5.1-Channel A/V Receiver With Sound Retriever

Pioneer's versatile VSX517K A/V receiver powers five channels with 110 watts each and features DTS, Dolby Digital, and Dolby Pro Logic II decoding. Exclusive Sound Retriever technology improves the sound quality of compressed music files like MP3 and WMA. Component video switching allows you to control video sources through the receiver with no picture quality degradation.

Getting The Lost Sound Back

You don't need a big home theater system to experience big sound. Not when you've got the Pioneer VSX517K powering your movies, music, sports, and games. Experience 110 watts across five channels for a full-blown surround sound that fills your living room. Even content from your PC or portable audio player sounds truly amazing thanks to Pioneer's proprietary Sound Retriever processing, designed to improve the overall sound quality of compressed audio formats like MP3, WMA, and AAC. Compressed music files work well enough through headphones, but when played through home audio systems, dynamic range can be limited and digital artifacts caused by compression can be pronounced. Sound Retriever restores lost dynamic range and replaces lost digital information for near-CD quality sound reproduction.

Rev-Up Your Engine

Just like the heart of a race car is its engine, the heart of Pioneer's VSX517K is its engine--in this case the digital engine microprocessor used to house the various decoders (Dolby/DTS) and digital sound processing features of the receiver. High capacity and speed are always a good thing. The digital engine in the VSX517K puts all the digital signal processing into one powerful, compact circuit board, shortening the signal path and minimizing radiation. The new Freescale 180 MIPS DSP chip offers low jitter, super-accurate PLL sound-processing clocking module, and virtually no audio degradation for exceptionally pure sound. Plus, this processors's low impedance stabilizes power throughout the chip, preventing internal noise that can affect signal purity. This receiver handles Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Pro-Logic II, DTS 5.1, DTS 96/24, and WMA9 Pro. What all this means is the decoding and signal processing capabilities of the VSX517K assure you the highest-quality sound reproduction. And you won't ever have to put gas in this engine.

Getting The Bass Right

Pioneer sound engineers describe phase matching as a new and critical factor in multichannel sound reproduction. That's why they built Basic Phase Control into the VSX517K to make sure sound sources arrive at the listening position in phase, preventing unwanted distortion or coloring of the sound. Phase control is primarily directed at the bass management system where an external powered subwoofer shares low frequencies with the front and center speakers. Because of crossover filters built into the subwoofer and the receiver, these shared frequencies can be significantly delayed at the subwoofer creating frequency cancellations. Basic Phase Control assures that all the bass frequencies arrive at the listening position at the same time so you'll hear every boom, blast, rumble, and roar.

Intelligent Amplifier Design

The main components of the VSX517K's Pioneer Hybrid Amplifier Design II are built into a single integrated circuit, for perfect precision even when processing high-level current. Since heat influences the amount of bias an output transistor requires to reproduce sound, Pioneer engineered a special Thermal Compensation Transistor to maintain correct bias levels regardless of temperature, minimizing total harmonic distortion. To eliminate undesireable electrical influence, Direct Construction keeps critical circuitry separate (for example, digital from analog, and video from audio). Also, the positioning of key parts is carefully mapped out, to optimize signal transmission efficiency. Your sound stays crisper, cleaner, longer. Even when you play it louder.

Customize Your Soundstage

In addition to the more traditional surround sound formats, the VSX517K offers exclusive Pioneer digital sound processing technology that lets you experience movies and music like never before. Front Stage Surround Advance allows you to place the surround speakers in the front of the room, an ideal solution if you can't--or don't want to--run wiring to the back of the room; but still want to maximize 5.1-channel performance. Virtual Surround Back deepens and broadens the sound stage by creating a phantom rear surround effect without using a surround back speaker. And Advanced Surround lets you choose from 14 simulated soundstages like Cinema, Music, TV, Game, and Sports depending on the room environment and applications.

Included With Purchase

Remote control, batteries for remote, AM loop antenna, FM wire antenna, and instruction manual.