Pioneer Electronics has been making audio gear for years. The company has a full line of home theater receivers that run the gamut from entry-level models up to high-end offerings that can cost thousands of dollars. Pioneer has rolled out a new home theater receiver aimed at custom installers called the VSX-80.
This receiver will ship at the end of the month for $700. The VSX-80 has a lot to offer for the price. It features seven HDMI 2.0 ports allowing you to connect a lot of sources to the receiver. It is Roku Ready certified so all the user has to do is plug in a Streaming Stick to get access to all sorts of streaming content.
Pioneer built-in support for 4K UHD video pass through. The best feature if the VSX-80 is that it is able to upscale standard HD content to 4K resolution on-the-fly. Using the receiver, you can set up a 7.2 channel audio system or use a normal 5.1 set up with the other channels for multiroom audio.
The receiver supports a number of high-resolution audio formats. Supported formats include 96kHz 24-Bit 5.0- and 5.1-channel FLAC and WAV files, it also supports other high-resolution music files including AIFF, WAV, FLAC, DSD (2.8 MHz), Apple Lossless, MP3, WMA and AAC. The receiver can be controlled by the iControlAV5 smartphone app and has integrated RS-232 and IP control capability.
