Which brand AV recivers bass effect is best ?

Question

DENON

Harmon Kardon

Pioneer

Yamaha

Rotel

Onkyo

Answer 1

Actually Bass isn't affected by the receiver, it just sends the signal via your preout to your subwoofer.  Depending on the sub you have will effect the bass.  You can adjust the bass level and the tone control Bass in the reciever, but the same can be done on the sub itself.

I find it's best to leave the Tone controls alone and have the subwoofer handle the bass level.  A good subwoofer will do the most for the sound, so I would look at getting an SVS, Hsu or Epik or Elemental Design sub rather than a store bought sub.

Now receivers can have subtle differences in sound (some think Yamaha recievers are bright sounding) but in a certain price range, most recievers will sound excatly the same.  It's the speakers themselves that will have the most effect on sound quality.  If you have big tower speakers with huge woofers and a great sub, you will have all the bass in the world.  If you have crappy little Bose cubes and their "bass module" that only gets down to 47Hz on a good day, then you will have hardly any bass at all.

I would look at the speakers first and good sub first, the reciever is only secondary.

Answer 2

Well I just got an Onkyo 606 and it has LOADS of power and bass. I have it powering a pair of Cerwin Vega VE-12's(a massive pair of tower speakers with 12'' woofers) and they put out more bass than my Yamaha powered-subwoofer(no joke!). Most Onkyo receivers(including the 606) use High-Current Power Supplies which is good when you are driving power-hungry speakers. I personally wouldn't go with Harmon Kardon because they are known to have technical problems and mediocre customer support. I had a Yamaha previously and it was okay, but it didn't give out much bass at all. Denon is good but you can get a comparable receiver from Onkyo for hundreds less. And I haven't heard Rotel so I don't know about them. But Rotel is going to be MUCH more expensive than any of the other brands mentioned.

But yeah, I would go with Onkyo.