Pioneer VSX-D812K A/V Receiver

by Pioneer

Product Details

• Item Weight: 22 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 28 pounds
• ASIN: B0001G0Y1S
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #232,740 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 2, 2004

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Simply does a great job with the basics!, August 23, 2009

By 

P. Rom - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pioneer VSX-D812K A/V Receiver (Electronics)

I purchased this receiver used a couple months ago. So far it's done very well. In comparison to today's receivers this one doesn't have half of the 'bells and whistles,' but it does a great job with the basics.

I went with the Pioneer brand because the my 13 year old Pioneer Pro Logic receiver outlasted my 7 year old Kenwood DD/DTS receiver. The receiver sounds great with movies (in both DD and DTS) as well as music (in DD/DTS or just a stereo CD).

The best part about the receiver is the pre-outs for all 5.1 channels for separate amplifiers. I am currently running a powered sub and a separate 2-channel amp for the fronts and it sounds incredible.

The receiver is also expandable to 7.1 channels.

PROS:
Reliable!
5.1 channel pre-outs
Solid performance for movies and music (great DD/DTS processing!)

CONS:
No auto-setup feature (see VSX-d912 for that)
No learning remote

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome receiver, May 21, 2008

By 

A. J. Good - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pioneer VSX-D812K A/V Receiver (Electronics)

I currently have it set up in 5.1 mode (I have had it in 7.1 mode, but the other two speakers didn't sound as good and I took them out of the loop) running audio for my 3 computers, tv, and xbox360 and they all sound great. The sound quality is awesome at high and low volumes. It does a good job of decoding the position of the sound and sending it to the right speaker across both input methods (RCA and optical) I have tried. It has plenty of connections on the back - more than a lot of receivers in its price range. I have had it routing video for my 360 too and it seems to do a good job of that too.

Drawbacks:
No HDMI
only 2 optical-in ports
Sound quality is good enough that low bit-rate mp3s are going to sound watery
Doesn't bring me coffee in the morning.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Receiver, not enough power, May 5, 2006

By 

Vikram Kalyanaraman "V-Drummer" (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pioneer VSX-D812K A/V Receiver (Electronics)

I've owned this for >2 years now. Of late the receiver has started going into Amp Error mode and I believe this is because it is unable to deliver the high current the speakers demand for movie watching. One thing to note is I am using this in the 5.0 mode with no subwoofer and that may be one of the causes.
Otherwise, the sound is very clean, setup is very easy and intuitive, connectivity is abundant, features are easy to access, display is easy to read from a distance too, remote is well designed and it just works. I have not been able to find anyone with similar issues to mine for this particular model, but a net search shows other Pioneer models with a similar problem.