Harman-Kardon SAT-HD200, HD-SAT520, SIR-TS160 manual Harman/Kardon AVR 325 A/V Receiver

G E A R G U I D E

Harman/Kardon AVR 325 A/V Receiver

A

B

A. The AVR 325 is a surround lover’s receiver, offering Dolby EX, DTS ES, Dolby Pro Logic II, and LOGIC7.

B. The back panel sports two compo- nent video inputs, an eight-channel analog audio input, an RS-232 port, and assignable rear- channel amps.

priced models’ spec sheets, and you’d be surprised to find how often the phrase “all channels driven” is mysteriously absent. While you’re at it, look for the full frequency response of 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz, as Harman/Kardon specifies. Occasionally, you might find a few competitors slip by with a less- demanding 40 Hz at the low end.

If I could condense everything I know about receivers down to four words of advice, they would

be these: Buy by the pound. A heavier black box is more likely to house a beefier power supply, and that suggests greater dynamic prowess, among other benefits. The AVR 325 weighs in at a healthy 40 pounds; that’s about 13 pounds heavier than Harman/Kardon’s next model down, the 5.1-channel AVR 225 ($549), and only 4 pounds lighter than the next model up, the 7.1-channel AVR 525 ($1,199).

While we’re talking about num- bers, let me repeat my conviction

that 5.1 channels are plenty for most home theaters. Still, even I must admit that adding two rear speakers to the mix will allow your system to cover a large, wide space more evenly. Besides, you could always trade the extra chan- nels for higher volume and better dynamics by running a 7.1-channel model in 5.1 mode, without the rear speakers. My favorite number is 5.2. Please forgive the digres- sion, but, once you’ve heard your system with two subwoofers, you’ll never want to go back.

Not afraid of the merry-go-round of fashion, I connected the AVR 325 to seven Paradigm Reference Studio/20 speakers, as well as to two subwoofers: Paradigm’s

12-inch PW-2200 and

Pinnacle’s 8-inch Baby Boomer. If you’re keeping score, that adds up to 7.2 chan- nels, and I pulled a few Dolby EX and DTS ES titles off of

the shelf to take full advantage of them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t supplement my own discs with anything current from Blockbuster. Whether the EX and ES formats aren’t penetrating quickly, EX- and ES-encoded titles aren’t properly labeled, or luck just ran against me that day, I don’t know.

Setting up the AVR 325 in a rough-and-ready way doesn’t take long, thanks to Harman/Kardon’s patented and trademarked EzSet system (the legal department must have put in almost as many hours

as the research-and-development department did). At the tip of the remote, there’s a small micro- phone that senses the customary pink-noise test tones and sends level-setting commands back to the receiver, which means that you can get along without an SPL meter, although it wouldn’t hurt to use a meter to double- check and fine-tune. You might find, as I did, that EzSet and your meter come up with slightly different settings.

As I set up the receiver, I tripped over one of Harman/ Kardon’s user conveniences. Every time I tried to assign the digital coax-2 jack to the video-2 input, the receiver switched to the analog audio inputs. At first, I thought the menu was failing to accept the setting, but it turns out that the video-2 input has a unique logic circuit that switches to coax-2 when a digital signal is present and defaults to the ana- log jacks when there’s no digital signal. This will come in handy with certain HDTV cable boxes that output digital audio for some channels and analog audio for others. (Until recently, I had such a box, but I’ve upgraded to one that feeds both digital and analog soundtracks through the coax outputs.)

I only had one gripe with the AVR 325, and that concerned its remote. It has both learning capability and preprogrammed codes, but, with all of those tiny buttons, using it to operate an entire system would be a mixed blessing. The OSD button that activates the onscreen menu is especially hard to find. On the positive side, Harman/Kardon

54 Home Theater / June 2003 • www.hometheatermag.com