BRISTOL SHOW 2013: Sony STR-DA5800ES AV receiver to sell for £2250
We saw Sony's new STR-DA5800ES home cinema receiver in prototype form at IFA in Berlin last August, but now Sony's technical guru Eric Kingdon says tuning is complete and the product is ready to go on sale. It will cost around £2250.
It replaces the STR-DA5700ES, is a 9.2 channel design with built-in 4K upscaling and should be available before the end of this month.
MORE: Sony announces two more new AV receivers for 2013
There are numerous improvements over the current model, including a new power supply, improved DSP (digital signal processing) engine, two additional channels of amplification for adding extra front height channels, or biamping, and a second zone HDMI output.
It's fully network capable with an ethernet socket around the back, will support multichannel 192kHz/24-bit audio and has a special 'lift-up' function for the centre channel.
The latter means that if your centre speaker is placed beneath the screen, you can set it so the dialogue is 'raised' to sound as if it's coming from the centre of the screen, not below it.
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Comments
When I spoke to Eric at the show he said the '5800ES was going into stores any day now, so we hope to have a review sample soon(ish).
Can we expect a review anytime soon ? You have not reviewed a Sony premier av amp since the DA5400es - skipping the previous 5500, 5600 & 5700 models. This has always puzzled me considering your links with Eric. Either you just havent rated the previous flagship models or Sony wont give you an amp to review ? Either way being a 5400es owner, I am keen to see how this will compare with the competition. Is it me or has it put on alot of weight ? Looks alot fatter / taller to me. Apart from that it looks identical to my much older amp.