What Happened To Sony A/V receivers?

The last Sony AVR I purchased, about three years ago, was an upper-mid-range ($1500) ES unit (forget the model). It was to replace an older (non-HDMI) Denon, and wsa replaced itself by a Pioneer Elite SC-27. I have a very old Yamaha unit and cannot comment on the new models.

Compared to the Denon, the Sony's room correction was lousy, and the amps weak. It's bass management was also poor. I later read several reviews and found that Sony's 100+ W amps would drop down to ~30 W or so all channels driven, and did not like 4-ohm loads at all. My Denon lost a little with all channels driven, but maybe 10%, not 2/3 or more. The Pioneer's room correction was much better than either Sony or Denon (but the Denon was another midrange unit and the Pioneer a top-of-the-line model) and the amps much better. Of course, the Pio had a much richer feature set, but again cost much more.

Bottom line: With absolutely horrible room EQ (I have used it on four different speaker systems in two rooms and it generated poor responses every time) and sub-par amplifiers, I have not tried Sony since.

YMMV - Don

In the early 1970s Sony's audio components were superb and they introduced some awesome, new technologies....
But they went the way of mass market, big-box sellers..
Plus concentrating more corporate R&D resources and $ to the growing segments of displays, PCs, laptops, portable music players and video games..

Just my $0.02..

Sony receivers have always been crappy, even the ones made in the '70s were crap, that is why all the other other brands are more common and command more $ off of Ebay. Spec wise, their amps and tuners were outperformed by cheaper competitors.
Their AV stuff was no different, their past came to haunt them.

What were those late 70s maybe early 80s commercials for TVs, where they said they outsold (or something like that) the other guys, and then said 'even Sony' and showed some grumbling Japanese dude?

Incorrect..
The 1st line of Sony receivers introduced about 1970/71 were incredible..
Metal front extruded panels, great tuners, even the tone controls were rotary switches using precision wire-wound resistors instead of the cheaper carbon pots, and their product had great sonics sound and good specs...
Also they had a 3-year warranty as well..

FYI..
I know this story well as I worked for the 1st Sony Hi-Fi component dealer in SoCal....

However as I mentioned in my original post as the market expanded through the 1970s into the 1980s they went to the Darkside addressing primarily the big box retailer..
Down went the Price, Performance, Specifications and Quality..

Just my $0.02...

I don't know. I've never had a problem with my 10 year old 1070 (now powering my dad's hsu enthusiast speakers) or with my 4400ES. Sonys are user friendly, have plenty of power for me to get loud and stay sounding good and very reliable. ALWAYS works without issue.

I had a Sony STR-820, and I'm no audiophile like some people here but it was a perfectly fine receiver. I compared it to Onkyo and Yamaha at the time and to me the Sony sounded better (or lets say just as good to eliminate bias), it had more features and was user friedly, all for a cheaper price. IIRC correctly there were a lot of good reviews for its sounnd quality in various magazines, as well as value for money.

I recently purchased the str-810 and I'm very pleased with it's performance. I had an older onkyo which had a weak center channel.
I had a bad experience with Sony dvd players in the past...I also stayed away for a few years.

I read good things about the 2004 $4500 62.7lb 200Wpc STR-DA9000ES with iLink. Looks like things went down from then on. The current 5600ES can't even do phase correction beyond 48kHz. Maybe it still sounds good if you use analogue direct with no room correction. But this forum is predominantly into room correction, it may explain the lack of interest here.

The Japan-only 9100ES is even better with HDMI support...things REALLY went down from there.

Sony recently shifted their higher end products to an exclusive retail channel, which seems to be the death-knell when it comes to online communities (which generally seem to favor online shopping and ID brands as a matter of convenience (and of course, getting lower prices due to competition)); the "top of the line" Sony parts that you can buy online are a far cry from high end units available from Denon, Yamaha, Pioneer, etc (the STR-DN1020 and 2010 look nice, but we're talking department store nice, not hi-fi shop nice). The new ES units look "good" for their asking price, however finding them is probably tricky for most users (Best Buy only seems to sell the entry level 3500/3600 model, and I've read some interesting things about the "system integrators" that Sony's website directs users to (one thread the poster said the "system integrator" was a security system installer, despite Sony listing them as a retailer for ES products)).

That aside, Sony generally seems to take a bad rap in the enthusiast community, just like Bose within the audiophile community, and Apple within most computer communities - even if Sony released a product that absolutely set the bar, "Sony receivers have always been crappy" is the rule of thumb (similar arguments exist against Bose and Apple, and I'm sure you can come up with your own specialized examples in your respective industries - there's always some public figure that specialists love to hate). I'm not arguing either way, just making an observation. In some cases, yes, Sony has made bad products - but they don't have a monopoly on bad products (for the sake of example, I can't even begin to count the number of "issues" threads I've seen related to Onkyo receivers and their reliability or customer service).

On a smaller scale, I've seen the 4600ES post fairly reasonable numbers in reviews - it delivers (or at least the reviews I've read support the claim) on par with other receivers in the $1000-$1500 range, but consider that other manufacturers usually still have a few tiers up from that, and in some cases separates above that; it can't be all things for all people. Add the complexity of actually buying a unit (compared to say, a Yamaha RX-A2000, which you can pick up at a number of stores and sites in that same $1000-$1500 range), and the lack of variable pricing, and it becomes substantially less attractive/competitive. If anyone is interested:
http://www.hometheater.com/content/s...es-av-receiver
http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/sto...er=STRDA4600ES
http://www.digitaltrends.com/receive...4600es-review/