Pioneer SX-S30

With HDMI inputs and a host of smarts in a slim chassis, the S-30 positions itself as a TV audio amp par excellence.

Well, the definitions balloon is truly burst by Pioneer’s slimline SX-S30. It’s a two-channel amplifier, it has the networking smarts which defines this group of smart amplifiers, it has radio tuners (including DAB+), but also HDMI inputs and decoding for movie formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio (delivering them in stereo), plus a set-up microphone for room EQ adjustment. So call this a smart stereo receiver?

However you label it, this is something many lounge rooms have been begging for — an amp that can properly handle both music and TV audio. Add the smarts — here courtesy of the rising ‘FireConnect powered by Blackfire’ platform, which includes Chromecast — and the promise is high indeed, especially given the price. Equipment The power rating first — no amount of versatility is of value if the output is weedy. Like Yamaha, Pioneer quotes its Class-D amp section with nonhi-fi specs — relatively high distortion of 1% THD is allowed, and further here the quoted 2 × 85W is the power delivered into four ohms rather than eight, measured at only 1kHz, with only one channel driven. So at hi-fi specs the watts would come out way lower. And there’s no way to upgrade it — there’s a mono subwoofer output but no ‘tape out’ or pre-out sockets here.

Perhaps that’s because all the space on the back is filled with the inputs. You get two line-level analogue inputs on RCA pairs, plus a turntable input (hoorah). The stereo digital inputs are a little light, with just one optical and one coaxial, plus a USB slot on the front for a stick or drive. Then there are four HDMI inputs and one output to your display, all of them 4K-compatible and HDCP2.2-enabled. Then there’s Bluetooth and, once networked by Wi-Fi or Ethernet, also AirPlay, Chromecast and FireConnect streaming — a huge array of wireless versatility which delivers network replay (including high-res PCM and DSD) and various streaming services, internet radio and so on (see the smarts panel). There’s an FM tuner and a DAB+ digital radio tuner inside, and a headphone socket on the front. It lacks only USB-B for direct computer playback. Annoyingly the speaker binding posts have been filled to prevent the use of banana plugs, no doubt pandering unnecessarily to some Euro-legislation — so it was fiddly bare-wire speaker connections only, until our learned colleague at Australian Hi-Fi magazine inserted a woodscrew and yanked out the centre sections. Freedom! Performance Those HDMI inputs are usefully versatile — you can plug them up any which way then use the on-screen menu to allocate to the buttons on the remote, which are named ‘BD/DVD’, ‘Game’, etc. You can similarly reallocate digital and analogue inputs. Indeed on first connection an initial set-up begins automatically, including the Pioneer’s sound calibration software which uses a supplied microphone with the aim of compensating for any anomalies in your room (you can skip this procedure and do it later, as did we; see below). We did run a firmware update over the network, which took about 20 minutes to download and install.

Using a 4K TV we had no problems at all, but later with a 1080p TV one input did give us trouble, the Pioneer claiming it couldn’t show us the pictures from a Fetch TV Mighty because our TV didn’t support HDCP2.2. Eh? An odd result. Switching to a different input and back fixed this, but it did recur often.

Under an ‘AV adjust’ menu (and in system settings) there’s surprising versatility of the kind you’d normally find on a multichannel AV receiver. There’s not only the sound tuning but settable crossover and distance settings for each speaker, including a subwoofer if you’re using one. Volume adjustments and sync settings (audio delay only) can be applied to each input individually. And power management lets you choose if the unit goes into standby or not, and what exactly can wake it up.

We listened both with and without microphone calibration, which tuned out some room bass to tighten