Pioneer elite vsx 21

This past Saturday, I picked up this puppy from Mike, looks like brand spankin' new. Again,a big thanks to Mike. I 've been playing around with it for a couple days now. Comparing to the B&K 307, my initial impressions are both good and some agravating ones to boot.
Sound quality- While the pioneer is more dynamic due to the new surround codecs, the B&K edges it out,not by much, but in the musicality dept. The wolfsen dacs give the pioneer a tad more sparkle on the top end. I would say the wolfsen is a tad bit brighter than the burr browns and offers more detail in sound retrieval. While overall,the sound differences aren't all that big, still noticable that the B&K was a tad more musical overall. The pioneer seems to put alittle more emphasis on the top end and sometimes,depending on the recording,it sounds artificial when you compare the low end with the top end. The 307 blended both high and low well and never drew attention to either one. 2 channel was pretty darn good,almost as good as the 307,almost,close,but no cigar. There is something to be said for build quality folks,lets leave it at that.

Processing- well,who can complain about DTS HD master audio. Sound is supurb. The pioneer in surround of coarse walked all over the 307, but in just plain DD, it was pretty much even. The 307 had way more fine tuning capabilities, way more configurations to taylor the speakers and the sound.

Power- hard to test as I use an amp for the front 2. From what I could tell by the surrounds though, the pioneer pushed them equally as well as the 307.

Overall,I'm happy with the new toy, but a few irritations remain. The biggest one so far is if you run everything through the avr,hdmi, you can't watch tv without the receiver on. WTF....so one more step is needed to turn the tv to a different input. Also the lack of fine tuning that I've been spoiled with by the 307,was sorely missed. Doing things on the fly,adjusting speaker levels on the fly,etc, assigning different speakers to different inputs,all on the fly if you wanted. I'll get used to it like everything else,and again,these are just first impressions. The auto set up feature is very good,very,very good. The 307 retailed over 3 g's, The pioneer retailed around 7-800, Honestly,I have to say the over all sq of the pioneer is approaching that of the higher end toys,at a fraction of the price. For those who like to tweak untill wee hours of the morning,stay with seperates, but as an all in one with good sq, and enough tweek ability for the average joe, the pioneers offer alot for the coin.