I was hoping you could help me choose between these two Recivers. From reviews I have read then the Azur 540R gets good reviews but is it better in plain sterio than the Pioneer? My gut feeling is that the Azur would be better than Pioneer. Is there any one who has tryed them both with resonable speakers?
I have tried both with Mordaunt-Short 908 speakers and honestly at the price I have not come across any HT receiver that perform as well as the Azur 540R in stereo mode.
To my ears the Pioneer was okay in HT, but I still don't like the sound.
Do note that the Azur does not have all the bells and whistles that some other receivers have, but more than make up for that in sound quality.
I've read a few posts mentioning they were unreliable, however I owned a 540R for about a year with no problems. The reviews over at audioreview.com are generally positive. It is a fairly basic receiver though, no adjustable crossover, relatively few inputs and doesn't pass a hi-def signal over component video. I see they have a version 2 available now with a few more features such as an OSD.
Overall I thought it sounded great for movies but found stereo music to be a bit thin sounding especially at louder volumes. It's priced around twice the cost of the Pioneer VSX-915 here(however the pricing may be different in Iceland
I intend to buy it from a dealer here in Iceland. It costs around 540$ here. I have read that they had some software problems, nothing that had an effect on sound quality directly. The one that I intend to buy is the Version 2.
I will listen to the Recievers I am most intrested in. The Nad T743, Azur 540R and the Pioneer VSX-915. But the thing is some of these dealers don't know how to display there products and usaly do not have them connected to any speakers or no good speakers. The Nad Dealer and CA have better rooms for testing. The Nad sounds intresting but is missing the rear back speaker (which I could live with out if the reciver is better then the rest).
In Iceland the pioneer is more expensive than the CA but the Nad has the same price tag as the Pioneer. About 120$ more than CA.
Do you think any one of these recivers would do better with SACD and DVD-Audio? Somwere I read the Nad didn't perform as well with SACD and DVD-audio.
I intend to buy it from a dealer here in Iceland. It costs around 540$ here. I have read that they had some software problems, nothing that had an effect on sound quality directly. The one that I intend to buy is the Version 2.
I will listen to the Recievers I am most intrested in. The Nad T743, Azur 540R and the Pioneer VSX-915. But the thing is some of these dealers don't know how to display there products and usaly do not have them connected to any speakers or no good speakers. The Nad Dealer and CA have better rooms for testing. The Nad sounds intresting but is missing the rear back speaker (which I could live with out if the reciver is better then the rest).
In Iceland the pioneer is more expensive than the CA but the Nad has the same price tag as the Pioneer. About 120$ more than CA.
Do you think any one of these recivers would do better with SACD and DVD-Audio? Somewere I read the Nad didn't perform as well with SACD and DVD-audio.
That's a tough call. What speakers are you using? I had a NAD T742 (the predecessor to the T743) for about a year and a half and the CA 540R for about a year after that. I though they both had very good sound quality but would give the CA the edge with movies and the NAD the edge with music, although that would probably vary depending on the speakers. With my ARs the NAD seems a bit heavy on the bass and a bit rolled off in the high end whereas the CA seemed to lack mid-bass.
Feature-wise the NAD has A and B speaker switching, main-amp inputs (I think), a learning remote and adjustable crossover among other things. The CA is a bit more limited feature-wise but does support 6.1.
I thought both the CA and NAD did very well with SACD and DVD-A through my Yamaha c750 player. If you like to listen to music really loud and 5.1 is fine I would recommend the NAD over the CA, otherwise I think I would lean towards saving the $120 and going for the CA.
Currently I am using 5 JBL speakers. If I remember the JBL front are called xtl 600 and the back speakers are one step smaller then the fronts. Don't mind not having a Crossover since I want to have my front and back speakers full size (or as close to it as I can), like having the bass sound that way. I am still waiting for the CA dealer to get a new copy of the V2 Azur 540R and when they have it I will test it, along with pioneer and Nad.
Finally bought the Azur 540R Version 2.0 receiver. I did try out the NAD and the pioneer. Unfortunately the pioneer dealer had a terrible space for testing and it sounded terrible with he speakers it was connected to. Actually I think they may have forgotten to set the subwoofer to off since I wanted to hear how the amp performed on its own. But the funny thing is that none of them sounded good. I tried the Pioneer with Pioneer floor standing speakers and the NAD with Dali floor standing speakers (don't remember the name), and the Azur 540 with AEG floor standing speakers. When I was testing the NAD I also tried the NAD 320BEE amp, NAD 521BEE cd and Dali Ikon 6 speakers and it sounded great. The Nad T743 and using a Nad DVD player did not sound as good (with somekind of Dali speakers which I can't remember what they were called). The Azur 540R test sounded bad also, so I was starting to worry that maybe the NAD would have been better since it sounded better at the shop. But I decided to buy the Azur and try it. The dealer said I could return it if I didn't like it. When I connected them to my speakers it sounded as good as I expected it to sound. It definitely did sound better in stereo then the Sherwood Newcastle R945 amp I had before. Can't say it sounded as good as the plain stereo Pioneer amp I had temporarily between the R945 and the Azur. My next step is to buy (when I have saved up the money) Azur 640 CD player and a good phone stage.
Anyways I just wanted to thank all of you who answer and helped me choosing.
i got a 5 year old HK 5000 reciever ( i think the US model equivalent was HK 510). Was thinking of buying a new one but the prices of HK have gone thru the roof. Was considering the CA 540R as an alternative. Do u think it would be a better sounding amp or am i better off with what i have? I have DefTech BP8 speakers all round.
I have a 5 year old HK 5000 (i think in the US the model was called the HK 510). Was planning to buy a new one but HK prices seem to have gone thru the roof.
I was thinking of the CA 540R as an alternative. Any views on whether it would be better than what i have or am i better off with what i have?
I am not familiar with the HK 5000. But from web sites I have read then it looks like a big amp. I would think the Harmon Kardon would be a better performer per watts. But I would think the Azur 540R is a good performer for the price. At least it is doing well for me and so far it has not disappointed. But somehow I feel like I am buying a very good product from Azur. I would rather buy a receiver from a company which puts all its effort to one receiver than buying the cheapest product from a company with a big line up of different amps at different prices.
My recommendations? Go for the Azur it costs less.
Well folks I have been trying the Azur allot and have found a strange problem with my Pioneer DV 565a SACD / DVD-audio players. I have 5 JBL speakers but no subwoofer which hasn't been a problem yet since the JBL have plenty of bass. The Pioneer player is connected to the Azur with the 5.1 analog RCA plugs, The speakers set up in the player is set to subwoofer off and the Azur amp has the subwoofer off also. And playing DVD-audio disks I get a very good sound. But when I played Dark Side of the moon (SACD disk 5.1) I found the bass just disappear. I have checked if the player is sending out a signal from the sub out plug during SACD playback but it has no audio coming from it. Then I found out if I set the Pioneer player to 2 channels setting then the full sound came back no matter if I was playing the 5.1 audio, 2 channels SACD or the normal CD area. But if I set the player back to the 5.1 setting (sending out the 5.1 analog outputs) then the bass disappeared again no matter if I was using the 2 channel SACD are or the 5.1 SACD area. This is the same no matter if I am playing other SACD disks which are only 2 channel sterio, hybrid or not and 5.1.
So my question is: Is the Pioneer DV 565 a crappie SACD player when set to 5.1 or is this normal for SACD generally? My DVD-audio is good
The new Azur 540R is now not working properly. The right speaker is now dead. No sound coming from it. If I use headphones there is also no sound coming from the right channel. So tomorrow I have to take the receiver back to the dealer and see what they say.
I must say that I am a bit disappointed in the 540R but the sound has been good but this failure is not good. Maybe I should just buy the Nad T743? Or the Marantz sr 4600 Has any body any experience with the SR4600?
How many days has it been since u bought the Azur? It looks like only 2-3 days. I guess if it had to fail its good it happened so soon but doesnt reflect well on the quality control. Was this the version 2? But Hawk and others have had problems with NAD too..........
The day I got it, I had it running for 48 hours to burn it in. Straight out of the box it sounded good, did not hear any noticeable difference after the 48 hours but it I did not try much to hear allot of difference. I bought it wendsday (I think there is something wrong with how I spelled wendsday) and it was running for 48 hours so that is Friday evening, turned it off and used it Saturday and still doing good. Sunday also good and then Monday, when turning it on, I noticed that the right channel was dead. I have the Version 2.0.
Talked to the repair person and he said that they had had not many problems with the Cambridge and they rarely come in for repair. So I hope this is just something special with my unit. I am going to try to get a new one when the repair person has done his check up.
Probably it would not matter if I would have bought the Nad or other. Could have been just as "lucky" with other products.
Got the 540R back today and is working normally now. The repair person told me that the failure was a connection that wasen't welded good enough and he fixed it. Nothing big he said. So plugged it in and started playing with it again.
Comparing the sound from the Analog source (stereo) straight through the 540R was lower volume then when I switched to the Digital plug. Did not hear any difference in sound other then the volume difference. Should not be much difference since both the DVD player and the Azur has 192 khz/24 bit DAC.
Therefore, the bottom line is... Still happy with buying the Azur.
Maybe I should just buy the Nad T743? Or the Marantz sr 4600