their actual measured response. ONLY HK met the actual stated ratings. HK is known for being accurate about their power ratings and trying to get the rest of the industry to be as accurate as well. BTW, they relatively low distortion over a broad spectrum, something else that is the hallmark of a good amp. Their dual transformer, “low power” vintage 430-930 series receivers are a wonderful bargain for people who like solid-state amps with their big ole horns.

[Jay481985]

I owned the hk 3480 (120 watts stereo reciever) and currently own the denon 3805 (120 watt 7 channel speaker) driving rf-83 which dip down to 2.8 ohms at 40 hertz or so. The hk3480 to me handled the dip in ohms where the bass was present and can shake your whole body at -20 on the receiever. The Denon even though its a lot more money and supposedly in a different league cannot do that even at 0. It just cannot handle that dip of ohms. This leads me to believe the denon cannot do low ohms and the 120 watts really means nothing. I now brought a crown xti1000 to compensate for the dip in power due to the lower ohms.

[redux999]

Well this is indeed an interesting topic.

I own a HK AVR132 receiver and I'm going to hook it up on a pair of RF-7 speakers that I ordered.

I will receive them next month.

My receiver has in Stereo Mode

a Continous Average Power (FTC) of 40Watts per channel, 20Hz - 20kHz,

@<0,07% THD, both channels driven into 8 ohms

according to the manual.

So I gues with a speaker sensitivity of 102 dB....... this is indeed looking good.

[CECAA850]

Well this is indeed an interesting topic.

I own a HK AVR132 receiver and I'm going to hook it up on a pair of RF-7 speakers that I ordered.

I will receive them next month.

My receiver has in Stereo Mode

a Continous Average Power (FTC) of 40Watts per channel, 20Hz - 20kHz,

@<0,07% THD, both channels driven into 8 ohms

according to the manual.

So I gues with a speaker sensitivity of 102 dB....... this is indeed looking good.

Welcome to the forum!

Let me try again, my posts seem to be disapearing this morning.

Your new receiver WILL drive the RF-7's, however, you won't see near their potential. If your receiver has pre-outs, you might want to look into a seperate outboard amplification. A good stout amp of around 200 watts will really wake those 7's up.

[redux999]

Thx. CECAA850 ,

I´ll keep your advice in mind but now my budget doesn´t allow me to buy me some nice amps.

First a pair of RF-7´s ... and hoping that I won´t get troubles with my neighbours, lol.

I got a real bargin on them.

I am from Belgium and I´m buying them in Holland for only 1250€ a set.

Since the low $ price here compared to the € in Europe, this is really a super-deal.

Only 2 years ago, ... a friend of me bought them for 3200€´s a set, also in Holland, can you imagine [:^)]

[Jay481985]

Look at the crown xti 1000, it costs around 400 usd and can be hooked up using preouts. It wasreally a pro amp but it works fine as a home amp, I use it.

[wsu99999]

I'm going to pipe in here and have to disagree with everyone. For what it's worth, I just sold my HK AVR 745 for a significant profit and purchased a Yamaha RX-v861. I got it for 250 bucks. The sound that the Yamaha produces literally blows away the HK. I honestly don't understand why, and I had planned on just using the Yamaha for a few months until HK's new Flagship came out with 1080p, but now I'm set on keeping the Yamaha.

The Yamaha produces much clearer audio, it sounds better at ALL volume levels whether it's extremely low listening or with the volume cranked up 90%, the Yamaha is cleaner, clearer, and better in every single way possible. Not only that, but the video pass thru is better, it is more configurable, and suits my needs 100%.

I honestly thought I would only keep the Yamaha for 3 months or so, but now it just tells me that I need to not judge a book by it's cover, and possibly I should look kat some other things in life that I would have normally passed up on.

I hope this helps someone.

[Tim_in_NC]

I'm going to pipe in here and have to disagree with everyone. For what it's worth, I just sold my HK AVR 745 for a significant profit and purchased a Yamaha RX-v861. I got it for 250 bucks. The sound that the Yamaha produces literally blows away the HK. I honestly don't understand why, and I had planned on just using the Yamaha for a few months until HK's new Flagship came out with 1080p, but now I'm set on keeping the Yamaha.

The Yamaha produces much clearer audio, it sounds better at ALL volume levels whether it's extremely low listening or with the volume cranked up 90%, the Yamaha is cleaner, clearer, and better in every single way possible. Not only that, but the video pass thru is better, it is more configurable, and suits my needs 100%.

I honestly thought I would only keep the Yamaha for 3 months or so, but now it just tells me that I need to not judge a book by it's cover, and possibly I should look kat some other things in life that I would have normally passed up on.

I hope this helps someone.

Not sure why your Yamaha sounds that much better than the H/K did ... maybe it's just your ears, as we all hear a little differently or maybe you had a faulty H/K ...

I currently own 3 Yamaha receivers and I do love the Yamaha sound, the Enhanced modes, etc... really do bring something to the table ... but when it comes down to clean, unadulterated power ... my H/K AVR7300 kills the Yamahas that I own and others that I've demoed, in all audio levels ...

Don't get me wrong ... again ... my Yammies sound great but not when compared to the older H/K flagship 7300 ...

If anyone wants a clear, extremely powerful receiver that is great in 2 channel duty, 7 channel duty for both music and movies (and you don't need the HDMI switching) ... You cannot go wrong with picking up a used Harman Kardon 7200 or 7300 ... I feel they are simply the beastly bargins of the marketplace ...

[wsu99999]

I don't know why it's better either. It's not just my ears - I did a side by side comparison of the two over a weekend and several of my friends were dumbfounded as well and my wife was shocked too. I guess it's possible that I had a bad one, but it was an A-Stock, non refurb, and until I got the Yammy, I thought it was great. Don't get me wrong, the HK sounded fine, but the Yammy literally blew me away.

In the past, when throwing parties, my friends would literally be shocked by the HK's sound. Now, they are giving me money to find them some LS's with the Yammy. It's really a night and day difference. I can't say anything to the 7300 but the 745 didn't compair to the 861. Needless to say, I'm very happy! I hope someone reads this and just goes for it. The Yammys' can be had for 300 bucks and the new HK's are much more (in most cases)

[Guest srobak]

[oldbuckster]

Sometimes here on the forum too much time is spent telling people what they hear, or should hear ............. Everyone is different, and they hear different things, and if a person likes the sound of his Yamaha better than the sound of his Harmon-Kardon, who are we to say different ?

[oldtimer]

This thread gives me the urge to put my 80 yamaha integrated against hk for some reason. OK, not ht related but what the hey, she's been out of the loop too long. Maybe the next meet around here I'll drag it along. where is everyone though? Haven't heard of a get together around here for a while.

[Fish]

The HK sounding like crap could be true.I once had a 7200,I posted how bad it sounded right here some years back.Bought it brand new,hands down one of the worst avrs I ever heard.I discussed it with many here that loved their 7200,I was confused because some of these owners were pretty knowledgeable.I sent it back and bought Rotel,I was happy.A few years later I ended up with a 7200 in a trade(which I didn't want).It sounded great,nothing like the congested mutilation of music of the first one.I have no idea why or how,and HK does have some qc issues but there's no doubt the same model can sound different.

[Arky]

That is strange fish. Could be cause they're made by humans.

[redux999]

I have my RF-7's hooked up for about a week now on my HK avr132 and .... I don't t know ... it's not what it's suppose to be I guess.

I have a problem with the low frequency's ... they don't seem to sound right ... I'm kind of missing a warm sound on the low,.. mid and high are more then ok.

I've tried to experiment with the position of the RF'7's ... with the rubber feet, .. now there on the spikes ... the source seems to be important to .. DVD, HTPC, cable radio, TV ... but the overall sound doesn't satisfy me []

At higher volume it's rather ok but not on lower volumes ... It's like I'm missing the sound of a "loudness' function which I don't have anyway on the HK.

Is my amp the problem or do my RF-7's need to losen up a bit .... [8-)]

[Youthman]

I have my RF-7's hooked up for about a week now on my HK avr132 and .... I don't t know ... it's not what it's suppose to be I guess.

The RF-7's are extremely efficient speakers and just about any receiver can drive them. BUT...they really love a high powered amp. I have the RF-83's which are very similar to the 7's. My previous HK AVR55 had only 50 watts going to each speaker. They would get loud, they sounded clear but I really felt they could do more. I borrowed an external QSC amp that had 265 watts/ch and WOW! What a difference. The sound stage opened up, the bass was incredible and bass was present even at low volumes. If your AVR has pre-outs for an external amp, I would definitely see if you can pick up one that has around 200 watts/ch. Your RF-7's will roar with power and precision.