Sony STR-AN1000 7.2 CH Surround Sound Home Theater 8K A/V Receiver: Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, Digital Cinema Auto Calibration IX, Bluetooth, WiFi, Google Chromecast, Spotify connect, Apple AirPlay, HDMI 2.1

After many years of enjoying my Epson 2150 Home Cinema and my SONY STR-DN1080, I decided to upgrade to a 4K projector. I use my projector as a television, to watch movies, sports, etc., on a daily basis. Upgrading to a 4K projector required me ass well to upgrade my home theatre receiver to 4K. Both of my previous devices were 1080. I upgraded my receiver to a Sony STR-AN1000 7.2 Channel (7 x 165 Watt) Surround Sound Home Theater 8K A/V Receiver and my projector to a LG CineBeam UHD 4K projector. Immediately upon connecting my new 4K devices, I experienced difficulties. The picture was jumpy and intermittent, and I could not seamlessly switch from one input on my new home theater to another. Before the upgrade, I would regularly switch among all of my playback and streaming devices. I started panicking thinking I would have to return all of my new equipment, reconnect my old home theater receiver, and put my old projector back into the ceiling. I decided to call customer support. First, I called LG support. Then I called SONY support. The SONY tech support figured out that the SONY equipment was working properly, but that the LG projector was not receiving the signals from my various devices. He told me the problem was that I needed also to upgrade my HDMI cable to a high-speed 4k cable. That immediately freaked me out because I have a 100 ft cable embedded in a ceiling that had been finished over the cable. No way I was going to rip apart the ceiling (thousands of dollars) to replace the HDMI cable. But his insight set me in the right direction. I did some online research and came across a solution that worked perfectly. Rather than tearing up my ceiling to install a new, high-speed HDMI 4K cable, I invested $39.00 in a HDMI 2.0 Repeater. This super mini HDMI repeater works by decoding and then re-encoding the HDMI signal to a new standard HDMI signal. It also extends the range of the signal. I was now getting perfect pictures from my Firestick and Fite TV Cube and was able to switch freely between them. I changed some of the display settings in the Fire Stick and Amazon Cube. However, I could not pick up the Xfinity TV signal on my LG 4K receiver. Picking up that signal required one last piece of equipment upgrade. I called Comcast technical support and determined that swapping out my Xfinity 1080 boxes for 4K boxes was an option available to me. Therefore, I returned my Xfinity 1080 cable box and swapped it out for an Xfinity 4K cable TV box. Problem solved. Now, I am receiving a perfect 4K image on the LG from all devices, and I can easily switch from one to the other. Now, let's talk about the SONY STR-AN1000 features. SONY STR-AN1000 This is a powerful and well-engineered home theater receiver. For me, the only reason to buy this receiver at this point in time was to upgrade my TV/ home theater watching from 1080 to 4K. My SONY 1080 still works fine. I have to figure out what I am going to do with it. The surround sound is awesome on the new STR-AN1000. It has this new Dolby Speaker Virtualization sound field simulation that totally immerses you in surround sound. You can control the SONY STR-AN1000 with your smartphone using the SONY Music Center App. There are plenty of digital and music streaming options. You have multi-room audio and video options using zone 2 and zone 3 outputs. Six HDMI inputs allow you to connect all of your media playback and streaming devices – Blue Ray player, Fire Stick, Fire TV Cube, ROKU Streaming stick, Cable/satellite TV Box, etc. Like my previous STR-DN1080, I can connect 7 speaker sets, including 2 sub-woofers. You can change the settings or switch from one input source to another easily. The on-screen display lets you make adjustments to your settings while looking at your TV screen. You can connect to the internet wirelessly or via an ethernet port. The only major feature this receiver is lacking is a phono input. I don’t mind that because I have another receiver from which to connect my turntables or record players. The remote control is much smaller than previous SONY home theater receiver remotes, making it more user-friendly and easier to understand. The Audio Return Channel (ARC and eARC) allows you to set your system up without the need for an optical audio cable. In my case, that means I don’t have to run an extra cable into the ceiling for the audio to work because the ARC and eARC transmit the audio signal. This receiver is capable of upscaling your video to both 4K and 8K. However, in my case, I found it necessary to get an Xfinity 4K cable box to watch my Xfinity programming. I am totally, 100 percent pleased with my SONY STR-AN1000 4K/8K home theater receiver. This is the fourth SONY home theater receiver I have owned. I have no complaints. The picture quality passed through from all of my playback devices to my LG 4K projector is stunning. There are so many other features to this receiver; however, those are best explained by an audio/video expert. There are many such reviews available online. But if you are a layperson like I am and you want to know whether this STR-AN1000 home theater is a good investment, my answer, based on a few weeks of viewing and my over a decade of experience with other home theater receivers, is that this is a very good investment. The quality and features you are getting are well worth the purchase price, and I am confident you will be watching a TV or projector hooked up to this home theater system for many years to come. I highly recommend it.

Upgrading from 5.1 speakers on CNET's top AV 2014 receiver, the Sony STR-DN840, I was curious to see how far home theater sound had improved since buying my Sony receiver and Energy 5.1 speaker set up back in 2015. I first upgraded by adding 2 more speakers, the ELAC B6.2 Debut speakers as my front main speakers and moved my Energy speakers into a 7.1 height speaker configuration. This improved the sound, but only minimally. This is when I ordered this bad boy AN1000 as I also wanted to take advantage of Sony's S-Center Acoustic Speaker connection with my 77" Sony A80J OLED TV. The sound was marketedly better - so much so that my usually nonchalant wife noticed the trickles of streams and birds watching an old anime movie, Ponyo, and was impressed! Basically, the upgraded Sony STR-AN1000 coupled with two additional quality speakers enabled a 7.1 systems that leveraged DTS:X Virtual surround sound as well as A.F.D. Movie mode that comes as close to Dolby Atmos without placing speakers in the ceiling directly above your primary seating position. Watch the first battle/landing boat scene in "Saving Private Ryan", and prepare to be immersed with bullets whizzing all around you! Ignore sound bars and upfiring Atmos speakers that bounce off the ceiling as a quick online search will pull up numerous articles that state 1) Soundbars are inferior to AV systems (I can verify as I demoed a top of line Sony HT-A7000 at home) 2) upfiring Atmos speakers are hit or miss at best 3) Dolby's DTS:X combined with Sony's processor gives you the most immersive sound possible without installing downward firing ceiling Atmos speakers in a 5.1.2 Atmost configuration. Having my Sony Bravia A80J S-Center synch along with my center speaker made understanding dialogue much more clear, and also enabled me not to have to crank up the overall volume as the STR-AN1000 makes adjusting each individual speaker volume as well as sound profile (equalizer) super easy. I would also be remiss in not calling out the ability to either auto calibrate using the included microphone or manually calibrate as both are extremely easy to perform. I opted to do the manual calibration using a tape measure for greater precision, but the auto calibrate was quite good. Get this STR-AN1000 especially when on sale or open box, and not only will you be rewarded - even your wife will comment on how much immersive sound improvement there is on even non Dolby Atmos movies!! UPDATE: Purchased two Sony SW3 subs, here's an addenddum. Head to head, the Sony SW5 is superior to the SW3 thanks to the SW5's both active and passive subs which are also larger than the SW3. HOWEVER, especially when purchasing open box, I was able to purchase TWO SW3's for less than either stand alone SW5 or on sale single SW3, and 2 subs definitely not only smooth out the bass, but makes your home stereo/cinema sound omni directional so there's no dead spots. My Sony STR-AN1000 easily synced with both SW3 subs (note - you cannot mix two different subs on the AN1000), and now my bass is smooth/even throughout my living room as I watch Dolby Atmos movies or listen to my favorite music genre on my PS5 Playstation CDs, Pandora, and Sirius XM. Thus, if you only want one sub and best quality, go for the SW5 or a more reasonably priced wired sub. However, if you can get two subs, two SW3 are a no brainer especially when buying two heavily discounted open box speakers that can be readily tucked away.

INSTALLATION AND CALIBRATION My previous Denon AVR which was older than 10 years did feature multi-channel sound separation but unfortunately may have had a capacitor fail because one of rear sound channels was no longer working and the AVR would go into a power-down/safe mode with flashing red power LED after a few minutes of use. Not really inclined to open the unit and attempt a self-repair involving soldering, I opted to upgrade the AVR to a newer Dolby Atmos-capable receiver, the Sony STR AN1000. Installing the AN1000 into my existing home theater set up was relatively easy, if you don’t account for crawling and stretching out on the living room wood floor and reconnecting existing speaker wire and subwoofer connections. Once the speakers were all connected, I used the calibration microphone and stand that comes with the AN1000 to establish the relative sound fields for each of the speakers. The graphical user interface from the Sony receiver to my Sony 4k TV was quite helpful in double-checking the accuracy of the calibration settings, which were slightly off in a few cases – particularly the distance of the subwoofers to the TV which for some reason added about 12 feet when they were only about 2 feet from the TV. When calibrating the unit, it is important to have a measuring device to verify the distance and height of all of your speakers, the height of your TV screen and the height of your ceiling. My home theater set up is in my living room and adjacent dining room that together have a 19-ft cathedral ceiling, so the acoustics can be quite pleasing. The other disconcerting thing about the graphical interface for the speaker setup was that it doesn’t give the user and option for smaller (bookshelf-sized) rear surrounds and only displays large speakers if your left and right surrounds are large. My front and side surrounds are large Sony tower speakers and given how my dining room is set up it doesn’t make sense to add additional tower speakers. CONNECTING AN APPLE TV 4K – Lack of the Dolby Vision Support I initially connected my AppleTV 4k set top box directly to the Sony AN1000 using an 8k-rated HDMI cable only to discover that the receiver would not pass through a Dolby Vision signal to the AppleTV 4k which display 4k SDR only. When I went online to see if this was a unique issue or whether other users had encountered this, I discovered that unfortunately this is a known issue that as far as I could tell that neither Sony nor Apple have yet to resolve. So, I was forced to reconnect the Apple TV 4k directly to the Sony TV once again. Sony claims to support Dolby Vision through the AN1000 but this is simply not the case unless there is a solution or work-around that they have published as of this writing that I have missed. DISPLAYING THE SOUND FIELD BEING USED The Sony AN1000 does have a nifty 360 Spatial Sound setting which comes in handy when watching older films whether they are streamed or from a Blu-ray player. That said whatever the current sound field being used is displayed on the front display panel of the receiver but is so small as to be unreadable especially considering that the user may be sitting some 10 feet away from the receiver and TV screen and not inclined to keep getting out of their chair to kneel down and get within a few inches of the receiver’s front display to see what the settings are. Attempting to verify the sound field by using the included Sony remote for the receiver is not much help since it hardly ever displays the information. Using the Sony TV’s remote isn’t much better since the option in the audio setting it displays is “Dolby Audio” not “Dolby Atmos” or “Dolby Digital Plus” or other sound fields/codecs like “DTS”. OVERALL PERFORMANCE - SOUND CLARITY AND SURROUND EFFECTS Despite some of the aforementioned annoying user interface issues, the surround sound effects of the AN1000 when in Dolby Atmos or using the Sony 360 Spatial Sound setting is quite impressive and to my ear sounds much crisper than my previous Denon multi-channel AVR. Initially my subwoofers were putting out probably a bit too much thundering low frequency bass; so, I actually had to reset the levels on them down a bit. This was quite noticeable when playing the 4k UHD Dolby Atmos stream of Blade Runner, for example and some other action films with explosions and other pyrotechnics. When playing the tornado scene from The Wizard of Oz, you really do get the sense that wind is whipping around you from every corner of the room. Other films that have been adept at incorporating Dolby Atmos will sometimes startle the viewer with offscreen sound effects that was made by another character that soon makes an appearance. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies are very good examples of this. I also tested the AN1000 with different genres (classical, opera, jazz, rock) of music on Amazon Music and was quite pleased with the crisp, clear sound of instruments and vocals. FINAL WORD To say that the AN1000 has horsepower and can create a dynamic and immersive theater sound experience in an averaged-sized living room is an understatement. This is a feature-rich and powerful home theater receiver and for most living room/family room/bonus room situations, the Sony STR AN1000 will be more than suitable for what you will need to create an entertaining surround sound environment.

When my beloved Sony STR-DN1080 receiver finally gave up the ghost, I felt a mix of sadness and anticipation - sad to see an old friend go, but excited about what new tech I could bring into my home. After much research, I settled on the Sony STR-AN1000, and let me tell you, it was a decision I don't regret for a second. From the moment I unboxed this sleek, modern receiver, I knew I was in for a treat. The setup was a breeze, intuitive enough that I didn't have to refer to the manual once. But it's the sound quality where the STR-AN1000 really shines. The clarity and depth it brings to music and movies are nothing short of astounding. Watching my favorite films, I felt like I was in the cinema, every sound effect and musical note resonating with crystal-clear precision. What really stands out is the receiver's ability to make even my old speakers sound new. It's like this receiver has breathed new life into my entire audio system. But it's not just about the sound. The user interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, making adjusting settings or switching inputs a hassle-free experience. And, the connectivity options are plentiful, ensuring all my devices can be hooked up without any issues. In conclusion, the Sony STR-AN1000 isn't just a worthy successor to my old receiver - it's a significant upgrade. For anyone looking to elevate their home audio experience, this is, without doubt, a fantastic choice. It's transformed my living room into a personal cinema, and I couldn't be happier with it.

I have been using Sony for very long time and this is my first negative review for a Sony product. Surely the experience with this product will change my perspective on Sony. I will think hard to buy another Sony product from now. My first unit had many issues. It shutdown itself multiple times without a reason. I doesn't turn-on/off automatically on the game port while it works with mediabox port. It bangs sometimes when it turns on. Sometimes it changes the connection to tv by itself. I contacted Sony customer support and followed their instruction, such as resetting the unit but it didn't work. The experience was not pleasant because I felt that they were trying to find 'my fault'. Eventually they agreed to take the unit. I shipped the unit in Nov'23. They tried to fix it but couldn't. So they sent a new unit. It took over 1.5mo. For 20 days with the new unit, it turned off itself 3 times. Yesterday, it became totally unresponsive. I couldn't turn it off and had to unplug its power. After reboot, there was no sound. So I had to unplug the power again multiple times before making it work. I contacted Sony for a refund because I don't have any confidence on this product but they refused and asked to send the unit back for a repair. I already tried two units and how I can be sure that the third one will work, but I have no choice but taking another round of the repair. I really hope that it works this time. EDIT: After the final try of the customer service, I haven't had an issue for over a year. I still can't give 5 star, but they are working fine and produces a good sound now.

I’ve owned Denon receivers for years and have always found them to be excellent. However, after my Sony TV received a recent update, my Denon receiver didn’t seem to work as seamlessly with my Sony TV and Ultra HD player. I decided to switch to the latest Sony receiver so that all my equipment would integrate more smoothly. This receiver turned out to be a great choice, both cost-effective and perfectly compatible with my other Sony components. I’m so glad I purchased it. The sound is phenomenal with my Definitive speakers, and I love how it connects with the speakers built into my Sony TV (located behind the screen), creating an outstanding center channel experience.

This receiver gave me nothing but problems from the start. I have 5 speakers, 2 front, 1 center and 2 surround. Additionally, I have the cable box, Samsung Smart TV, DVD player, Apple TV and Wii game attached to the receiver. Setup was fine, but when I turned it on with the cable box remote (would not turn on with the receiver remote), a message appeared on the receiver saying something like, "please wait". I waited and waited, from 2 - 15 minutes before it would come on. Once it did start up my TV, everything played well - TV, Apple TV, etc. But when I turned it off, and came back the next day, same message and same wait. I called Sony Support 4 times. They walked me through different setup's, but the same problem persisted. I gave up and have returned it for a full refund. I downsized to the Sony STRDH590 5.2 and have been very satisfied. Everything works, and comes on immediately with the Sony remote or Cable box remote. If you don't have more than 5 speakers, don't waste your money on the STR-AN1000 7.2.

I was researching many similar A/V Receivers and reviews for all were about the same I felt. Some would keep the first one they bought (around 1k range or less) and others would return them and buy a different brand that was in the price same range. I was able to buy this model for the cheaper price that has popped up at $565.94 (before tax). I read a review at Cnet Best AV Receivers for 2024. I normally use a grain of salt when reading reviews at sites like Cnet but since I couldn't find what I felt was a real end user consensus of go with this one not that one I then based my purchase off this line from the Cnet review "If you're spending under $1,000, there are four main receivers to choose from -- the Sony STR-AN1000, the Yamaha RX-V6A, the Onkyo TX-NR6100 and the Denon AVR-970H. All offer excellent performance, so the short answer about which to buy is whichever is available for the lowest price." That stuck with me since I did get this for cheaper than the Onkyo TX-NR6100 (a brand I would consider first). If I had more in my budget I might have gone with the more expensive Onkyo TX-RZ50 due to it's great reviews as well but this Sony STR-AN1000 does have a bunch of future proof features that I wanted. So far I am impressed with the Sony STR-AN1000 and have not seen any downside. I did pair this system with Klipsch Reference Series 5.2 Home Theater Pack with 2X R-625FA Floorstanding Speakers, R-52C Center Channel Speaker, 2X R-41M Bookshelf Speakers (as found on Amazon). That also comes with 1xReference R-12SW 12" Subwoofer. So far it has been great! Based on my research I would recommend you buy Oxygen Free Pure Copper wire instead of slightly cheaper 2 Core Parallel (Stranded CCA) Copper Clad Aluminum Wire Strands (for example). The cheaper ones that aren't pure Copper that may not deliver as well. That is going to be based on your own personal experience but I suggest spend once for something and not twice. I did not buy any banana clips to use with this receiver but I also forgot how much of a pain it can be unscrewing the caps and having to thread the speaker wire. SO I might suggest that if are on the fence about such a purchase. We only use Blu-ray or internet based streaming options with our setup through a Chromecast Ultra. I tested my Blu-ray of Ghostbusters Frozen Empire. The intro with the thunder and lightning could be felt and heard just like what I would expect in real life using this receiver and speaker setup. The system has no issue sending 2160p 4K HDR content through to the TV and of course the 5.1, Dolby Atoms, etc through as stated for support in documentation. I have not taken the system beyond a volume for 40 for testing different audio sources as I am breaking in the new speakers but the delivery really starts jumping up at about 34. I decided to switch from using sound bar systems to a full A/V Receiver and proper speaker setup due to sound bar systems underdelivering (even at the higher prices) or killing themselves due to trapped heat (I am talking about my personal experience with LG). Yes the initial cost is more but there is a difference between hearing what you are watching and experiencing it and longevity of product. I plan to keep this setup of mine for as long as possible and do not currently anticipate any need to replace short of conditions out of my control. I would recommend based on pricing or your personal preference of brands.