Sony STRAZ5000ES Premium ES 11.2 CH 8K A/V Receiver

Amazing build quality, easy to set up, feels very high end. Picture in Picture mode is great. Love the ease of use with it and being able to use my Sony Bravia 9 as a center channel speaker as well. App is easy to use, AVR powers on/off everything with one remote as well. The power cord is replaceable if you prefer to upgrade that as well. While it is more expensive to comparable brands, the overall build quality and ease of use, as well as the room correction are well worth the extra money to me.

Very nice A/V Receiver. Simple & easy to use. Sounds great! Made of good quality. Great improvement to the older ES models.

As a longstanding Sony ES customer, I'll start off with the things I do not like about the STR-AZ7000ES:1. No HDR10+ support.2. No QMS support.3. No QFT support.With that out of the way, this thing is worth every penny. I have owned a number of ES and non-ES AVR's over the past several decades, and nothing sounds as good as this thing.Setup and calibration is easy. The on-screen UI is easy. The web browser is great as it does everything the on-screen UI does. The iPhone app is simple but equally as effective. The remote control leaves a little to be desired, but it's not a train smash.The STR-AZ7000ES has range and power for days. It just keeps going.It does get a little warm (okay, very warm), so I added the AC Infinity Aircom T10 to keep it nice and cool. I highly recommend this for any AVR owner, as AVR's are notorious for running hot, even when they ship with their own in-built cooling fans.The 360SSM does sound quite innovative and interesting, but I prefer to watch content without it as I have a full 7.2.4 speaker system. If you have fewer speakers, 360SSM can help fill in the missing channels.The upmixing of 2-channel stereo music into Neural X is actually pretty good. I was originally a 2-channel purist for music, but Neural X does a great job of expressing all the high-frequency instrumentation and vocals across a 7.2.4 speaker system, while keeping all the low-end in the subs.As for movies, stop the press. This thing really shines especially in Dolby Atmos that has been properly mixed and engineered in the studio.In summary - do yourself a favour and get it!

As my Sony DA4ES was 23 years old it was time to upgrade as component video wasn’t solidly supported in TV sets anymore in 2024. It’s all HDMI, that standard won out. This was the ideal choice for me from a connectivity perspective.In the 20+ years of using the DA4ES this AZ3000ES replaces I never once used the pre amp outputs of the 4ES. The built in power amp stage has always been sufficient for my 6.1 setup and so getting this with only amplified speaker outputs for running it as a 5.1.2 is just the right fit. It gives me the option of adding front heights in the cieling (if Atmos becomes more available in normal BD or FullHD streaming) and having a 5.1.4 system.But as is it solves my key problem - switching between 6 HDMI input sources, without the complex cabling and remote control macros that an external HDMI and optical audio extractor requires. So much easier and more reliable to control with a programmable remote control.One annoyance , that is just a change of how to use it I suppose, is the way it displays the audio mode. I’ve gotten used to the blue LED that lights up in the DA4ES when a multichannel decoding is detected and enabled. The AZ3000 does it by illuminating specific tiny lettering in the front display , which is useless when sitting 8 feet away from it. So there isn’t a quick and easy way to spot if its matrix decoding a stereos signal (aka Dolby ProLogic ) or getting discrete 5+ channel decoding of Dolby Digital /Dts/Atmos/etc. The way it’s done now is you can enable some on screen display of the audio decoding in effect and see it on the screen. Just not as instantly visible as a distinct colored LED would be. Because the lighting of the matrixed vs discreet deciding text all looks alike from the couch as a light blue blur in the front panel display a 1/2 inch left or right of each other. It’s a gripe at a high level I know.The one annoying flaw, which may be fixable in a future firmware update is the 360 Surround Sound mapping software mode which creates virtual speakers out of the setup of physical speakers you have. When enabled , that mode does soils much more room filling and enveloping , I like the general sound stage it produces. So it can make my 5.1.2 setup sound like a 7.1.2, however the software signal processing has an issue with producing a hiss from channels without a string discreet signal in the decoded content. So for me the hiss that comes out of the rear surround speaker left that is just 2 feet from my head is distracting when no audio is playing - such as in menus and silent scenes. Turn off the 360SS mode and the surrounds go silent immediately. With 360SS on , the hiss is there. After about 10 seconds of waiting the receiver does mute the surround speaker , but that just shouldn’t need to happen. If there is silence to a channel , that speaker should be silent and it hissing.

Bought a Pioneer receiver but couldn’t get it to pair with my new Samsung OLED. Bought the Sony AN1000 and it worked great but felt I needed more power. I bought the Sony AZ1000 and couldn’t be happier. Spent some serious time with Sony and Samsung help lines and got it all hooked up and running. I had everything connected correctly but was having a problem with the TV Recognizing the receiver. Would not have been able to figure this out without both manufactures support. Both Sony and Samsung were really great. The sound is better on this ES model. If you can spare the extra dollars I would recommend getting the AZ1000. Sony receivers are easy to use once you get everything set up. Sony has a rich sound, better I think, than some of the other Asian brands. Like the 4k and 8k upsampling. Picture is great. I will be set now for many years to come.