Sony STRDH190 2-ch Home Stereo Receiver with Phono Inputs & Bluetooth Black

Do not allow the extremely low price on this Sony STRDH 190 stereo receiver to in any way prejudice you against considering it as a wonderful entry-level stereo receiver. I have purchased thousands of products on Amazon over the past 25 years, and I cannot think of any item that pleasantly surprised me more profoundly than this one. I also purchased the matching (style) Sony turntable PS-LX310BT which works perfectly with the STRDH 190 receiver.Sony's lowest priced receiver now sells for around $200, though I could it on sale for a bit less.Now I know, most people would think, "there is just no way a $200 receiver is high quality"... but I am telling you, that is dead wrong in this case, and you should prepare to be blown away by what you get at this crazy low price point.This is NOT a no frills unit. It is feature packed.It has connections for TWO PAIR (four total) speakers, and PLENTY of clean no-distortion power to drive all four speakers to loud and clear volume levels. It also has an A/B speaker switch to play through speaker set A, or speaker set B, or all four speakers at once.It has a phono stage pre-amp which is actually very good. Seriously, it is much better than the phono stage pre-amp built into my Emotiva integrated amp for which I paid $1,000. It plays vinyl loud with no distortion. You will NOT need an external phono pre-amp.It has excellent Bluetooth wireless connectivity built in... no trouble getting it to instantly recognized sources and play them perfectly. You can play all the music on your iPhone or other digital device, wirelessly.It has a huge allotment of extra connections, ... a whopping FOUR inputs... so you can also hook up a CD player, and another external device of your choice, and another one after that, and another one after that! (WOW). And that's is not counting your PHONO input which is actually a fifth input connection. Astounding accommodation of external sources at this (or almost any) price point.If you are a dinosaur who listens to FM ... it's got an FM receiver with 30 station presets, and an output to hook up a proper external FM antenna, and a long-wire FM antenna is included in the packageSony says the "HiRes" audio produced by this unit is "superior to CD quality"... though I am not sure how to measure that claim, especially if the extrnal source you are using is a CD player.It comes with a very high quality remote control, with real buttons, and many features.You can actually program each of your external sources to appear in the illuminated display as the specific names you want, rather than a generic default source name like "CD".The low price may raise an eyebrow, and the fairly light weight (much heavier on one side than on the other curiously) nature of the unit may also cause doubt... but only until you set it up and start listening, and your jaw drops.I would put this sub-$200 receiver up against any receiver on the market priced under $800, (and probably several of them priced at twice that much!) and I believe you will not be disappointed in the sound quality of Sony's entry-level unit. You certainly will NEVER find another receiver anywhere near this price point with so many features and inputs... all of which work flawlessly.This is the greatest bargain in the world of affordably-priced HiFi equipment.It is easily worth multiple times the asking price.

Surprisingly, it's small size is actually a problem! It's simply not long and wide enough to be stackable. I can't put my turntable or my projector on top of it because it's just too small! If you are expecting to stack this item be sure you actually have shelves or measure first.As to the sound quality...It does not suffer from the frequency gap or tinniness I found with the Yamaha amp I tried before, but the frequency crossover is not as smooth as the Insignia amp this unit is replacing.Interestingly, it seems to have some kind of volume leveling circuitry because while my PS5, Turntable, and Xbox all had different volume settings before, now they all seem to be the same.Bass is woefully inadaquate at default settings and to get a "normal" sound I have to turn bass up between 5 and max, with max my default setting to prevent harsh sounding voices in movies and videos.I don't see a need to turn the treble up because again, that results in a harsh scratchy quality to voices like a bad telephone conneciton.Bass is slightly boomy but nowhere near as bad as the Yamaha. It lacks power and expansiveness. Not terrible, but not the home theater showcase I got out the Insignia.The overall sound profile is "clean" but on the cold side, even after adjustments.I played vinyl records, and they had a "cd player" sound do them similar to the cheap Audio Technica direct-drives. Very very clean but lacking in warmth and bass feels dampened. Static and distortion seems to be amplified instead of muffled. Overall impression is that there's some noise and/or signal cut-off, which my pre-amp also provides to elminate hum, but seems even more severe with this unit. It does not sound "bad", just less analogue if that makes sense.From digital sources that previously had weak signal and static/distortion at high volume, this unit seems to be processing the signal with more powerful amplification and noise reduction. For my PS5 console the sound through USB DAC is noticably improved.From a usability standpoint it's got cheap clips for speaker wires as opposed to the big screws on the Insignia, the expected A + B speaker configuration options, FIVE inputs including the front "portable" port (why you would plug a phone in rather than using the included bluetooth or a dedicated streaming box is beyond me). Sound amplification and clarity on all ports appears identicaly, though the 4th input does feature output as well.Inputs are selected with a knob instead of a button (old school) and there's a very loud CLUNK sound when the unit powers on.Remote works well but has some weird button placement with voluem control at the bottom, with radio tuning below it...and radio presets at the top with inputs above. Not bad, just...odd.I don't generally have need to turn audio up to thunderous levels but I haven't noticed static or distortion at any volume level from any source so far.Unit is very responsive to inputs from the remote. Volume up/down is very gradual so accidentally turning the volume up too high is very unlikely.The unit also comes with a two year warranty, which is honestly the real reason I bought it rather than another very old Insignia amp.If ultimate sound quality, esp for vinyl and movies through 2 channels is your thing, I would go with an Insignia over this.If you don't want/need heavy bass response from just two speakers and use primarily modern devices with a DAC or analog out (video game consoles, bluray players, music streamers, CD player) I think this is a very good choice unless you require more/different features or a lot more power for your needs.