Sony STR-DN1050 7.2 Channel Hi-Res 4K AV Receiver (Built-in Wi-fi & Bluetooth)

Let me first say I am by no means an audiophile. I bought this to replace an aging Onkyo 5.1 "theater in a box" setup. A lot has changed since I purchased my first setup nearly 10 years ago. I have to say, this is a great receiver for the price. I picked mine up as a warehouse deal in very good condition. In fact, it was brand new and doesn't look like it was ever removed from the box. Setup is a breeze using the included microphone. I paired this with a Polk TL2/MC60 speaker package I put together and a PSW 505 Polk sub. My only issue was a matter of user error. As this is a 7.2 system, it has 2 LFE subwoofer outputs. I arbitrarily chose one and could not get my sub to calibrate or put out any bass. I swapped to the other output and problem solved. The TL2's are satellite speakers and the calibration setup correctly identified all perimeters. I tweaked it a little but all in all, pretty accurate. The HDMI passthrough is a great feature but takes some getting used to compared to when you want to switch the input with the reciever off. Choosing and input with the receiver on automatically turns it back on. Not a huge issue but a bit annoying. I am using the full 7.1 setup and elected to power a second zone with a separate amp using the zone to preamp output. Otherwise you lose 2 channels from the 7.1/7.2 setup (specifically your rear surrounds) and end up with a 5.2 setup. There is no quick way to access the zone 2 features via the GUI. I downloaded the android app and it makes it much easier. Being able to listen to separate inputs in each zone is nice. I am also using the multiple HDMI outputs as we have a second TV in the kitchen. You can either use the HDMI zone 2 or the HDMI B output in conjunction with your main HDMI A out. HDMI B plays the same as HDMI B while HDMI Zone 2 can function independently. Sound is great from this machine compared to my old setup. Granted the speakers have a role here but the brains of the system is the DN1050. We mainly use thi for it's surround sound role with music being secondary. Either way, the average user will be impressed for the price. I don't have a 4k TV yet so I can't comment on that. It's in the works so I'll know more in the future. Bottom line, if you are on the fence this is a great deal for the money. You won't find a better deal at this price point. While the DN1060 is the newest model of the series I don't feel it justifies nearly $100 more for whats been updated.

As my review title might tell you, I'm not (EDIT: WAS not) super happy with the reliability of this receiver. Originally I thought the USB port just completely failed (circuit burned out, whatever. It totally quit!) Instead, here's how easy, yet stupid, it was to fix; I unplugged the receiver and then plugged it back in and the USB port went back to working. (After over a month of ownership, the USB port shutdown hasn't occurred again since the 1st time.) So glad I thought to try that before shipping it back! (The "Raytheon reset", as they say (or used to say) in the Navy.)If you're honest with yourself, you will probably not go wrong in the sound quality department with any receiver you buy above a few hundred bucks assuming your audio/video sources, speakers, and video monitor are up to snuff as well. The Sony STR-DN1050 does not have any fundamental issues in the sound department according to my listening nor research. You can find many reviews that say this unit sounds great. Above great, even. Plenty of other folks will tell you that ANY Sony receiver is crap (whether or not they have actually listened to one, or this one in particular). If you are in the latter group then you are only here to troll, and you should just go back to listening to your vinyl records on a $5000, 50watt/channel, stereo tube amp through $1000 dollar cables to $5000 speakers and leave the rest of us alone.I replaced a ten year old, $1000 level Yamaha with this Sony, and that Yamaha was itself the replacement for another $1000 level Yamaha that I also had for about 10 years. Neither of those Yamahas had any significant failures and still sounded as good as the day I got them. They had just fallen behind in the receiver features race. My initial evaluation is that the Sony is not as high quality in basic amplifier details as those Yamahas (no surprise at nearly half the price), but I can't tell the difference by the sound and as long as the 1050 also lasts 10 years I will have no complaints about the trade off. With HDMI 2.0, wifi, bluetooth, etc., the 1050 seems as future proof as receivers ever get.Hopefully, if you're here looking at these reviews, you've already done your research and know what this receiver can (or should) be able to do, so I won't re-hash those details.This receiver can (or should) be able to do A LOT, and so I'll say up front that most everything I'm about to tell you may have a fix, or some sort of rhyme or reason I just haven't figured out yet. However, I'm a reasonably smart guy with a reasonably high level of aptitude in home theater and I haven't been able to figure them out so I'll just go ahead and tell you about them.So on to my experiences and gripes:1. As mentioned, on day 2 of ownership the USB port went dead (NOTE: again, it's working now). It worked fine out of the box. Then on the 2nd day I was using it to listen to an iPod and then came back a few hours later and nothing plugged into the USB port would work. I tried different cables, devices, thumb drives, you name it.The loss is tragic, because the fact that this receiver plays music from (while charging them!) all of my family's Apple products is pretty awesome. Also, in my short time while the USB port was working, I really liked that I could plug a USB thumb drive in and play music straight off it. And not just mp3 or wma, but also AAC (and a bunch of others I didn't try)! I can't think of an electronic product (that was not a PC based computer program/app) that I got that didn't come from Apple that would play AAC, and subsequently a large portion of my music collection is AAC so that is a great feature in my book. Come to think of it, I have had one other component that played AAC as well: My PS3. Well done, Sony!2. As you've probably seen, this receiver does not have unlimited inputs. Probably more than enough for any normal person, but it is what it is and you have to decide if you can live with what it has. (For HDMI, that number is 5 rear panel HDMI and 1 front panel HDMI. Add in 2 HD capable component inputs and you get a total of 8 HD inputs. Why does the Sony site and the Amazon page for the 1050 say 8 HDMI inputs and 10 total HD inputs? I can't begin to guess, and it really irks me in principle, but if you've done your research then you know what it really has.)My critical needs were 4 hdmi inputs, and I was really hoping that the fact this was a Sony product would mean that I'd finally have real interoperability between my Sony XBR6 TV, Sony BR player, and my receiver.Regarding inputs, of the limited inputs the 1050 has it repeats them across several formats of input (e.g. there is a "SA-CD/CD" input in HDMI, Optical, and Analog RCA). It's a little confusing, and I'm still playing with it, but one of the ways that they've gotten around conflicts is to have separate "watch" and "listen" groups. In my case I have an external HD Radio receiver, Sony no less, (what is it with NO ONE having HD Radio in their receivers still after all the years it's been out?) plugged into the SA-CD/CD analog input, and my HTPC hooked into the SA-CD/CD HDMI input. I've been able to rename each input to what I actually have in it, and since the HTPC is in the "watch" group and the HD Radio in the "listen" group, the receiver is able to use both of the inputs even though they are labeled the same even though there is a limited number of buttons on the remote. Basically you push the "listen" button on the remote a number of times until you get to the source you want to listen to on an OSD, and similarly with "watch".While this works pretty well if: 1. You've got the receiver hooked up to an external display, and, 2. You've got that display turned on, there are limitations. Considering that the receiver only has a single line front panel display, if I want to just listen to my HD Radio and have no reason to turn on my display to do so then I have to blindly punch the "listen" button on the remote until I get to the right input. (The front panel display does not tell you what input you're up to until you stop punching the "listen" button, so it can be hit or miss. It is very intuitive if you've got a display hooked up, and on, but still...)3. EDITED (see updated part at end): Interoperability between home theater components: There is a link going on between my Sony TV and this receiver, but it's not perfect. Case in point; when I turn the receiver on to watch a video source, it does not turn on the TV. (My 7 year old Sony BR player DOES turn on the 7 year old Sony TV through the HDMI link when I hit "play". Go figure.) But, if I've got the TV and receiver both on and turn off the TV, it will turn off the receiver (or turn it on if they were off) automatically even if I was, say, listening to music from my HTPC and just didn't need the TV on but still wanted the receiver to stay running. (Conversely, I had to hunt down and turn off the "auto off" function of the receiver because, even though I was actively viewing/listening to my HTPC output it apparently didn't register with the receiver and the 1050 would shut off a few minutes after my last input from the receiver remote.)If the TV and receiver are both on and the receiver is turned off first it doesn't turn off the TV, it actually keeps the HDMI input last selected on the receiver running into the TV, and switches the TV speakers on. Because of this "feature", at one point I spent a while watching a movie on my HTPC through the TV speakers after the 1050 had done the auto-off thing I just described, thinking "geeze, the receiver sounds as crappy as the TV speakers!".EDIT on interoperability: Well, all the stuff I said previously was technically true, but... it seems on further evaluation that the link is actually working pretty well. Here's what I was missing: The 1050 assumes that if you turn it off FROM the receiver then you either weren't using the TV or didn't want to effect the TV, and so leaves the TV on (or off, as the case may be). If you turn the TV on or off FROM the TV, the receiver will turn on (or off) as well via link. Here's the really cool part: When watching a video source through the TV, any volume input that would tend to change the TV volume actually changes the 1050's volume via the link. I really like this since we tend to keep the component section of our home theater blocked off with a rolling toy chest (darn toddlers!), and in the past I had to roll it out of the way every time we wanted to watch something that required line of sight to the receiver in order to control volume via the remote. Now we can leave the toy chest where it is: The cable TV remote, which we previously set to control the TV volume (but never did use, because with the old receiver there was no link with the TV), now controls the 1050's volume through the TV. Seems small, but pretty sweet in practice!4. Input switching speed: This would be a real deal breaker for me, and I'm glad to report that, once up and running, the switch time between inputs is very reasonable. My big gripe is this: If I start up the 1050 to listen to a "listen" only source (e.g. the USB input) I get sound pretty quickly, but the TV spends several minutes reporting that there is no compatible (visual) input signal instead of showing the receiver's GUI. The "workaround" I've found is that I can briefly switch to a "watch" source and the TV will immediately recognize the input, then I go back to the "listen" only source and I can then see the OSD of the receiver.5. Software update: WiFi is there, obviously, and it works, but it isn't a great priority for me (so far, since I already had an HTPC in my system that does far more than the Sony can). The one quirk I saw that I wanted to share was the update process: The 1050 almost immediately reports upon WiFi connection that there is an update available, but doesn't force you to start it. My advice is do it right away! I spent an hour or two messing around in the menus and setting up my system before I started the update. When it finishes (which takes a while), the 1050 resets to defaults and you have to start all over! Aggravating.Going on a couple of months I'm pretty happy with the 1050 (aside from the USB thing). Hopefully they will come up with a firmware update to fix the "video source not supported" issue.