Home Theatre/TV: Pioneer Home Theatre – Review – 75

It’s been some time since the VSA-AX10Ai was Pioneer’s flagship home theatre receiver. The now obsolete gold beast was chock-full of the latest technology of its day including DTS-ES Discrete and the first incarnation of Pioneer’s MCACC microphone calibration system. It all sounds a bit old school now, but back then the AX10 was a formidable device and a challenger for the world’s best HT receiver.
In fact Pioneer didn’t replace the AX10 at all, preferring to promote good but lesser credentialled receivers such as the AX4 to the head of the pack.

Maybe it was because Pioneer was preparing the way for the emergence of the true heir to the AX10, the mighty SC-LX90 Susano.

Susano means ‘God of Storms’ in Japanese, and with 10 200W channels of what Pioneer calls Direct Energy HD ICEpower amplification, it is capable of conjuring up a hurricane in just about any home theatre room.
At 35kg the LX90 Susano is no shrinking violet. It is also much taller and deeper than your run-of-the-mill receiver.

Suffice it to say, a sturdy support with plenty of spare real estate is an absolute must.

Apart from its sheer bulk the Susano’s first noticeable feature is its centrally mounted LCD panel for navigation of disc menus and viewing pictures via USB input without having to switch on a monitor. It won’t display video from HDMI sources, but it will through analogue connections. I found it good for navigating DVD-Audio discs sans telly.

Naturally, the LX90 will decode all the latest sound formats, and its DLNA certified Ethernet port allows access through a LAN to music, video and pictures stored on a PC. There’s no provision for internet radio, however, which I feel is an oversight for a cost-no-object flagship receiver – lucky for me I had so much fun watching movies and listening to music through the Susano, I didn’t miss it.

You’ll never run out of inputs on the LX90, with six HDMI 1.3 sources allocated for as well as two outputs – useful for those lucky punters with a high-definition TV and a projector.

I could go on and on [and you do, Gazza, you do - Ed], but certainly the LX90 is the most sophisticated and powerful home theatre receiver/amplifier I have ever laid my hands on, and I couldn’t wait to test drive it. Happily, Pioneer’s MCACC microphone calibration system took the pain out of setting up and I was ready to drive the beast.

In tandem with the BDP-LX71 Blu-ray player and new KRP-500A high-definition monitor, the LX90 produced quite sensational sound quality from the hi-def audio tracks on Blu-ray discs. The outstanding detail and crashing dynamics were extremely impressive for sure, but the sheer weight of sound the Susano produced was a real eye opener. There is something about the way the LX90 produces sound that no other receiver thus far has been able to match. I was actually assessing the soundtracks of movies such as Iron Man and Blood Diamond in hi-fi terms: there was excellent detail, visceral impact and fine surround sound steering, but these attributes were combined with musicality and warmth.

Pioneer’s Susano LX90 is a triumph of a home theatre receiver with stunning power and control, real musicality and involvement – possibly the answer for those high-end lovers of music and movies wanting a one-box solution.

The performance of the LX90 is dependent on what is connected to it, so Pioneer has introduced a new range of Blu-ray players. Enter the BDP-LX71, which replaces last year’s excellent BDP-LX70A.

Sporting the glorious deep gloss black fascia and blue display sported by all the components in the LX range, the LX71 has the same battleship build as the earlier LX70A and is just as stunning in the flesh.

It is quite a large and heavyweight player, and the reasons for this are the same as its illustrious predecessor: the video and audio boards are completely separate from the power supply, and much attention has been paid to vibration resistance in order to produce the best performance possible. With on-board Dolby Digital True-HD decoding the LX71 can be connected to older receivers via its analogue outputs (7.1 channels available), but there is no internal DTS-HD Master Audio decoding – maybe a firmware upgrade in the future will incorporate this.

The player’s HDMI output transmits 1080p/24fps video, and the v1.3 profile supports the deep colour specification. What the LX71 does lack, however, is an Ethernet port, so those looking to access BD-Live interactive content from their home theatre room will be out of luck.

Having said that, the LX71 provided the best looking images I have yet experienced from Blu-ray disc. Colours were rich and vibrant without a trace of over-saturation, and the amount of detail unearthed by the Pioneer was a revelation.
Jackie Chan and Jet Li are the definitive kung-fu dream team in The Forbidden Kingdom, and combined with the LX90 and Kuro KRP500A display, the LX71 really was able to strut its stuff. There was fantastic detail on this disc, and fast action panning scenes were miraculously judder-free and fluid, with no motion blur whatsoever. With realistic skin tones and beautifully rendered country scenes, the LX71 turned a pretty decent bubblegum flick into a very enjoyable watch indeed.

The action scenes on Casino Royale were also a joy to behold, with great colour depth and motion control. Skin tones were once again practically flawless, although having the fantastic KRP500A plasma did help in this regard. I also had the services of the latest Panasonic and JVC 1080p projectors on hand as a test group, and the results were similarly phenomenal.

In short, the BDP-LX71 offers true state of the art video and audio performance from both DVD and Blu-ray, and even though it lacks Ethernet for BD-Live the LX71 offers the best video replay I’ve yet seen.

The third piece of Pioneer’s delicious puzzle is the company’s latest and greatest plasma telly, the KRP500A.
A brooding slab of minimalist chic, the 500A is a 50-inch, full HD 1080 x 1920 display with an external media centre. Separating the tuner electronics and connection panel from a display has two main advantages: if mounting on a wall, only one cable need be used between the media centre and the display, eliminating cable clutter; and there is much easier access to inputs as the media centre can be placed on your home theatre support.

It also makes the panel less bulky and therefore less obtrusive, and this was most certainly the case with the 500A – it’s one of the slimmer plasma displays I’ve come across.

As bare as the display is, the media centre is far busier in terms of inputs and widgets, with no fewer than four HDMI 1.3 inputs, as well as Component and coaxial. There’s also DLNA certified Ethernet, card reader slots and USB connectivity, among others. The internal tuner is analogue, but a Freeview or MySkyHD decoder can easily be attached to the 500A via the media centre.

The KRP-500A doesn’t have on-board loudspeakers, but any self-respecting owner would surely connect it to a proper home theatre system – it deserves it. A colour sensor automatically adjusts the picture depending on the ambient light in the room, and to be honest I didn’t notice it in action (a good thing).

Both the panel and media centre are beautifully styled in gloss black and would be quite a centrepiece for an upmarket home theatre system, Of the many picture modes available through the well-laid-out remote control, ‘Pure’ was the one I selected while viewing. Of course, the 500A can be ISF calibrated for optimum performance, but the Pure setting removes most of the picture processing – think ‘source direct’ and you’d be getting close.

In this mode picture quality via the LX71 Blu-ray player was sublime, with endlessly deep black resolution, clean and judder-free movement, and detail to die for. Viewing the 500A was quite a treat and even clunky old DVD looked good. Edward Norton’s strangely unsatisfying Hulk actually looked more high resolution than I remember, with nice shadow detail and excellent colour gradation.

But things became simply outstanding with Blu-ray. Underworld, with its many dark scenes (actually all of them), was stunning viewing – the black performance of this Pioneer was quite gob smacking, and the juxtaposition of the gloomy dark scenes and copious amounts of realistic blood spurting everywhere turned the movie into something resembling high art. And dare I mention the extra detail I noticed while scanning every millimetre of Kate Beckinsale’s outfit..?
I could go on and on, but this high-end trio from Pioneer had me salivating. Add a dash of high power and superb detail, mix well with sublime resolution and natural, lifelike imagery, and the result is a veritable home theatre banquet. Simply awesome.

GARY PEARCE

TECH SPECS

SC-LX90
Home Theatre Receiver    $13,999
BDP-LX71
Blu-ray Player     $1899
Kuro KRP500A
Plasma Display and Media Centre    $10,999

SC-LX90 Susano

POWER: 200W x 7, 140W x 10
AUDIO FORMATS: DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD surround sound
CONNECTIVITY: 6 x HDMI in/2 x out, Ethernet, USB, iLink
OTHER FEATURES:
- 5.1-inch LCD monitor
- Advanced MCACC setup with 9-band EQ
- DLNA certified
- Lip sync adjustment
- Digital Core Engine with Freescale 400MIPS Processing DSP
- iPod player digital direct via USB
- Digital video converter (up to HDMI)
DIMENSIONS: 44 x 24.7 x 47.9cm (W/H/D)
WEIGHT: 35.5kg

BDP-LX71

Video D/A converter: 297MHz/12-bit (high definition)
Audio Converter: 192kHz/24-bit Wolfson DACs x 4
Output: 1080p/24fps
Connectivity: HDMI x 1, Component x 1, 7.1 analogue outputs, S-Video x 1, digital coaxial and optical x 1
Dimensions: 42 x 12.4 x 26cm (W/H/D)
Weight: 5.7kg

Kuro KRP-500A

Type: Plasma
Screen size: 50 inches (127cm)
Resolution: 1080 x 1920
Connectivity (media centre): 4 x HDMI, 1 x component, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x PC, 1 x USB, 2 x card reader slots
Dimensions: 123.3 x 72.3 x 6.4cm (W/H/D)
Weight: 31.4kg

CONTACT:

www.pioneernz.co.nz

Pros

• Staggeringly good HT experience

• To die for aesthetics

Cons

• BDP-LX71 lacks Ethernet connection

• Keep working that overtime

VERDICT

• The sublime Pioneer trio personifies everything that’s great about home theatre, and although expensive, repays the debt with a simply outstanding experience.