Pioneer VSX-S520 Slim Home Audio and Video Receiver - Black,4K

I've been using this receiver with an Optima UHD51ALV projector for the last couple months and it hasn't disappointed yet. I chose this receiver specifically because of it's small Class D size. I have it situated inside a cubby hole within my credenza and it can get too hot in there for some receivers. Setup was very easy, the setup wizard worked fine and I find it easy navigating within Settings to fine tune the 5.1 setup I'm using, post auto setup. I'm using it in a room that's 15 x 15. And I feel anything up to 25 x 25 should be fine. 12 ft ceiling. If your room is bigger than 25 x 25 AND you want to shake the walls with bass, I'd go with something a little more powerful. I've turned the volume up to 100% and while it's loud, I don't think it will handle the load if you're in a room that's 30 x 30 or bigger or hosting a party with a lot of people drinking. It passes hdmi 2.2 fine. I have a 2160 60khz image. Make sure to buy a 4+4+4 cable for hdr support. Lastly.....all these people complaining about the wireless services not working are lying, perhaps posing as customers who work for competing companies or are too naive to understand what a firmware update is. If you want to pull this thing out of the box, plug it in, and expect to see services like Spotify, Pandora, Amazon music, ect. working BEFORE you actually install the software that supports them, you simply do not understand how things work and shouldn't be posting online reviews. For the record: Spotify, Pandora, Amazon music, and mass USB storage all work perfectly, without issue once you complete the firmware updates to support those items. Just go to settings, misc, firmware. Have a eithernet cable plugged in and follow the instructions on your TV or projector. I personally had 4 updates and it took about an hour to finish them all. You can also do this wirelessly if you connect to your router. Oh! Important: when firmware updates complete, push On/Off button on your receiver (power cycle) the receiver to finish the installation. Then, do the next firmware update until they are all finished. DO NOT power cycle the receiver with the On/Off button after a firmware update using the remote. Lastly, Chromecast built in also works but don't expect to stream YouTube videos to your tv. You can only pass audio. I don't have a YouTube music acct so I'm not sure if that works. I don't use the Chromecast feature because I usually play off mass storage or stream direct from my phone, using the Pioneer mobile App, from Spotify or Pandora or Amazon music. I have a Nas but haven't bothered to try it. If you're looking for slim, quiet, cool running, hdmi 2.2 pass thru, lots of streaming possibilities, in a smaller space, receiver then don't hesitate. Buy it.

Edit (7/6/19): Called Pioneer support, and they were of no help. They wanted me to ship it four hours away. In the meantime, I would've had no stereo, and who knows how long the repair would've taken. They would not exchange it. I contacted Amazon customer support, and even though I was 8 months outside the return window, they sent me a new unit, and paid for the return of the defective unit. I received the new unit the very next day (today)! Amazon gets 5 stars!!! Pioneer gets none! If I could, that's what I would change my official review to. ---------–-------------------------------------------------- Edit (7/5/19): Now the Game HDMI port quit working, so now I'm using the BD/DVD port to watch TV. The STRMBOX port is still working for Roku. I'm beyond disgusted with the cheap quality of this inferior receiver! AVOID THIS RECEIVER AT ALL COST! DO NOT BUY! ------------------------------------------------------------ Edit (5/29/19): I'm taking this down to 1 star. The Cable/Satellite HDMI port suddenly quit working. Unplugging it and plugging it in again after waiting a minute or so doesn't resolve this. I had to plug the cable box into the Game port to watch TV. Even if this gets fixed through a software update, it's highly unlikely this will see 5 stars again. I'm disgusted and very disappointed in Pioneer, who normally puts out great sound systems. ------------------------------------------------------------ Edit (5/12/19): I'm taking this back up to 5 stars, because the update from right after Christmas seems to have resolved the issue reported back in December. I wanted to wait a few months to ensure that it seemed to be resolved before I upped the rating. ------------------------------------------------------------ Edit (12/22/18): I'm reducing this from 5 stars to 3 stars, because I have to unplug and re-plugin the receiver about once per month. I have to do this when I can no longer access the USB drive, and I cannot get into the system settings. When I unplug and re-plug the system, everything works as it should...for about a month, but then I need to redo it again when it inevitably happens again. Maybe a software update/patch can resolve this. Until then, my review will remain the same. ------------------------------------------------------------ WOW! Amazing! At first, I thought, "What a piece of overpriced garbage!"; that was until I found the manual equalizer! Once I set that to my liking, the audio was no longer muffled and came to "full-color" life! I can now hear ALL the treble highs and bass lows. I still gave it 5 stars, even though you can only shuffle USB music per folder instead of all music from all folders. Also, I would've liked to have had the option to have the speakers still on with headphones connected. However, there is a workaround - connect your headset/headphones to your TV's headphone jack (you'll still connect your cable/satellite box via HDMI to the stereo receiver), press the Home button on the stereo remote, go to System Startup, go to Hardware, go to HDMI, and then choose Audio TV Out to "On". The only negative side effect is that in that mode, the audio is relegated to the factory setting, and the manual EQ settings are overridden, leaving the volume bland. I hope that was clear and made sense. To manually set the audio EQ to your liking when not listening to headphones from your TV headphone jack, press Home on your remote, choose MCACC, choose Manual MCACC, choose EQ Adjust, then choose the channel to adjust the audio highs and lows (must be done to each audio channel separately) by hitting the Enter key, then arrowing over to each band (each of the 9 "bars" adjust the audio from the far left which are mainly bass and lows, all the way to the right which are gradually more treble and highs). I hope all that made sense, too. Once I was able to set the audio to my liking, this unit had me sold! If anything changes, or if I have anything happen (similar to what the negative reviews have stated), I'll surely be back on here to update my rating and review accordingly.

This is the way to go if you are looking for a slim reciever since this is basically the only one out there! Been using for several weeks and it runs great. I took a bit of a gamble getting this since the only reviews I could fine were here on Amazon due to it being so new and the only two were mixed reviews. I had pretty high standards for this since I have a nice Denon reciever for my main system. All expectations were easily met. Sound is great as are the bonus features such as the networks capabilities. Also quite nice that this includes hdmi 4k 60hz support. Only complaint about the system is that channel volume can't be set per source type like on my denon reciever. I like to listen to music in a 4.1 type set up so for stereo sources I prefer to have the center channel with low volume or off just for extended stereo but now with an actual surround sound source. My denon would allow for setting these separately but this one only has the global setting. If pioneer added this or a extended stereo 4.1 mode this reciever would be perfect

I bought two of these units and I must say they are indeed stellar in every way. The class D transformer is really nice and puts out enough power for virtually any speaker. The best thing about this unit is that it has many nice features and runs very cool to the touch which I wanted seeing that one of my units is enclosed in a tv furniture stand. I previously had a huge Pioneer receiver that was both heavy and ran very warm. I liked it very much but this little scale down version beats it in every way. You will not be sorry for the purchase.....compared to the Marantz version which costs much more with the same features. The only difference being the speaker connections on the Pioneer are spring loaded version versus the banana type on the Marantz. Pioneer did this to save space in the back for hook ups.....makes sense. This unit is a great buy and you will not be disappointed with its performance.

This is a great receiver that has a ton going for it but with some rough edges. I haven't purchased a new receiver in 15 years. I live a very digital life. Haven't used my old Sony receiver in a long time. It was failing anyway. Technology has moved on. Too hard to play new digital content on the old receiver. Time to purchase a new receiver. This receiver is an amazing step up. - Sound is great. I love MCACC. Beautiful balanced sound. - Tons of options for speaker configuration maxing out at 5.1. I ended up using 2.1, 4.1, 5.1 configurations while I slowly attached speakers. Sounded great in all configurations. - There are apparently tons of standards in the audio/video space. Ultimately it creates a confusing mess for consumers. I'm sure most don't understand or tweak all the available settings. The complexity isn't Pioneer's fault. Its just a complex space. Most of it works great. I have all the internet based TV devices attached to the receiver. Apple TV, Fire TV, Roku 4k, Chromecast. I have CEC configured to allow the TV and receiver to talk. If I turn if on or off or adjust volume from any remote, the receiver power on and off and volume works as expected. It's seamless.... after a ton of setup with the TV and making sure all he HDMI cabling is up to the latest standards. I also have ARC (audio return channel) enabled on my TV. That took some futzing. Turns out my HDMI cable didn't support it and my TV only supports it on one HDMI port. - Class-D. It build one for my senior college project for my Electrical Engineering degree. Class-D allows the amplifier to run cool regardless of output power. There are claims that it can result in more distorted output. I'm not sure what to listen for, but in a variety of listening tests I cannot discern any distortion with this receiver. Sounds great at high or low volume, with all sorts of music and all sorts of frequencies. - Lots of ways to provide digital music to this receiver. List is almost too long to mention, but to sum up, it includes Airplay, Chromecast, a bunch of HDMI inputs, HDMI ARC (audio return channel from the TV), USB stick, WiFi accessible server, bluetooth, and a ton of built in services including things like Pandora, Tidal, Amazon Music, etc. - Phono input: Most receivers no longer have this as an option. I still have my old record player and am glad to see it return in case I try to use it. - iOS app: Had trouble finding the right app. Pioneer has apps out there that do not work with this unit, but the Pioneer Remote app does work and works pretty well. Overall, I'm thrilled with the receiver. Sounds fantastic. Extremely versatile. Tons of ways to get digital music to play through it. However, there are some rough edges. Some are minor that Pioneer could easily fix. Some seem like things are just broken. Some may be harder to fix. - As I mentioned, I've using every major type of internet TV. With CEC enabled throughout, its now great that I can use any remote and have it control the TV and receiver to power on/off and volume. And all the current remotes work via bluetooth instead of infrared. So I don't have to worry about clear line of sight and can be 30 feet away or so and still have it work. Thats awesome. But with all this bluetooth awesomeness, why, why, why did Pioneer make the receiver's own remote infrared? Still has to be line of sight and close range. - Some of the "Net" services don't work. This is the biggest issue. It's a combination of bugs, almost fraudulent claims of things working when they're not implemented, and what appears to be underpowered hardware. - Chromecast: For the most part does not work. This is a huge issue as I see it as one of the primary ways I had envisioned using the receiver. Try it from most iOS apps and the receiver seems to hang or become unusably slow. I have seen it work. Google play music on iOS or Chrome on the Mac "seems" to work unless you confuse it and the receiver goes back to being hung and/or very slow. - Spotify: Doesn't exist despite being featured as a built in app. Trying to launch the app in the receiver doesn't do anything. Try to launch it from Pioneer's remote control app and it launches the iOS native Spotify app which does nothing specific for the receiver. I'm guessing they intend you to use Airplay. - Tidal: Very temperamental. Many of these "Net" services in the receiver are abysmally slow. Might need faster hardware. They may be pushing beyond the limits of what the processor in the receiver can handle. - Pandora: Seems to work pretty well. Can up/down flag songs. Still slow to react but seems pretty stable. - Amazon Music: Like Pandora. Works well. A very nice addition. Still slow. - Airplay: I haven't had any issues with it. Works well. - Chromecast: I'm bugged that this doesn't work reliably or worse can cause the receiver to become essentially non-responsive. I had hoped to use Chromecast's queuing scheme to queue up songs to play. - Power: I haven't pushed the limits yet. I have a powered subwoofer where most of the power is needed. I've had it loud enough watching a movie to have earth shattering kabooms etc. In this configuration, the power of the receiver seems fine. I have not maxed it out. However, I find some of the specs misleading making me question their trustworthiness. The specs at one point claim up to 250 watts output from 6 channels. However the max input power is only 60 watts. You can't get more power out than you put in. Doesn't add up. Class-D amp design should be able to easily handle much more power. I don't understand why this unit is made so weak. But in my listening its been fine. I had debated and continue to debate getting the VSX-832 which is currently almost a hundred less expensive with more power and lower distortion with all the same digital features, but I like the idea of Class-D. This amp is half the height and less than half the weight and runs cool. Class-D is a more modern, digital-like technology so I think I'm ok spending the extra money for the underpowered receiver that still sounds great and allows me to play music from every way I can imaging. Bottom line, great receiver with some caveats. Upsate: I knocked a star off. I just had a case of a software bug. Somehow the receiver got into a state with no sound. Everything else working. Could switch video inputs. Net working. Acted like it was playing. Just no sound. Powering off and back on didn’t fix it. I was about to conclude it had broken. I had to unplug it. Wait a little bit and plug it back in to really reboot it. Then it was fine. Not cool at all. They need to make the software more reliable. This indicates an unstable architecture. It should have been designed to be able to recover even if a subsystem had issues. Update: I gave it a star back. I've now tried many/most of the speaker configurations. I started with just 2, then 2.1, 4.1, 5.1. Then unrelated event, the power amp in the sub died. I bypassed the sub's amp. Turns out this receiver is one of the few that can directly power an unpowered sub. I hooked it up with fingers crossed worrying if it would generate enough power and if it would sound good enough because of no crossover at all. To my relief it sounds GREAT! Presumably MCACC is doing its magic. The sub sounds at least as good as it did before. I've belted out some pretty loud movie tracks. Sound is clear, crisp, great tonal balance. No distortion that I've noticed. And the beauty of a class-D amp shown through. After listening to an action movie loud enough to have the house rumbling often, the receiver was completely cool, not noticeably warmer than it usually is when sitting at idle. So its a very flexible great sounding class-D amp, but with some rough edges and complexity in its software.

Amazon lost the package and i had to go through an astronimcal amount of back and fourth with them. It was lost in transit before it ever got to me. I had to fight with them for a month to get a refund and its still messed up as i get daily emails stating that they are still waiting for me to send it back. Aside that, i sourced this from a diffrent site outside of amazon and wow. I was very suprised at how well it worked. It replaced a panasonic all in one unit from 2004 that was losing its sound at low volume. Now i can run everything through the reciever and it has what feels like unlimited customizability. I would highly recommend this product but cant say i would purchase it off amazon or at least be very causious.

Most of the features seem to work reasonably, however, the HDMI Standby Pass Through (which passes source audio and video through to the TV Receiver when the Pioneer AV receiver is in Standby) does not work. I have a streaming box connected to the Pioneer AV receiver STRM BOX input 3 and a Samsung TV connected to HDMI Out. When the Pioneer AV receiver is ON all works normally, when it turns "Off" (goes into standby) the video from the Streambox is passed through to the TV but the AUDIO IS NOT. I suspect this is a FIRMWARE / Software problem as if I set the STRM BOX Audio source to Audio 2 rather than HDMI - STRANGELY in that case, when the Pioneer AV receiver is in Standby then BOTH Audio and Video from the Stream Box are passed through. I have contacted Pioneer regarding this and so far have no response. Thanks to Amazon, I have till Mid Jan 2020 to return the unit and that is what will happen if Pioneer doesn't resolve the problem. I really do want this unit to work - it is an ideal minimalist compact AV Receiver which is feature rich and has low power consumption... But it has to work as intended. Fingers Crossed - I will update this review when things change or the unit gets returned. Update Dec 30 2019 - Unit being returned to Amazon - THANKS To AMAZON - I had a long discussion which included on-phone interactive testing - disconnecting all power - doing factory reset - done with one of the upper tiers of Pioneer support. At the end of the discussion the Pioneer rep suggested returning to Amazon indicating defective product. Thanks to the Amazon return policy and several hours on line with Pioneer - I am well within the return period. The unfortunate part is that while both Pioneer and myself agree the unit is not functioning as it should - it seems impossible to know if another unit will have the same defects or not. When first turned on the unit updated its firmware to the latest version - and there is no way to go backwards to the as delivered version (I don't even know if that would help any). I really wanted this unit to work - the symptoms sure seemed to be a software (firmware) error to me... but sadly Pioneer never gave me a clear indication the same tests we did worked successfully for them. I had asked for such indications by Email but never got anything. So if Pioneer ever gets this fixed - they should publicize it well. Otherwise one could incur endless frustration exchanging units. I don't engage in frivolous returns or exchanges so I would have to have assurances that something was fixed before I would consider this unit again.

Worked perfectly for my tight rv space. Pushes plenty of power for all 5 speakers. Great sound. Excellent Bluetooth function. Note this unit has built in amp for non powered speakers which I needed. Price initially seemed expensive but after I’ve been using it couple months , completely worth it.

El producto es muy bueno, estoy totalmente satisfecho. Doy 4 estrellas porque el vendedor podría mejorar. Tomó demasiado tiempo en enviarlo.

Amazing product

Receiver com excelente qualidade e potência... Além de possuir uma saída amplificada para Subwoofer!

The device came and some of the HDMI ports did not work so devices could not be recognized. Had to return it. I'm sure I just got unlucky.

I required a small receiver for my travel trailer to replace the AM/FM DVD player that was factory installed. I also replaced the factory in-ceiling speakers with Polk Audio V60 2 way ceiling mounts. Needless to say the difference is phenomenal. As for the unit; streaming was an issue until the latest firmware was installed & that seems to have solved the connectivity issues. Other than that, A/B speaker switching and a "AM" radio band would have been bonus. Overall pleased with the purchase.