Customer Reviews

Sony STR-DA3200ES ES 7.1 Channel Surround Sound A/V Receiver

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Well, I decided to bite the bullet and buy this receiver despite the lack of reviews. Let me preface this review by saying that I am just a normal guy who likes good quality sound, and am by no means an audiophile. I am however a pretty thorough shopper and knew what I was looking for: a good quality receiver that could do HDMI switching for a good price. Unfortunately, those three qualifications seem to rarely line up... If you want quality, you can have price and HDMI switching... If you want price and quality, forget about the HDMI switching.

I looked at literally dozens of receivers over several months before settling on the DA-3200ES. Early favorites included the Sony STR-DG1000, the Yamaha RX-V1700, the Harmon Kardon 445, and the Denon AVR-887 and 2807. The reason I settled on the 3200ES was honestly because it was an unknown (as crazy as that seems.) Unlike many of the others, there were no reviews or rankings and so I took the plunge. My thought was this: Since I was replacing an older (about three years old) 5.1 Sony receiver and I am happy with Sony products, I thought it might be worth a shot. Additionally, being an ES, it is supposedly "upper end" of the Sony product line.

The box arrived and I had to wait for a few weeks to install the receiver as it was going into our new house (unfortunately only pre-wired for 5.1 speakers.) When I did hook it up, I matched it to the Toshiba SD-6980 DVD, an LG 42PX4D TV, HKTS-14 speakers, and our cable-company supplied HD receiver. Set up was a snap. I ran the speakers to their hook ups, the DVD player to HDMI input 1, and the cable box to HDMI input 2. HDMI out went directly to the TV. One of the great things about this receiver is the amount of possible connections on the reverse. I finally settled on HDMI cables for all inputs, but with the addition of optical sound cabling. After about an hour of hooking up the connections, I rolled out the included microphone for setting up the speaker levels, and placed it in the middle of the room. The room itself is 2 stories tall and just over 400 square feet with hardwood floors, so getting the sound "right" is quite a chore!

I was sweating the interaction of the receiver with the television, since I have never used on-screen programming for one of my components like this before. To my surprise, it worked flawlessly. The set up instructions note that the testing of the speakers is quite loud, but I wasn't too terribly worried about waking up the neighborhood when it happened (it was loud, but tolerable.) After setting up the speakers, which took less than 5 minutes total, the system was ready to go. My kids hadn't seen Ice Age 2 yet, so I bought it for them to use as a test for the system. It worked flawlessly. The sound was great, and everything seemed to work as planned. Overall, I was (and still am) very pleased.

To caveat this review, I must say that I haven't been lucky enough to test out multiple receivers so I don't know if something I considered routine about the set up of this receiver might be considered difficult to some, or that something in the sound output isn't as perfect as another receiver might put out. To my ears, it sounds great and I'm happy with it. I will say that I have not tried it with 7.1 sound, nor have I tried setting up the additional two speakers in another room (nor do I intend to.) The one non-intuitive thing on the receiver was the fact that you have a separate button on the front to select the HDMI inputs. I would have assumed that these inputs would have been selectable via the input selector knob, and was rather surprised that they aren't. With a little tinkering though, it did make sense and I think as it is set up at the moment it makes operation a little easier for people who might not be as familiar with the system: push the button once for the DVD player, push it twice for cable.

Overall, I am very happy with this receiver. For what I needed, it was a great value, a quality unit and it had HDMI switching. I could have spent more money on a receiver, but I honestly don't think that it would have made much difference. I give this receiver five stars and would recommend it to others.

STRENGTHS
Excellent sound quality, with Plenty of power and does not get too hot
Has built in equalizer
Excellent up-conversion of cable boxes and analog sources
HDMI pass through of 1080I work great
Super easy speaker calibration

WEAKNESSES
The incremental changes in volume level are just 0.5 dB when using the remote so it is not very responsive to changes in the volume.


With a new KDS-55A2000 HDTV, I wanted a HDMI switching receiver that would provide excellent up-conversion of low resolution Standard Definition (SD) video sources from my cable box plus excellent 7.1 sound reproduction. I read the CNET reviews on the Pioneer, Onkyo, and JVC 7.1 receivers with HDMI switching and they all had issues and many users complained of them getting very hot and/or not doing that good of HDMI switching or up-conversion of video signals. It looked I was going to have to spend $1200-$2000 for a Denon to get what I wanted until the DA3200ES came out in November 2006. After testing it for a couple of weeks, I think this receiver has both excellent sound quality and very good video processing! The sound reproduction is what you would expect from an ES line Sony receiver and I think better than the Yamaha 5740 receiver that it has replaced in my home. And it does not seem to get that hot--about the same as the Yamaha.
`
Setup was like any other receiver. The speaker calibration was surprisingly simple since Sony provides a microphone for this purpose. I placed it on top of the back of the chair I normally use in the middle of the room and pushed the button to perform the calibration and it was done in about 30 seconds. Sony warns of very high volumes when the calibration is being performed, so I put some earplugs in my ears before I did the calibration. The earplugs reduced the sound level by about 20 dB so I did not even notice it as being loud. After doing the calibration I put in a DVD to listen to the sound reproduction from all of my speakers and the sound levels were balanced very well and the receiver's sound quality is excellent.
`
The receiver has very good HDMI switching and up-conversion of SD signals input by composite video, S-video, video/audio RCA connections. My cable gateway does not have an HDMI output, so I had to use video/audio RCA connections for the input and the video up-conversion to 1080i output from the receiver looks noticeably better than the SD signal input directly to the TV. It looks fine on a 55" HDTV. I tested a lot of different video hook ups combinations and for my system, the composite video and video/audio RCA connections had better picture quality reproduction through the u-conversion algorithms than using S-video (not sure why?). I recommend using the HDMI output to a TV if possible. Any input signal is automatically converted to 1080I when using the HDMI output to a TV with an HDMI input. My Toshiba DVD recorder has an HDMI output that can put out 480I, 720I or 1080I. When I played purchased DVD movies the video reproduced when using the 1080I signal from the receiver was better quality compared to the same DVD output directly to the HDTV. So 1080I pass through, in my opinion, works very well in this receiver. Next I tried a TIVO'd and DVD recording of the same purchased DVD. The purchased DVD was slightly better quality that the recorded SD copies of the same movie (recorded in the second highest quality; 2 hours total on the 4.7 G DVD-r) when using the 1080I HDMI output.
`
It is a excellent receiver/amplifier with very good video processing. I been enjoying movies without having somebody kicking the back of my chair or eating candy wrapped in plastic wrappers behind me in a theater!

I have owned the 3200 for a little over 2 months. I was looking for a mid-range receiver to drive my 4ohm M&K speakers. Unfortunately, that ruled out some of the cheaper receivers under $500. I also wanted HDMI switching for my cable box, xbox 360 HD DVD player and ps3. The goal was one cable to the TV. Almost. My HD comcast dvr did not want to coorperate with the plan and the copy protection said it did not support HDMI repeaters. Who knew? I had to run the HDMI to the TV and a digital cable to the TV.

To my ears, the receiver sounds great. It handles most of the decoding formats and plays SACDs from the PS3 at 192khz linear PCM 5.1. :>

My speakers sound great and I do not have any complaints about the power output. The receiver also does not get nearly as hot as the pioneer elite that it replaced.

The receiver does not lack inputs with one exception. I wish it had more than 2 hdmi inputs. That was the price premium for the 5200 - it seemed hard to justify several hundred dollars for an additional input. It is hdmi 1.2 which should be fine for the next several years.

DVDs look great when played on my xbox running component to the receiver and hdmi to the tv. The receiver upscales to 1080i and my tv scales to 1080p - but the image quality is outstanding on my 46xbr3.

The setup of the receiver was a snap. It doesn't have the fancy menu of the 5200, but is is straightforward and appears on the TV over the hdmi output. I was able to select 4 ohm vs 8 ohm easily and did the auto setup for speaker placement. It comes with a microphone and a 20-30 foot cable that you place in the room and the speakers then autocalibrate. I found this process pain free and satisfactory. The manual warns of loud noises, but I found it tolerable and it only takes about 45 seconds to complete the process.

On most web sites I noticed the warranty was listed at 18 months - but the certificate in the box says 5 years - which is standard for ES systems.

Overall, I am very happy with my purchase.

This reciever is a good upgrade from last one.Price nice because it's a couple of years old,(although new in box).It's got good powerful sound,and sound fields,A,F.D.(auto format direct) in particular are cool the way they decode incoming signals and use different speakers accordingly.Small beefs: won't convert S-VHS analog S-Video signal to H.D.M.I. must use composite video cables for H.D.M.I up-conversion. #2: could use more than 2 H.D,M.I. inputs. O.K. for me right now.Over all ,It's GREAT!!!

I never setup one these before and it was easy. The instructions are clear. One thing that is not clear is the video upconversion. What you are looking for is called upscaling and certain DVD players do that. This receiver will upconvert an SD signal to a maximum of 480p. A lot of reviews say that it will do more than that and that is not true! My TV displays the signal type and I am getting 480p from SD signals. My DVD player upscales and I get 1080i. This reciever simply passes through HD signals. It will not take an SD signal and convert it to 1080p! One thing I didn't like is that the remote control will not work on my Dish Network satellite receiver. There is no code for it. The remote has a learning function but I haven't been able to figure it out yet. The receiver produces amazing sound, has good amplification and the tuner is clear. It only has 2 HDMI inputs so be mindful of that. I didn't use the auto configuration mode that it has. I preferred to manually configure each setting which was easy. The manual is thick and there is a lot to learn so expect to do a lot of reading and referencing the manual every time you want to change something but eventually you'll learn it all. For the money and features, it is a good buy.

Sony STR-DA3200ES 7.1 Channel Surround Sound A/V Receiver sounds great, Setup was time consuming and for the price should have more HDMI inputs!

For indepth reviews I go to UK based sites (What HiFi) and found that the model down from the DA3200es (DA1200es)is considered one of the Hi Fi bargains of the '06 and as such received very high praise. Enough said!