AV Receivers

The home cinema industry has been in something of a rut since the financial meltdown of 2007, with gaping holes where much of the high-end market used to be. But Arcam's AVR850 – its latest flagship AV receiver – has me thinking we may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Onkyo's TX-RZ800 marks a break from the brand's typical AVR design, offering an oversized volume dial and a pimple rash of tiny buttons. As a fashion statement, it must be said it’s not particularly pretty, but it is at least different. Other changes are less obvious.

It’s easy to forget that Yamaha effectively invented the home cinema receiver market. When screens were square and multichannel audio was young and frisky, it pioneered with monster AV receivers that became things of legend. Back then, DSP was Definitely Something Profound, and Yamaha wrote the rulebook on soundfield design.

For many years, the general perception of the Canadian brand NAD might best have been summed up as ‘workmanlike.’ Behind that rather prosaic grey livery, the engineering was solid, reliable and normally very effective but rarely did it cause a huge amount of excitement. This isn’t to say there haven’t been some great NAD products – there have been several, including the predecessors to the models on test here – but the brand was about worth rather than superficial excitement.

Pioneer’s new flagship AVR comes to the HCC test bench fresh from its Dolby Atmos firmware upgrade, bristling with features that will have both music and movie fans salivating. It's a lavishly-engineered top-flight powerhouse that deserves an audition if you're upgrading your setup – although it does have one curious flaw...

The £500 AVR market is more competitive than the final stages of The Great British Bake-Off. These days, it’s no good simply offering multichannel decoding and amplification with the odd DSP mode and a raft of HDMI sockets. No: you have to spread the love and get your AVR to cosy up to all the other technological toys that are stuffed with entertainment content, including smartphones and servers. And the best way to do that is sans wires.