Design and Features

Although the VSX-816 is your basic A/V receiver—a squarish black box with a boatload of bells and whistles—it has a groove running around its middle giving the slight appearance of separate components. Among the most notable features are three assignable component video inputs and one assignable output, four audio inputs including the AM/FM tuner, four A/V inputs with S-Video terminals (one on the front panel along with a digital optical in), five digital inputs (a generous two coaxial and three optical), and one digital output. If the 100 watts into seven channels isn’t enough beef for your small to medium room, there are pre-outs for connection to external amps.

Simulation and surround are major themes of the VSX-816. In addition to the popular ones you’ve heard of, Pioneer has tossed in a few of its own. One music mode simulates the acoustic environment of a concert hall and one called Advanced Movie simulates the environment of a movie theater. Huh? Isn’t that what Dolby and DTS are there for? There’s also TV Surround to bring enveloping effects to old mono and stereo movies, Sports for bringing background action to the front channels, Advanced Game to juice up left to right action in video game soundtracks, and a mode called 7 Stereo, which puts a stereo signal through a simulated surround effect. (Again, why bother when you’ve got multiple versions of Dolby Pro Logic IIx and DTS NEO:6, which do the same thing, only better?). Another Pioneer mode, Expanded, claims to broaden the soundfield of Dolby Pro Logic and Dolby Digital.

Oh, and if you don’t have surround and rear surround speakers, Virtual Surround creates an effect as if you did. If you retreat to headphones, you can be surrounded there too with Phones Surround. Additional decoders include hi-res DTS 96/24 for the audiophiles and WMA-9 PRO for the compressed crowd (assuming your CD or DVD player is compatible).

If you want to tone it down altogether, Midnight Mode boosts overall surround sound effects at a low volume setting. The good news is that you can select Midnight mode directly from the remote, the bad news is you’ll have to hunt around awhile to find the button. It’s a must feature for new parents who don’t want to wake the baby.

You can biamplify speakers with this receiver, which I thought was an odd feature to include at the expense of others (like better binding posts). That’s typically an audiophile-type feature not associated with a consumer in this price range.

A few Pioneer-slanted features round out the package. A special mode for Pioneer plasma TVs, for instance, automatically switches the video input of the TV when the input is switched on the receiver (special SR connecting cable required). There are also Pioneer SR jacks on the back panel that enable you to control other Pioneer SR components from just one remote. There’s no RS-232 output or IR jack for external control options though. 

Image courtesy of Pioneer