Maybe a silly question, but how would you describe HK AV receiver sound?
Bright Neutral Warm
A friend bought a HK 235 and although he(and I) had high expectations, it sounds as if the mid to mid-highs are almost non-existent. It may be because of his speakers and/or low quality interconnects, but it really sounds horrible although this sounded quite good with his 20 year old Kenwood stereo amp.
IMO, HK's are mostly neutral across the product line. If you are comparing the sound to cheaply made consumer amps that over-empasize the highs, you will definitely notice less brightness with HK. I am not knocking the Kenwood, they made some nice products back in the day.
As I have posted before, I find the H/K AVRs to have a very warm, almost wooly sound. It is also somewhat dark sounding. What you have really told me is that your friend bought the receiver using his old speakers, which matched his old Kenwood, but do not match (sound-wise) with the H/K. What speakers does your friend have?
H/K works very well with a very bright, forward sounding speaker, especially those will a hard metal dome tweeter, as the H/Ks can tame the brightness from such speakers. Good choices for the H/K include JMlabs, Cantons, Mirage, Athena, and to a lesser extend Monitor Audio and Totem speakers. Very bad combos would include Paradigm, PSB, and Yamaha, among others.
So again, I have to ask, what speakers does he have?
Hawk, What speakes would you advise with a HK635. From where I come the choices are not htat many and the rands you mntioned may not be available. I do have the option of Maurdant Shaurt,KEF, ELAC, perhaps Monitor (though not sure) and Wharfedale, Infiniti and JBL. I am still deciding on an AVR and ame swinging between the Marantz 7500 and HK AVR 635.Could you advise on the best possibel combos of both. I listen to music 50% and movies 50%. Like listening to the entire sound spectrum at not very high volumes. I also like to cvrank up the volume only when listening to rock or movies with sound effects.
Ranjit after the weekend I should be able to tell how an HK pairs with Mordaunt-Short as my friend will bring his receiver to my place to hear what difference it makes and I have MS Avant speakers(908, 903, 905)which are brightish(and British )
What Hawk describes is exactly what we heard with my friends HK paired with relatively unknown speakers(Visonik David 6000), "almost wooly" I also came to the conclusion that the speakers sounded good with the Kenwood due to a bright with warm pairing and terrible with the HK due to warm/warm pairing.
Once we tested on my speakers I will post again reporting our findings.
Okay, we have done the test of pairing my friends HK AVR235 with my speakers and there was a fast improvement to the sound(In fact my friend now likes his purchase )
Something I did notice is that the HK does not sound as powerful as my CA 540R, despite the claimes about high current. I have to add that I got the same feeling about my previous Yamaha 650.
In the end the HK is good with many features, but I did expect a lot more from it.
Abe, Thanks for the review. I presume that this implies that given that HK sound is generally warm they are best paired with a bright sounding set of speakers. I shall keep this in mind and check out a few other possible combinations. Thank you Abe, I appreciate your help.
The sound of the HK is quite similiar to the CA, although I felt that the CA has a tighter, more powerful bass and clearer highs, but that could be due to the CA sounding a lot more powerful than the HK.
Personally I feel the HK is a good alternative, but prefer the CA.
Hey Abe! I got a 640a v.1 integrated amp for $250 pre-owned and absolutely LOVE the sound! Now I need to get a cd player to escrapilate the most out of the wonderful sounding amp...
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