You know, that was totally unfair. Pre-digital I had a Sony PL A/V I loved, for years. I have a Sony center and two surrounds. (I had two Sony full-size fronts, but in small cabinets, and they were on the floor; I had to get them up off the floor and had no place to put them. So I went shopping for a couple stands. All the stands these days are made for the little micro-size surround-kit loudspeakers. To get top platforms big enough for the fronts, it was $100 for the pair of stands. The audio store where I went for the stands had a few discontinued $250 a pop Polks in cabinets the perfect height, on get-rid-of-them-now clearance for $40 apiece, cheaper than the freaking stands. Plus these Polks have a bit more presence than the Sonys; you know, not *louder*, I just think I get a little more "detail" listening to music, especially LPs -- movies, nyah, I can't tell, but for a lot of music, a bit better.)
The "blech" came from one analog Sony PLII my wife had, still have around here somewhere. Sounded fine, really, it was just that it was like a damn desert on available inputs. It wasn't marketed to people who were going to connect more than a VCR and a CD deck, which was perfectly my wife before I married her. But that thing hassled me, though there was nothing wrong with it one bit for its target market. My Blu-ray players are Sony. I'm cool with Sony, I just have this bizarre hangover resentment against that Sony PLII receiver and its input shortage. The "blech" was just a personal thing; Sony isn't junk.
I like my clearance-price Onkyo 5.1 -- God bless HDMI for knocking the price of models without HDMI pass-through down into the dirt. Any comparable Sony I'd like just as much.
You'd like this: I was in one of these consumer electronics chains, Best Buy or Circuit City, some place like that, struck up a conversation with the "audio expert". He had what he swore was a 100 watts/channel, not 100 watts aggregate, receiver -- I mean I asked for clarification on that, and he swore *per channel* and no tomfoolery on the specs. He didn't like it so much because it was "a little underpowered". I asked him how much he was paying in rent to live on the field in the Astrodome. I don't think he got it, though.
Speaking of Sid Harman, I gotta admit Bob Carver and his Sunfire rap drive me bonkers, too. Sure his gear *looks* nice. Sure, a machine may tell the difference, but a human being? I mean today we have guys with the knack -- no, not the band, people -- producing major-label records in freaking GarageBand, and then lying about it and *no one can even tell*. At the same time you gotta drop two grand on an A/V receiver, minimum, or you won't get "the full audio experience today's technology brings you." Uh, yeah.
