Maybe i've been too harsh...
When it first came out of the box, the first thing i tried was "Desires" by Ozzy Osbourne Live and Loud on on SD-DVD. The reason is that i've played this song with different set up over the years to test the quality of the speakers. The bass lines at the beginning of the song (2 channels) are brutal sounding, hitting you through your body but at the same time you can hear the sound of the string hitting the neck and frets on the guitar!!! With my energy speakers btw, without subwoofer half off the sound was lost because of the limitation of the speakers themselves. Without a good subwoofer, You cannot perceive what i'm trying to describe here. But let's go back to the point; with the Kenwood VR9070 I could not drive it to -10 db while with the VSX-95TX i could. I can tell that the spl is definitely lower in the room. In the setup menu, I increased the db level of all channel by 3 DB (they were all at 0 Db before). While it was better, it was very similar to the output of the VR-9070. As for the sound, apart from the bass lines at the beginning it's not really the best song to test anything else regarding sound
. So i put in "Stream of consciousness" by Dream Theater Live at Budokan and that put the grin back on my face. The sound was very detailed. Boy, those C-9 can deliver! Two channels on Pioneer is a very enjoyable experience.
As i said, I love the features and all but it is not as spowerfull (personal opinion). Here what SoundandVisionmag have to say about it:
Quotes:"
Pioneer's latest receiver produced uniformly excellent bench results: Linearity and S/N were close to perfect on both PCM and Dolby Digital signals, while distortion and frequency response were nearly as good (the latter, in particular, on 96/24 PCM). Power output was generous in 2- and 1-channel tests, and the 94TXH was happy enough driving 4-ohm loads. With 5 and 7 channels driven, and its clamping circuitry in full effect, it fell well short of 100 watts per channel, but the result was still better than some receivers of similar ratings we've seen, and in any event, this is of no real-world consequence."
Also i wasn't trying to give fuel people that believe that sound is all the same. The Kenwood VR-9070 was a good receiver for the money back then. It was THX certified. It had 6.1 channel with component output but it also was 9 years old. Back then, It was a mid-range that could deliver some pretty good sound hence the reason why it's more difficult, for me anyway, to see an outstanding difference in sound quality. After doing the Advanced MCACC the sound was definitely better than the Kenwood no doubt on this but my complain was mainly about power output not the sound.