B&K AVR 507 Series 2: Low Key and High Octane

Finally, a future-proof, PC-friendly AVR that sounds great, too.

The home-theater experience is lost without center-channel performance that is both naturalistic and articulate. And nothing is more revealing of the plusses and minuses of the center channel than a dialogue-heavy movie like that pulp-pleasure Sin City, which overlays reams of narration on the violence- heavy plot. What is significant is the timbre change between the distinct worlds of narrator and actor. Clive Owen would be one instance. As narrator his voice is heavily damped, devoid of ambience, and forward, more directed and apart from the screen. As soon as the movie shifts into the actual scene, the character's dialogue drops back into the screen environment, where it rejoins the voices of the other actors, the sound effects, and the ambience.

The recently released extended version of Gladiator not only has some incisive and uproarious commentary tracks with Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott, but a few well-acted, character-driven sequences that are worth a peek. One scene depicts a military execution where the emperor Commodus questions a lieutenant's loyalty and his willingness to carry out orders. Underscored by somber strings, military drumming, and wind gusts, the archers stand with arrows drawn-back at the ready; the creak of the bows under tension can be heard during the close-up, followed by the whistle of air upon the arrows' release, and the thud of impact as they pierce the chests of the accused. It's a scene built on small details—none of which are missed by the AVR 507.

The B&K AVR 507 Series 2 is geared for high-performance enthusiasts who don't get hoodwinked by buzz and gimmickry, who've matured beyond the basic "impulse buy," who take their home theater seriously. It's got the features, flexibility, and futureproofing that matter most in a market riven with change. Bottom line: First impressions are important, but it's the lasting impressions that make the difference. Game, set, and match to B&K.

Setup Notes: A Perfectionist’s Paradise

Thanks to the clean OSD (on-screen display) and the redoubtable Home Theater Master MX-700 (fully trickedout and pre-loaded by the B&K pit crew), the set-up procedure is as comprehensive as it is easy to master. The front-panel pushbuttons have multiple functions that correlate with the appropriate menu items depicted in the display. The B&K software also goes a couple steps beyond the predictable speaker set-up conventions of size, distance, and level. There is a whole host of presets for each and every input, so that users can choose a default processing mode, a decoder, a speaker-channel configuration, and source levels. Furthermore, there are 40 available custom presets (I haven't even mentioned macros!) that allow the user to take a virtual picture of preferential settings and save them for later recall. For example, if you want different trim-levels and EQ for a specific radio station, you can save them to a preset for that station. Very cool. The procedure however is a little tedious, (each radio station needs to be input one by one), but B&K has hinted at some shortcuts it's considering.

Rather than deal with the unpredictable and often irreproducible nature of most auto-calibration procedures, B&K has created its own brace of equalization programs. The first is ROOM EQUALIZATION designed to improve timbre matching between speakers in user-selectable bass and treble ranges. This is especially useful to compensate for characteristically bright movie soundtracks or to smooth response when placing speakers behind a projection screen. Additional pre-programmed EQ settings like LOUDNESS (low-level listening), VOCAL (a nighttime mode, but also applicable for PCM or analog), and FLAT (no EQ) can be selected on-the-fly via the remote control.

Of even greater interest is the ROOM RESONANCE menu—a system of notch filters and shelving equalizers that can subdue in-room resonant peaks in the bass region that tend to muddy up lower-octave response and cloud the sonic picture further up in frequency band. With the aid of your own SPL meter, B&K's tone generator sweeps the listening room in the 20Hz to 300Hz range. The user notes the three highest peaks in that range, as well as the frequencies above and below the peak where the difference in frequency is less than 3dB. Using B&K's simple formula, you simply adjust the notch level and notch width (between 4.8Hz and 33.4Hz) accordingly. Tricky? Not at all—actually it's fun, sonically rewarding, and much more involving then "going couch potato" during conventional auto-cal.

This is one very "PC" audio-video receiver. Mind you, you won't need a laptop to blast off into home-theater heaven, but if keyboard optimization and integration are your thing by all means take advantage of the SR10.1 Remote Editor Software (included) and the BK-Suite set-up software (a download from the B&K Web site).