B&K AVR 707 And REF 70

There are a lot of companies making a lot of different home theater receivers.In fact the market has too many good products out there.Makes it really hard to choose.In the high end market almost everything is good in some way.Over the years I have been really lucky to get my hands on a lot of the good and bad.With B&Ks recent release of of their 7 series models I have found a new king to sit at the top.They really did their research and made the jump to the next level.First lets talk about the difference between the 707 and the REF 70.Its simple really.The Ref 70 requires a separate amplifier to power the speakers and the 707 has the amp built in.Going the REF 70 route is more expensive,but more powerful.Most of you will only need the 707 as it has plenty of power for the average application.

Now on to what makes them so good.First there is the sound.B&K have always sounded great,as their amps give great tone through the whole spectrum . But on top of that they have a new audio processor which makes any source sound better,cleaner and more powerful. The 707 has 125 w per channel which is way more than enough for all but the largest rooms.This should be more than enough to sell the receiver,but this is a whole new beast compared to the 5 series.They totally updated the whole machine.In the 5 series we were stuck with component video at 1080i and only 3 inputs at that rate.Now we have 6 HDMI ports ,8 component and all up converted to 1080p if you use HDMI.I am not big on HDMI as it has some problems when you get certain pieces of equipment together.But its nice to have the option.Most of the time I will be using the component still as its just so reliable. To go with all of this flexibility is the new Silicon Optix video processor.With HD content being the standard you need to have a really hot processor and this one is amazing.Noticeable amounts of noise reduction and super crisp colors make it a sight to behold. Plus there a bunch of features that us custom installers love.Like the new on screen menus and the video processors cinescope 2:35 aspect possibilities. 

This is a pretty complete package.It has a matrix switcher built in,it has more audio inputs than you would ever need and it integrates really well with other products.The only down side is that I have had to update the software a couple of times.But as time goes on this will go away. These are not for the timid,both price 4-5K and the complexity almost ensures you have a pro involved. Is it worth it.YES ,YES and more YES.