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My 25 year old Marantz had midrange. Go Amazon. I would give this a 7+/10. Power is plentyful, and it is stylish and pumps out plent of crisp sound with the twist of the illuminated gain control out front. Yes. No relabling feature is built into that - so your MP3 player is now Video2. Another negative is that there is really only Treble and Base control, and no Mid-Range.
Would I buy another one. If you are looking for something you setup and forget, and gets daily usage and a low relative price - this baby is perfect.
On the "con" side, the front controls are poorly marked, hard to read (you'll need reading glasses), and you are stuck with the design engineer's decision to call all three inputs (including the optical input) Digital 1, 2, 3. If you are looking for customization and 3 layers of equalization, look elsewhere.
The design on this unit is clean, solid, and pleasing to the eye. The net net is, this is a solid low end receiver with good sound.
Go JBL / HK. Amazon has a great value here, and better's the price of Vanns, and others.
My Sony of 15 years vintage allowed the relabling function.
it sounds beautiful, such a strong, crisp, clean sound. The sheer power of this receiver overcomes the lackluster components. Cannot wait till my new tsi500's come in. I just got mine out of the box and plugged it in to some 15 year old aiwa bookshelf speakers and a 10 year old jvc home theater subwoofer. I just wanted to make sure that everything worked, little did I know that it was going to blow my mind.
3. 2. It's hard to see what's written in the buttons of the remote control. I've bought this product in US , knowing that bringing it to Brazil I would loose my guarantee. Whe working with the Bridge II dock station the information on the screen is often partian and not complete.No doubt however that it's an excellent product Just some few comments as positive contribution:1. I have no regrets and I am happy about it. Why there is know control of bass and treble in the remote control.
the upper half face (dark portion) was bowed out of the box but i firmly pressed it with my palm and it seemed to have glue behind it because it stuck and stayed flat (fixed). there might be a little loss but not enough for me to notice. it may look even better than the half silver style (i also own a silver/blue avr-635).
i have a set of speakers in the house and a set in the garage and sometimes i like to have all 4 going together. the 3490 is a crazy good deal for features and performance vs cost. the teac would lose about a third of the volume and some dynamic range but this hk doesn't even flinch.
the Harman Kardon HK 3490 2 x 120W Stereo Receiver i purchased from amazon last week is all dark (no silver) with white light around the volume control. this replaced a TEAC AG-790A Stereo Receiver also purchased from amazon. i would GLADLY pay double for the same exact thing built in the US.
as another reviewer mentioned the exterior plastic seems cheap. one thing i hadn't seen mentioned in other reviews is the 4 speaker performance.
For what I paid for the HK3490 ($289.00) it's hard to complain, but I will say the remote is big enough to use for a boat oar. Pretty impressive, because my Mcintosh had some background hiss during silent passages, of course it is about 40 years old. If you are someone that loves music, and are trying to keep the cost down low, then I'd highly recommend the hk3490. I like the hk3490 better than the NAD C720BEE. I was wanting something with a remote, which the Mcintosh didn't have, and was wanting something easy to move around, the Mcintosh amp was a hernia waiting to happen, heavy would be an understatement. I've had the Harman Kardon HK3490 for about 2 months now, and I've been listening to it constantly. In my opinion you can't beat this for the money. I loved the Mcintosh stuff, cause it did have that smooth, warm sound, plus the tuner on the mac sounded beautiful.
The mac did alot better with vocals, but the HK isn't that bad with vocals. A few years ago I bought a brand new NAD C720BEE Reciever, and it had some background hiss during silent passages, plus the NAD's tuner really sucked. I'd also recommend a Marantz CD player. I tried my Sennhauser headphones with the hk3490, and it was also silent during silent passages.Happy Listening. I had a CD playing that has a good amount of silence in the music, so I turned the volume up very high during the silent passages, and there was no hiss at all, dead silence. The sound of the hk3490 is very enjoyable, and not harsh. I've tried a Sony SACD player, a NAD CD player, and an old Mcintosh MCD7005 CD player, and my Marantz CC-4001 sounds better.Something else I just noticed is the hk3490 is very quiet. My last system included a Mcintosh MX-113 Tuner/Preamp, and a Mcintosh MC2100 Stereo Amplifier.
I have this reciever teamed up with a pair of Wharfedale Diamond 9.5 speakers, which sound very good with the hk3490, and can be had pretty cheap right now. I tried different FM antennas with the HK, and got the best reception with a C.CRANE FM REFLECT antenna. I also needed to economize. The tuner is good, but doesn't sound as good as the mac, but I expected that.
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