Performance
When we first lifted the AZ5000 out of the box and felt its heft and then looked inside and saw what looked like a really nice amp section, we could not wait to test it out in a two channel audio system to see how it sounded. The result was stunning! The AZ5000 had a very open and effortless presentation with a warmth that almost reminded us of a tube sound. The Sony engineers did a great job of making this super musical. While it did not have the ultimate bass control of the McIntosh amp we had in this system, it was extremely good for a receiver. It will also not outdo the rhythm and pacing quality you get with British integrated amps, but we did not expect that out of a home theater receiver anyway.
When you get into the price range of the 5000 and 7000 we do wish Sony had given the option for multiple subwoofers. There are ways to get around this we go over in our subwoofer setup & calibration video, but this feature is becoming more prominent. We did suggest to Sony they could through software use the zone outs for this and we will be interested to see if they figure out a way to do it.
We set the STR-AZ5000 up in one of our demo theaters to test out. This is an all B&W CT series 5.1.4 system. In this room the screen is up pretty high and we have no rear speakers. This enabled us to check out both the phantom rear tech and the center lift. We first went through all of the distance measurements manually. The one screen guide was great as it even throws up green lines on your display when you are measuring from there to give you a guide. We then set up the included microphone, which has two wings with a clearly labeled left and right mic. Even the auto calibration will ask for some of the measurements we did earlier. You do two passes with two different points for the microphone that are impossible to mess up as the little stand has cut outs for the Sony mic. We also like the fact the whole little assembly had a threaded insert for a tripod stand.
After all of these are done, you get a choice of some interesting EQ settings. You can go for flat, Sony Engineer, or Front Reference, where it tries to match the surround speakers more to your fronts. After that, if you do not choose Front Reference there is another screen that asks if you want to match the right and left speakers together. We wound up going for Engineer for most of our listening. As we expected, we did have to go back in and redo the distances the auto calibration system came up with as some were off by several feet, but this is no surprise as most systems like this do not nail the distances. It also changed our midsized surround and Atmos speakers to full range which we flipped back to small at 80 Hz.
We played a few scenes for Atmos effects we were very familiar with and the Sony did just a fantastic job with these. We were especially impressed with how things tracked across and above us. There is no doubt, the surround sound processing power inside and all the data you give the receiver really enables it to lay down an incredibly immersive sound field. The great soundfield, how good it sounds in two channel, and the very high end build quality put this as one of the better AVR’s on the market.
However, we were not as impressed with the center lift as we had hoped. There are different levels of effect you can add, but even with the smallest amount turned on, the processing made it sound like the dialog was out of phase. The dialog did move up into the screen, but if you are sensitive to phase accuracy, you will not like it on.
The phantom rear tech was a bit more interesting. This did give us a bigger sense of sound behind us, but with some added phasey effects. Most people will probably like this turned on if they do not have rear speakers though and it gives you two settings you can flip between, one for concerts and one for movies.
We wish we would have had a way to test out the dual center technology to hear how it worked. This could be very interesting for systems with tall screens and we will try to give that a test in the future.
The wait has been long for new Sony ES receivers, but it looks like it was really worth it. These units, especially from the STR-AZ3000 and up, are built like tanks, sound amazing and with all the information you can feed it about your speaker distances put out one of the most immersive sound fields we have heard.