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33 of 36 people found the following review helpful.
Too many bugs! Dolby Volume defective [UPDATED]
By Amazon Jeff
I upgraded from an H/K AVR330 (2004) to decode DTS-HD and TrueHD. I was also interested in the Dolby Volume feature. I had the AVR 330 for 5 years or so and was EXTREMELY pleased with it, this point is important, because this new unit is not a worthy upgrade.I got the 2650 from Amazon and hooked it up and after a short while I started noticing loud, high-pitched "pops" or chirps coming from random speakers; they occurred randomly, sometimes 10 minutes apart, other times a dozen in a 5 minute span. I tried a variety of troubleshooting options and eventually sent it into the seller for a replacement (World Wide Stereo was really helpful once they were made aware of my problem).The replacement unit did the same exact thing, and a Harman/Kardon top-tier tech support arrogantly claimed he'd never heard of such an issue. I wrote this much of this review, and found another customer shared my experience in the comments, and then another, and another. The solution was to disable Dolby Volume, and sure enough this worked. This was disappointing, but the Dolby Volume feature is fairly poor anyhow, and so I decided to keep the receiver for the price I got it for.As for the receiver itself, its appearance is its biggest advantage. Aside from the poorly placed headphone jack, it's got a refined and minimalist look; and the on-screen menu is equally simple and elegant, even sporting some graphics in the speaker setup menu.... although, the number keys on the remote (despite having TT9 letters above them) frustratingly do nothing when changing an input's name. I was unable to use the EasyEQ setup because I don't own a sub, but all the standard setup tweaks were in there and easy to edit. The HDMI handshakes with the Sony TV nicely, and though I haven't tested the HDMI pass thru with video games yet, it performs quite well with 1080p video. There's 10 total inputs, and you can mix-and-match the ports to them which is a nice flexibility for configuring your setup. And of course, the other reason you buy H/K is the sound quality, which is there and really fills the room when playing DTS-HD or 176k SACD (which comes through as Multi-channel PCM when bit streaming from the PS3).If Harman (or Dolby?) were to issue a firmware update for the Dolby Volume problem, I'd probably bump up the rating a star, but it's a pretty egregious flaw.UPDATE: MORE PROBLEMS! There's a few bugs that have been ruining my audio enjoyment lately, so I decided to make a big list here of all the problems with this unit, to help other people avoid buying buggy Harman/Kardon receivers.- When the unit powers on, it occasionally fails at passing thru HDMI, and the only way to get a picture on the screen is by turning the receiver off and on again -- pretty pathetic.- When switching audio formats (for example, going from Logic 7 to Dolby Digital) the receiver goes silent for roughly 1.5 seconds and pops a notice on the TV screen - this might be tolerable, except that it happens during movies and games for no apparent reason, but it happens consistently in the same spots of the movie, causing the audio to go silent for a second or two while it bugs out.- There is NO WAY to set stereo input to play as STEREO without disabling surround sound entirely. If you would like to listen to a stereo source without the awful faux-surround, you have to enter the menu and turn off surround sound, and turn it back on when you need it again. This was not a problem with the AVR330.- The HDMI-TV link is buggy, and frequently lets the TV take over for audio when it shouldn't. Turning the feature off in the menu fixes this, somewhat, but doing so also disables the auto-power-off of the TV, so if you accidentally turn off the receiver first, the TV again sets itself to using it's own speakers... so no matter what you do, you'll be constantly switching the TV audio source manually.- Dolby Volume does not work properly and may actually damage your speakers with the loud chirps.- Harman's customer/tech support is simply awful, probably the worst I've ever encountered.After a few months with this unit, I wish I had bought a Yamaha or something instead. H/K used to a be a king in the audio world, but it's clear from what I've experienced and read about this receiver line that they've lost interest in creating quality products.BUYER BEWARE.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Great bang for the buck
By rtrski
[EDIT: Revised down 1 star to 4 on 25 Dec due to some problems, namely my cooling fan fails to operate now so it ends up overheating and shutting down without user-supplied auxiliary cooling. Read thru comments after the initial review to get the full details. Remainder of review after this paragraph is as it was originally posted.]I was a *little* worried, after pulling the trigger on this order, to read that H-K had recently moved its AVR design division to a completely new engineering group. But as it turns out I've had no significant problems with the unit at all.Bought because I was finally upgrading to a 3D-capable LED-edge lit TV (see my other reviews), and 3D Blu-Ray (ditto), and wanted the full HDMI 1.4 passthru capability in my A/V path. I was replacing a rather old H-K AVR265 or so (I think that's the model number) from circa 2005 I think.I am using this as the receiver for the aforementioned TV, Blu-Ray, a media streaming device (SageTV HD-300, basically equiv of a Roku or other streaming box although I'm also using the SageTV software on the server for my PVR functionality), and the wife's Wii. Connection paths are HDMI (using passthru) for the TV/Blue-ray, I am using the ARC function on the HDMI-out for the TV audio back to the reciever, HDMI to the SageTV streamer, and plain old vanilla composite video (not even "component - the breakout cable has to be bought extra!) and stereo audio inputs from the Wii. The Sage box upscales everything to 1080p x 60 hz for me (with interlacing correction) so the only thing taking advantage of the onboard Faroudja video processing on the HK 2650 is the Wii. And as that's a 'standard def' (480p) input signal...there's only so much improvement you're going to get. But it does look better than it did when plugged directly into the older TV. I have not tested plugging the Wii directly into the *new* TV to see if the new TV's onboard upscaling is better than the H-K's...as I said, it's SD, I only have so much expectation so any difference probably won't be noticable.The receiver's surround setup was nicely automatic and resulted in a pleasing balance. I remember having to fine-tune the levels after the automatic setup on the older receiver. Surround seems very 'surroundy' now without being overbearing. There have been a few weird digital chirps or 'coughs' watching OTA HD TV broadcasts, that have gone away after deactivating the "Dolby Volume" feature (which tries to auto-level things like commercial and program volume). I suspect that as the digital audio stream gains/loses sync with things like program to commercial breaks, or perhaps with antenna signal fluctuations, that 'chirp' was happening as the datastream was being decoded past a flaw. I have not tried any alternate audio paths back from the TV (like optical S/PDIF) because as I said altering that setting on the receiver got rid of the issue.The audio (from the TV ARC via the HDMI-out) doesn't always seem to come on with the TV set as input (if you turn on the receiver while the TV is still warming up) but I think I've figured that out as an HDMI-CEC handshaking issue - powering on the TV used to auto-power-on the H-K receiver (with "power control" on at the receiver setting side), so a premature power-on I guess confused it. I've deactivated this setting as well since I"m using a universal remote (Harmony) and it forces a 'power on' signal to both the TV and receiver anyway, and that issue seems to have gone away.The sole "problem" I've had is that the receiver isn't seeming to maintain a network connection (for the Internet radio) but that might be in part my fault as I have it wired into a "wireless converter bridge" which is also shared by the Sage box, so it could be in the way I have either the wireless converter or my router set up. I didn't really plan on using Internet Radio much anyway (TV and Blu-ray both have Pandora apps) so it hasn't been worth troubleshooting.I like the new looks of the receiver, very clean. I love that you can rename various inputs (e.g. the "game" input now says "Play my Wii!!!" on the front panel for the wife). The remote is kind of big and edgy but has a nice industrial design look about it - although in my case it's getting replaced anyway with a true universal. I also like that it does a lot of 'auto-selection' of best surround modes depending on the input. So far I've found its choices to be great; with the old one I had to set up teh desired audio processing per input (and for the Sage streamer for example, which might be used for playing DVDs off the network drive, recorded TV (HD streams), or a digital music library (WMA-lossless) that meant you had to swap manually for given content. Now I don't have to.The receiver does seeem to get hotter than the old one though, although it's in the exact same hole in the media cabinet (about .65" clearance to left and right, 1.75" clearance above, no glass door or back to worry about). I'll keep an eye on that since we do let our house get pretty warm in the summer vs. paying out the nose for A/C, but I don't anticipate it being a big issue overall.I'm giving it a 5 star rating because it does everything I want it to, and I like the audio quality with my nearly 20 year old (back when they were GOOD) Cambridge Soundworks "Ensemble" speakers (front satellites-and-woofer enclosures each side, their bi-phase 'surround satellites for the back, a who-cares-its-mostly-for dialog midrange nameless center channel speaker, and slightly newer A/R sub. Sound is definitely crisper than with the old receiver for the same media. But then again, I'm no audiophile and at mid-40s my high range hearing is definitely on the fade, so take it for what its worth. No "audiophile" is going to be looking at a lower-end-of-the-line AVR anyway.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Great mid-level home theater receiver
By Lon J. Seidman
If you have that nice 50+" 1080p display but lack theater-quality sound, you need to take the plunge and purchase a decent home theater receiver. This one from Harman Kardon is a great mid-level centerpiece. It also looks nice, with a very modern and simplified industrial design.At this stage of development most reputable home theater brands sound fantastic. This one is no exception. So really the purchase decision boils down to features.What I like best about this receiver is that it has a ton of inputs, making it less likely you'll need to rely on the television remote for some devices, the receiver for others. The 2650 features 5 HDMI ports, two component video inputs, and a number of digital audio inputs (both coax and optical). It also supports legacy devices through its three analog audio inputs and two composite video jacks. It does not offer S-video connections.One thing it lacks is decent iPod functionality. A dock can be purchased separately that does allow an iPod or other iOS device to connect. Still it's just as easy to connect it with an analog cable or just purchase an AppleTV that allows for wireless streaming. While the ethernet connection can stream internet radio, it doesn't support many popular third party music services like Pandora (competing brands do). Harman Kardon did equip it this receiver with a USB port for easy firmware upgrades, so these enhancements could come later.And while setting up a home theater can be a complicated exercise, the 2650 also has an attractive on-screen GUI for controlling the system. Many systems in this class still have a less than intuitive text-based interface for navigating settings. It will also set surround sound speaker volume automatically using an included microphone.Bottom Line: This is a superb home theater system at a reasonable price. It lacks some of the bells and whistles features of other brands, but its audio quality is just as good as more expensive devices. I particularly like the GUI interface and its abundance of HDMI inputs.
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