Official Pioneer SC-68/67 Thread - Page 31

We were doing some sound comparisions with oppo BDP-105 using oppo"s analog out puts yesterday. With SC-68. They both sound great and both have their own charactors to it. I didnt compare their usb dac inputs yet. Oppo sounded just perfect on two channels stereo out puts but sc-68 had more percise tight control over acoustics but also we bit warm but refined. Thats may be that oppo has about 50 hours of playing time and sc-68 had no more than 4 hours. Oppo was very warm in those early hours. Therefore i think it is a base less comparison at this stage?
On the picture quality: cant see any difference between oppo, pioneer and straight out of motorola 3510m cable box on a 40" sony xbr tv. But when projected on a 150" screen then i have to say that oppo is better. No matter how you play with the settings, oppo makes the picture more refined. I dont know what they have done to the settings. We tried comparing the picture quality with onkyo tx-nr818 which has a descent chip but lower price point. Pioneer is much better than onkyo in picture quality but oppo comes out better in making picture less washed out and showed more depth. We watched in our family room which is not the best place for a projector.
All of the above is very subjective to our opinion. ( dont want any broken hearts LoL).

Now there is an issue that i need help with. I have purchased small speakers with the specks as follows.. I have to say for the price, these are amazong for medium size room and you can mount em upside down if your mounting them over 6 feet high because of their design. And they fill the room just great for me and they disapear physically and sound wise. pioneer just sounds great except one issue.
My automatic setup has setup the speakers at small sub=yes and crossover at 100hz. I can tell that i am missing some sounds inbetween at these settings. Can barely hear NFL reff and some other sounds in documentry. Setup has recognized 5.1 speakers setup just fine. Bass sounds good but its short at either end, not sure front or tail of the bass sound.
Next cross over option in SC-68 is 150hz. The manufacturer of these 5.1 speakers set advises crossover 120.


Satellite speakers:
Omnipolar technology creates a larger, more realistic soundstage
frequency response: 110-20,000 Hz (±3dB)
each handles up to 100 watts
sensitivity: 87 dB
3/4" PTH™ tweeter
2-3/4" Titanium Deposit Hybrid polypropylene woofer
wall-mounting brackets included
binding posts
4-1/4"W x 6"H x 4-3/4"D

Nanosat S8 subwoofer:
bass-reflex (ported) design
frequency response: 33-120 Hz
75-watt RMS amplifier
8" down-firing woofer with Ribbed Elliptical Surround™
12-1/4"W x 13-3/4"H x 13-1/2"D


Thank you in advance.
And thank you jbwitt for you suggetion on Remote control and i will look in to it.
Kris
Edited by FlatRocky - 1/21/13 at 8:06am

Guys I am still in the loop and confused. I have the SC-67 sitting at home unopened and don't know if I should upgrade to the sc-68

As I dont need the DAC. Is it worth to upgrade to sc-68 just for the slightly higher power rating, gold plated terminals and ceramic speaker binding posts. I am coming from the sc-57 which had the gold terminals and ceramic speaker binding posts.

Any input would be appreciated??!! Need to act fast.

Thanks

Cat,

Not sure if this helps but I went through the same selection process about two months ago. My priority was home theater first, music second. Running a 7.1 setup with some demanding 4 ohm KEF reference speakers in front. After alot of research and looking at the very helpful information from this forum, I went with the sc-67. At the time, the price was just over half the price of the 68 (I did some aggressive price shopping and comparison).

Couldn't be happier - receiver has been great and I haven't come anywhere close to maxing out the power supply. No regrets.

Good luck.

Thank you for the input!

Gold plated terminals do not enhance any sound quality, it's just a coating to prevent metal corrson over time. Connecting like to unlike metal surfaces would corrode faster compared to like to like metal contacts. But we are talking about something that take many years to develop. I am sure a little circuit contact spray would take care of it easily when it happens. Havn't found much info about ceramic terminals other than that ceramic is pretty much scratch proof.

Where do you see that the SC-68 has a higher power rating than the SC-67? I checked the pioneer website and they are both rated at 140 watts x 9 channels. In my option if MDAC isn't a requirement then the SC-68 isn't worth the extra cost.
Edited by colson79 - 1/21/13 at 10:52am

Thanks gr8sound

Remote is OK but I am far sighted, can't see the printing, the red background light is no help. Can't find my glasses, cant find the light switch LOL! In doing a small comparison as this it is just that you can tell which remote is more advanced with on screen macros already developed . For me-It is the one with the LT-RT arrow and enter button while you look at the TV, job done. Oris it the one where all buttons on the remote look and feel the same and have to look at the remote to be sure-sometimes using a 2 button approach to get the job done. The Pioneer remote needs a little more Left-Right Arrow/Enter implementation. Most people don't fall into my catagory I assume.
Thanks,
Dave

It's somewhat confusing as they are generally listed as 140 x 9. In the manual it actually differentiates between the two, particularly at 6 and 4 ohms.

Top line differences 68 vs 67:

8 ohm multi channel continuous output 810w vs 770w
6 ohm 190w vs 180w per channel
4 ohm 250w vs 230w per channel

Pretty nominal in the scheme of things.

If you download both models brochures then you will see the difference. I am not talking about the generic comparison.

I was confused when I got my SC68.

I knew that the power was 140 x 9.

The sticker on the SC68 said 190 x 9.

Not sure why.

Thanks for the info. It does seem pretty nominal and not worth the extra cost based on power output alone.

Correct, you need to look at the extra features the 68 provides over the 67. Power differences are minimal and I suspect even less than stated; they probably use the same supply and amps, but marketing needed to bump the numbers on the 68 since people expect more power (even though it does not matter).

I decided to get the 67 to replace my VSX-33. I'm still pretty much a disc spinner, and can't justify the extra cost of the 68. The 67 does everything I want (and more). Thanks for everyone's very helpful commentary. It made my purchasing decision an easy one.

Thanks everybody good info

I forgot to add I guess its more of an ego since I always get the top model in an AV receiver and therefore I had the 57. My dealer insisted I go for the 67 if I didn't need the DAC. Its more money to him if I buy the 68 but he said most of his customers bought the 67 and that's why he is not stocking the 68, he is an Elite dealer for many years.

I just got my Pioneer SC-67 from Best Buy and set it up yesterday. One surprising omission is the Pioneer did not come with any instruction manual (you spend $1400 on a receiver it does not come with instructions?). You have to download it from the Pioneer site. The instructions are very vague and not written in a logical manner. It comes with a CD (AV Navigator) for use on a laptop to aid you in setting up the system but it does not run on a Mac.

It was noticeably lighter than my Onkyo TX-NR906 (54 lbs vs 38 lbs). The Pioneer no longer has that "Urushi" gloss black finish but rather a brushed aluminum look. Less smudges but it no longer matches my other Elite stuff. The speaker connections use banana plugs but the connectors themselves are rather flimsy and feel they will break if any tension is applied to it as the connectors bend readily. You can rename all the inputs (e.g. change DVD to Denon DVD3930) but the process is very long and tedious. The text goes through all the letters (upper and lowercase) as well as nearly every symbol on a keyboard, such as #,$,%, etc). BTW, when you are finished entering the new name, click on ENTER on the remote, do not click on RETURN or you will lose your settings.

I initially used it in stereo mode using an Oppo BDP-83SE (with the upgraded ESS DACs). The sound is noticeably different. The music seems cleaner with less grain than the Onkyo but the Onkyo seemed to be more robust in sound. The highs in the Pioneer is not as open as the Onkyo, the bass is not as extended as well. Soundstage and imaging on the Pioneer is notably better than the Onkyo.

I then ran MCACC through its paces. It reported that my center channel speaker is out of phase. I checked the connections and the speaker is definitely connected correctly. I am going to have to take down the speaker and check the wiring to see if there is anything amiss internally. After running MCACC the surround sounds more open and spacious than the Audyssey XT from the Onkyo, but bass was definitely light on the bottom end (it could be related to the phase issue on the center channel speaker).

I am using an Oppo BDP-83SE and a Pioneer BDP-09FD for movie playback. One thing I noticed immediately is that video appears a lot later on screen than my Onkyo (which was pretty slow in itself). For example, when I play a Paramount disc, the opening splash screen (the Paramount logo with High Definition text) the sound comes out first and the logo finally appears on screen near the end of the animation. There was no change in PQ as compared to my older Onkyo since video is passed through.

I have one BIG issue with the Pioneer. The remote control is useless. Totally sucks. Big time. I have never encountered one as bad as this one. It is long and slender. The buttons are all similarly sized and arranged in an unfriendly layout. The text is so small on it you cannot read it, I swear you really need a magnifying glass to read the darn thing. It is backlit but it's useless because its lit red (the red lit is very dim and button letters are mostly invisible) and most of the buttons are dual function and the function you need is not the one that is lit. I am resigned to the fact I will have to buy a universal remote to be rid of this annoyance.

I bought this receiver for its multi-zone capability and I have yet to get it working. I wanted to use a dual system in my home theater. I have my usual 7.1 setup for watching movies. But I also wanted to set up a second zone in the theater so I can use a different pair of speaker just for listening to CDs in stereo. When using the second zone, i do not want the 7.1 system engaged. I definitely have the second pair of speaker connected to the correct terminals. You have to engage the second zone from the front panel (you cannot activate it from the remote). But the 7.1 system comes on and the second pair of speakers is silent.

See my post above... I agree with the terrible remote comment in general. However, my multi-zone works great, and I use all 4 zones. You can definitely control all 4 zones from the remote in the box. I did for several days until I got my other remote programmed. Once you hit the zone button at the bottom of the remote it puts the remote into a different mode, and all of the input buttons will then send different discrete commands for that zone. And all of them are definitely independent, even the Z4 HDMI. I have the SC-67 but it has the same zone capabilities as the 68. If you haven't gotten it working yet I can only suggest rerunning the setup software. I'm pretty sure it adjusts some settings during the wire-up phase.

I didn't see where anybody answered this.... it's yes. I do it all the time.

Guys,
Is there a key combination to fully factory reset our SC-68?
Thanks

press + hold tune down and press + hold Zone 3 for ten second until restart

I am still learning how to use MCACC so others can chip in if anything I say is not accurate but I had the same issue when I first got my SC-68 and had thoughts about taking one of my surround speakers apart to see if there was a problem with its internal wiring. But I read the manual again and noticed where it said this can be caused when there is too much reflection for the MCACC to handle. I repositioned my speakers, moved my furniture around, pulled my drapes and it went through the MCACC ok. If you are certain the wiring to your speakers is correct you are supposed to just tell MCACC to continue.

And to add to this, it makes picture quality of my cable signal better than any high end receivers i have tested so for using it's hdmi inputs.
And the sound quality of the preamp very very good to my taste.

+1