Sony STR-DE475 Dolby Digital Receiver

Description

.co.uk Review The Sony STR-DE475 Dolby Digital Receiver is a superb and fully capable surround sound amplifier with plenty of power. Despite being what Sony terms "entry level" the STR-DE475 carries a full 80W of power for all channels. It's a nice-looking piece of hardware too, with well laid out controls and a pleasing finish. It can take a little while to set up, but the manual gives plenty of help. It has all the basic connectors you'll need, both optical and coaxial digital input and the small army of phono outputs needed to drive a full surround sound speaker system. Beyond that though there's little in the way of additional frills--no extra phono input for example, so you can't connect another sound source. The DE475 supports both DTS and Dolby Digital, these are actually very similar but incompatible systems which produce your five speaker plus sub-woofer surround sound. All DVDs have a Dolby Digital soundtrack, although not all will contain full surround sound effect of course and certainly not films produced before 1976. DTS is an optional format so not all DVD will have a DTS soundtrack. This uses a higher bit-rate and a different compression method and is generally accepted as slightly superior. The DE475 will also handle Dolby Pro Logic, the older analogue system and you've a set of video inputs for your video recorder and television, although S-VHS is absent. If you don't have a separate sub-woofer the bass is fed to the main speakers. If you're lacking the full five speaker set-up you can run in a virtual mode which attempts to recreate the effect on two speakers, presumably while you save up for the others. As with most sound equipment you get a Digital Signal Processing chip that can add various effects. This is a bit of a novelty and you'll probably stop playing with it after a while. The Receiver part of the name tells you there's an FM/MW radio on board. This has auto tuning but there's no indication of signal strength, which makes it a little more awkward to find the best frequency. It does struggle a little to pick up less strong signals effectively. The remote control covers all the functions, but the buttons are a little small. Minor niggles aside, the DE475 gives a lot of amplifier for your money. The sound quality lives up to the specification, offering a rich and detailed sound stage. You can spend horrendous amounts of money on surround sound equipment but this Sony gives all you need in a surround amplifier, plenty of power and features with cracking sound quality.--Miles Berkeley