Home > Consumer Reviews > JVC RX-9000VBK Dolby Digital/DTS Audio/Video Receiver

My receiver arrived yesterday and had it installed and running in approx 45 mins. Very impressed with the sound quality. Further, it has a 4 speaker stereo mode, which I have not had the luxury of having on any of my previous receivers (Harmon Kardon , Pioneer, Onkyo). This receiver replaces a Pioneer 906s and I must say, it is truly an upgrade. The only thing that I am unhappy with is the remote because it is not backlit.

I am not an audiophile. I happened to come into this receiver at a very reasonable price. I have some tech background, but very little. This system is both very complicated and yet somewhat intuitive. As another reviewer said, the manual is a bunch of technical jargon that is dificult to follow. I have yet to get a surround sound system. so I am only listening to this on 2 speakers, but I can still appreciate the great sound. I have a VCR and DVD player hooked up to it, and they work great. Very noticeable difference from my previous receiver.

JVC packed a lot of features into this receiver, at a reasonable price. Many of these are seldom used, like the DSP "concert hall" type filters. Others have subtle limitations, but most work as advertised.

The sound quality is great, especially from digital sources. The remote is nice, once you get used to the layout. There is a "one touch" mode that remembers the settings for each input; this is a very nice feature, as you generally don't listen to your CD player with the same settings as your television. The unit itself is very sturdy and visually appealing. You can enter call letters for AM/FM stations, so rather than "92.5" you see "KQRS".

Now, the problems. After it warms up, say after an hour or two of use, it no longer responds to IR remotes (specifically, my TiVo remote using JVC codes). The RF remote still works, though. The FM receiver is quite weak; stations that were easily picked up by my antique Kenwood without an antenna require a powered antenna with this unit. The S-VHS and composite video inputs are not mixed, as other reviewers have noted. The volume control resets to "30" (a very low level with my setup) if you turn it off at a level higher than that, although some people may consider this a feature...

Balancing the flaws with the many features, and factoring in the price, this unit is a good value for the money. None of the flaws are fatal, and the unit generally performs as advertised.

The JVC RX-9000VBK is apparently JVCs flagship reciever, and while it is a nice reciever, it does not present itself as boldly as some of JVCs other flagship equipment. This receiver is big and complicated, so I will try to divide it up into the different aspects that I feel are important for a reciever to have.

Frist and foremost, this is a reciever, so lets look at audio quality. I have hooked this unit up to a seven piece two-thousand dollar THX Technics speaker system, and it has very nice sound. Because this particular system has two active subwoofers (a left and a right one), I found the Subwoofer level adjustment a godsend. All of the speakers had individual level adjustment (less the mains which had balance control), which is very nice. The noise level is as it should be in any reciever in this class, non-existant. The unit has many audio inputs: One COAX PCM [or SPDI/F], three optical TOS-LINK, and 3 sets of standard analouge connectors. This does not include any of the sets that are coupled with video. The optical and coax digital inputs are software routable, which is good. The unit does have sub-room output with a second set of stereo speakers as an option, but I will not be using this setup. I also found the DSP effects to be genuinely lowsey. The Pro-Logic mode is VERY quiet and VERY noisy, and the other modes don't do much for me. The built in 3-band EQ on the other hand, I find quite useful, but 5 band would have made me like it a little more.

Next video and the like. The unit has inputs for DVD, TV, an I/O for VCR, also a front video input jack and in addition a VCR2 that is virtually useless. All of the inputs except VCR2 support both S-Video and Composite. Here is one spot where the unit looses points. The S-Video and Composite video are on seperate busses in the unit, i.e. if you have a video camera the uses composite video, all your output devices need to be wired for composite video. Its utterly redicilous. In addition, what is the point of a second VCR connector that has only composite video in? There is none. Very disapointing.

With DVD input you have four ways to connect your audio, you can use Coaxial Digial, Optical Digital, 2-Channel Stereo, and a 6-channel descrete mode with inputs for each of Center, Sub, Left and Right, and Rear Left and Right. I myself could not get my JVC DVD Player to send 5.1 Channel audio over optical and have my JVC Reciever recieve it, so I'm stuck with the 6-channel mode. I am still discussing this issue with JVC, but this is also disapointing that there seems to be prodcut compatibility issues between the same brand.

The unit does have an optical digial out, a feature I'm not using now, but mabye I will some time in the future. Its nice to have there.

Of corse there are AM and FM radio modes, but I don't have an antenna, so I don't get a single channel. Its probably a good tuner. I really don't know.

The manual is an abomination of technical writing. I recomend having a tech-savy friend help you install it rather than resorting to the manual. It only explains how to change settings without the remote, which leaves out the entire on-screen system. Thankfully, the design of the unit itself is good and relivelty easy to use, with a surprisingly small number of options.

The remote is well designed, but has no support for DVD players of any kind. This is unfortunate, because if not for that, I could have actually used one remote for the whole setup. JVC has invoatve technology called compu-link, and once you get by its primitive stages, its very impressive. All of the components in the system I was setting this up in (less the speakers which I've already mentioned) were JVC, a JVC D-Series 32" TV, an older (but still AWESOME) JVC-S9500U VCR, and a JVC BX2000 DVD Player. When you turn the reciever off, everything else shuts right down. When you power on the reciever and pick VCR, the VCR powers up. Good design here. JVC does include a remote sender to add a smiliar feature to non-jvc equipment, but it must be placed so that it can "see" all the other compoents, which can be very awakard. The switching can be annoying occasionally. Changing mixing modes on the DVD player often made the reciever switch to stereo analouge mode for DVDs insted of the 6 channel mode.

Its obvious that JVC still has alot of work to do in the reciever market. They should really invest more time into manual design. Also, at the retial price, its fairly expensive for what it does. If this unit were about $500, it would be a bargin.

The reason I bought this reciever is I thought it would impress me, and to be frank, it doesn't, but I'm not an easy person to please. I probably should have saved my money and bought a ONKYO TX-DS989 :)

Although I have only had the JVC RX-9000VBK for a short time, it has not taken long to appreciate the quality of sound that it produces. I fancy myself somewhat of an audiophile. I have been buying equipment for over 40 years; therefore, I think that I have an experienced listening ear. It is with that ear that I can observe the strong bass and the crisp highs that this receiver produces. The receiver has plenty of audio and video inputs and outputs for the price. The instruction manual is excellent and I am somewhat puzzled by one of the reviewers in this section criticism of the instructions. As for power what more could you want? Unless your listening area is over 16' by 30', which mine is, the power is sufficent to produce distortion free sound that is loud enough to cause your ears to reach the threshold of pain.

However, the biggest drawback is that it only has one output for the front set of speakers. I thought that the output for the "extra room" set of speakers could be used at the same time in the same room but this does not seem to be the case.(I haven't finished reading the Manual). I have no need for the feature that allows the remote control use of the receiver in a second room. But for those that do, you would find this receiver a cost saver.

Although I am experienced in connecting togther components of a system, I think that the receiver is so well desinged, that even the novice should should have little trouble with the connections.

If you consider cost, features and quality, I doubt that you can beat this receiver at what I consider its low cost. I think that I am in for many years of trouble free operation. My experience with other JVC audio and video products has proven to me that JVC products are reliable.