Pioneer VSX-9040TXH 7-Channel Direct Energy Amplification Home Theater Receiver (Black)
by Pioneer
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Category: Receiver or Amplifier
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Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: PioneerBrand: Pioneer
Edition: Electronics
Model: VSX-9040TXH
Color: black
Publisher: Pioneer
Studio: Pioneer
Music Label: Pioneer
Product features:
- Works with iPHone Certified with Digital USB input
- 110w x 7 Direct Energy Amplification
- THX Select 2 Plus: for dedicated Home Theatre rooms, Dolby True-HD/DTS-HD Master Audio: HD audio for Blu-Ray
- HDMI Repeaters: 4in/1out
- Faroudja 1080p Video Scaler
- Logitech Harmony 1100 Universal Remote with Color Touch Screen
- AmazonBasics 3RCA Component Video Cable (6 Feet)
- AmazonBasics Ultra-High-Speed HDMI Cable Braided (9.8 Feet/3.0 Meters)
- AmazonBasics High-Speed HDMI Cable (6.5 Feet/2.0 Meters)[Supports 3D + Audio Return Channel][OLD MODEL]
- AmazonBasics High-Speed HDMI Braided Cable (6.5 Feet/2.0 Meters)
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Pioneer VSX-9040TXH 7-Channel Direct Energy Amplification Home Theater Receiver (Black)
Customer Review: well played, well played.
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had this thing for about 2 weeks now. It replaced an old school Sony STR DE 597; which is a fairly ancient receiver with no HDMI inputs. Install went very well. This receiver supports banana plugs, so the speaker wire swap out was pretty much instantaneous. Furthermore, it has SIX s/pdif inputs! (digital audio inputs). Two of these are coax and four are toslink.
The main reason I got this unit was to support a new HTPC I just built. I had been having to run a toslink from my motherboard to my old receiver, since it had no HDMI. Well now, I can run just the one HDMI cable from my ATI Radeon video card to the receiver. Some terminology that I ran across which may be useful. Some receivers have HDMI switching or HDMI passthrough. A/V purists consider these 2 things the same thing and also consider it to be fairly useless. A receiver with switching or passthrough acts as an HDMI switchbox to alter which signal is output to your display, without pulling out the audio stream.
What you want is a receiver with HDMI repeater architecture. Sometimes the product info will just say HDMI repeaters, and then say how many. The key here is the receiver is able to pull out the audio signal from the HDMI signal, and then repeat the signal again, unaltered, on to your display device. Well, this receiver has repeater functionality. Sometimes this info is hard to find when looking at budget receivers; plus the semantics of it is confusing.
I also have an Xbox 360 unit hooked up to the device. It is a non HDMI 360, so I have to use one of the toslink inputs for dolby 5.1. This receiver also supports the highest audio option the 360 can output, which is Dolby Digital 5.1 with WMA Pro. This codec uses the least compression of the other options. Keep in mind, even though this receiver supports Dolby True HD for the now defunct HD DVD format, you can never truly get that signal from a 360. Besides the software limitation, the new blu ray bitstream audio formats of Dolby True HD and DTS HD master audio can ONLY be ported through an HDMI cable. A s/pdif of any type will not carry this signal. I think someone else on here mentioned that the receiver doesn't broadcast well enough what type of signal you're getting. Some of us really like to see the evidence of what we're hearing. Well that is true. But the receiver does absolutely let you know what it's outputting. You just have to get sorta close (very tiny, won't be able to see it from the couch), but it's got dedicated backlit codec messages for EVERYTHING. Download the manual and check it out. On the page that shows what you may possibly see on the front panel, it's got everything. To add to the confusion, though, in some cases it depends on if your blu ray player is doing any decoding on its own. As with the PS3, it does the decoding itself vs. just sending it on the receiver. So if the receiver isn't doing the decoding, it's not going to show DTS HD MA, for example. It will show up as multichannel LPCM. Now chances are DTS HD MA is what you're hearing, but just another little nuance/annoyance of these newer audio streams.
An interesting tidbit on my HTPC was that I opted for a high end ATI Radeon, but not the 5000 series. Most all video cards now only support HDMI spec 1.1. Well, guess what, you actually need HDMI spec 1.3 minimum to support transport of DTS HD MA or Dolby True HD. Nice! Well, after the rebate, my card which is awesome, only cost around $60. The 5000 series Radeons cost 350-ish. You could also try a Xonar sound card for a couple hundred instead. But I opted to go with the cheaper option and wait this out until the 5000 series drop in price.
Turns out this was the right decision. This receiver is amazing. The only blu ray I own that has a DTS HD master audio track is the Michael Jackson concert DVD of This is It. So the receiver only shows it's getting a DTS signal, but I really don't see how the newer codec could sound any better if I do upgrade my video card. Just amazing clarity on the highs and precise bass thumps. If you get this receiver, you have to get this DVD to showcase it. It will make you smack your mama.
Keep in mind all of the other BS that goes along with blu ray playback if you're putting one of these in. There's virtually no home theater PC in existence which meets all of the HDCP(high definition content protection) and PAP (protected audio path) requirements. So your blu ray player will likely down rez picture or sound if there is some component that is not up to par (or possibly just drop any output altogether). The only solution to this is to use a product called AnyDVD HD to strip all all the DRM, including the HDCP and PAP restrictions. Of course, this only applies if you're using a HTPC. You do not have this luxury if you're using a stand alone blu ray player.
So the MCACC system is the auto setup function this unit uses. You wire a little microphone into the unit, place it on a tripod or box where you sit at about ear level and then let the big dog eat. Get out of the way, so you don't interfere with sound waves, and the unit starts piping white noise type of sounds out of all the speakers. It puts your sub woofer through the ringer, too. This it pretty loud, so don't run it at night when the babies are already asleep. It actually worked really well and I honestly haven't felt the need to tweak any settings after running this.
One option I did have to tweak was to set my front right and left tower speakers to small. It had defaulted through MCACC or possibly just factory setting, to large. Well, the problem here when you're streaming Hulu or Netflix that doesn't pipe in with 5.1, your sub never turns on. Setting front speakers to large tells the receiver to let them handle most if not all of the bass. So when I was streaming netflix, I was missing my bass hum on key scenes. Setting the speakers to small fixed that, the sub kicked on instantly, and started handling the bass. I guess if you have some whipass front speakers, it would be ok. But to me, that's the whole point of having a good sub. I likey my bass.
Since I figured most people looking at this receiver were geeks like me and were putting it in a similar scenario, I wanted to share a few things in hopes it might help.
More Pioneer VSX-9040TXH 7-Channel Direct Energy Amplification Home Theater Receiver (Black) reviews:
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Description of Pioneer VSX-9040TXH 7-Channel Direct Energy Amplification Home Theater Receiver (Black)
110w x 7 Direct Energy Amplification, THX Select 2 Plus: for dedicated Home Theatre rooms, Dolby True-HD/DTS-HD Master Audio: HD audio for Blu-Ray, HDMI Repeaters: 4in/1out, Faroudja 1080p Video Scaler, Advanced MCACC with 9 Band Eq , Works with iPHone Certified with Digital USB input, PQLS for Jitterless transmission of 2 Channel Stereo Music, ALC Multi; superior sound quality in low volume , Advanced Sound Retriever, PureCinema I/P Video Processing, Analog to HDMI upconversion , Sirius/XM Satellite Radio Ready, GUI for easy setup and Navigation , Multi-Zone (2) with Composite out for Zone 2, Component Inputs 2in/1out , Digital Inputs 5in/1out, Composite Inputs 4in/1out , Audio Inputs 3in/1out , Phase Control , 12v Trigger & RS232 for Custom IntegrationDigital Cameras & Photo Categories
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