Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Listed below are my thoughts on the S-302 after a week of use.
Styling
The styling is fair. This is very subjective, but the cabinet does not really look like it should cost $1700. I very much like the compact size. The controls look fine and feel solid.
Sound
I am not an audiophile, so take this with a grain of salt. I believe the quality of the sound is very good when playing music. The bass was not too deep and the highs were very clear. There was a good separation of instruments on some the jazz recordings. I tested this with various types of music using sources from CD, FM, and MP3 (VBR 165-175 kbps).
DVD
This is a 2.1 system and to me that is what it sounds like. Watching several movies, I never had the illusion of 5.1. The sound is fine, the sub-woofer did a bit too much shaking of the apartment for my tastes, but this is easily adjustable with a dedicated button on the remote. Occasionally the voices did not seem to come from the correct place on the screen. This could be due to the location of the speakers as they are at the bottom of the screen since the stands are not yet available.
The picture from the DVD is very good. I have the S-302 connected via HDMI connection to my 42" plasma, which is 1080i. The picture is extremely sharp. No noticeable jagged lines.
The memory function of the DVD does not work very well. If you stop the DVD and turn off the unit, it will remember the location when you turn it back on. If you switch to another source (e.g., tuner) and return to the DVD, it starts at the beginning of the movie. Not the menus or the FBI warnings, so it appears that it recognizes that this DVD has not been newly inserted.Internet/USB
This unit is equipped with WiFi (802.11b/g) and ethernet network capabilities. I was not able to get the wireless to work. My WPA key contains spaces and I could not figure out how to enter a space in the key. I removed the spaces from my key. I then turned off security. All of these options failed to connect. I then connected the device using a power line ethernet adapter and was able to connect. This connection is not reliable and I cannot tell if it is the adapter or the S-302. Occasionally, when starting the unit, it will try to connect using the wireless. This should occur only when the direct ethernet connection is not present.
The interface for the internet radio is easy to use. The stations are categorized by genre and country of origin. Although you can get to a station with this interface, a search feature would greatly facilitate getting to a known station. The interface for the USB is not so friendly. It is just a directory listing of the USB drive. It would be easier to navigate if it used the ID3 information to group by artist, album, genre, etc.
Tuner
While the quality of the sound from the tuner is very good, tuning of stations is very frustrating. There are three modes. FM Auto, FM Mono, and AM. When in FM Auto, the unit will not let you enter a weak station. Direct input of the station results in no sound whatsoever. Switching to FM Mono, the station can be entered and listened to. Entering a preset for this will remember which mode it is in, so this is necessary only once. Also, in the FM Auto mode, if a station starts to fade, it just goes out. It is either tuned or not tuned, so it can just keep cutting out. I would rather have static, but to do that I would have to use the FM Mono for all of my stations.
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