Kenwood VR-507 Surround Sound Receiver

by Kenwood

Product Details

Product Manual [3.23mb PDF]

• Item Weight: 23 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 23 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005T3MA
• Item model number: VR507
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #407,553 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 2, 2002

Product Description

Get the brains and brawn of your home theater system in this Audio/Video receiver from Kenwood. This receiver has everything that you need and more, featuring Dolby« Digital, DTS, Dolby« Pro Logic II, Dolby« 3 Stereo, and Kenwood's own Circle Surround processing. And with 500 watts of total power, you're in for a complete audio and video experience.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay, But Needs A Better Center Speaker, November 24, 2002

By 

Keith Doyle (Panama City, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kenwood VR-507 Surround Sound Receiver (Electronics)

I purchased this audio-video receiver as part of a home-theater set which included 5 speakers and a subwoofer. After reading many reviews I saw that it was one of the highest rated systems, as well as being readily available at many electronics stores.

I'm a perfectionist, so perhaps my mediocre rating for this item is biased. From the reviews I expected perfect clarity in the sound. For the most part everything sounds fine. The big flaw has to do with the center speaker. That speaker is responsible for speech in movies, so it's pretty important. The problem is I can hear a high-pitched distortion during brief moments in some movies. The distortion occurs when certain characters or creatures talk and roar. Take Jurassic Park, for example. When John Hammond has his little discussion with Alan Grant and Ellie Satler in the trailer, you can hear a faint whine in his voice that becomes more annoying the higher the volume is set. And the scene where a Brachiosaurus appears for the first time and let's out a bellow before sitting down sounds horrible.

To most people it's barely audible. To me, it's irritating. So irritating, in fact, that I bought a whole new center speaker to replace the original. It was a Bose. After that I had no problems.

Well, except one minor difficulty which involves the subwoofer included with the set. The bass cannot be adjusted by remote, one must get up and physically turn the knob in the back. I hate having to do that. Maybe that's because the subwoofer is 'powered', I don't know.

Other than all that I have no complaints. There are plenty of S-video and composite inputs but no component inputs. There's two coaxial and two optical digital audio inputs. At 100 watts per channel the overall sound output is impressive. The bass can shake your room sufficiently when that next monster comes stomping around on the screen. Make sure your video/audio cables have some separate reach at the ends because not all the jacks are very close together. There might be better home theater systems out there for the money, but who knows if they also have that high-pitched distortion problem? It may be a common factor in mid-ranged systems.

I give 4 stars for the receiver, 2 for the speakers.