# Harman Kardon AVR 154



## Synthsayer

The Harman Kardon AVR154 is an excellent AVR with tons of features and the renowned Harman Kardon sound that has given the company its long reputation for technologically advanced audio equipment and excellent customer service. I bought mine at a large US retailer, Best Buy. See Best Buy, AVR154 product page. 
*Just click the underlined links in this review to see more product details. These are ‘clean’ links to the products’ Web site and not some bogus redirector selling you car insurance.
I have had the AVR 154 for about a year and a half. I could not be more pleased. Any time I have had a question about setup or anything about the AVR, all I had to do is call the American tech. support in N.Y. and my questions were answered by very HKs professional, knowledgeable, and polite tech. support staff.
The AVR154 has great features besides its hefty 150 Watts of power, triple crossover bass management thanks to the built in digital electronic crossovers, 3 HDMI inputs, a multitude of Surround Sound Decoders, and a remote that is very easy to setup for controlling all of my gear. With the remote I can make changes to speaker volume, speaker delay, or A/V Sync delay. I can even run the Test White Noise to check speaker levels with just a press of a button on the remote.
The AVR 154 weighs 20lbs. You can tell when you take it out of the box that it feels like it has some real guts in it. It has large, heavy transformers that give the AVR an open, punchy and dynamic sound quality from the High-Current, Ultra-wide bandwidth amplifiers. 
If you are looking for a great sounding AVR then this is the unit you want. It is rated at 150 Watts, or 5 X 30W per channel which may not impress some people unfamiliar with HK gear. But, HK uses testing methods that give real power ratings. With over 25 years of pro sound experience I know how companies come up with these overblown ratings. 150 Watts from a Harman Kardon amp is equivalent to more than 500 Watts from other products. And the 150 Watts you get are clean, transparent, and powerful. The sound is very full from top to bottom. There are no raspy or gritty highs that some amps have when really pushed to high levels.
I run an OAudio 500 Watt BASH sub amp into a DIY MAD 1259 driver. The low end output can make you sick at your stomach. You don't hear the bass when it gets really low, you just feel it. My friends look at me during a movie and say," Where is that bass coming from?”
I use an AudioQuest Sub-A subwoofer interconnect between the AVR154 preamp level subwoofer output and the OAudio 500Watt BASH subwoofer plate amplifier.
I have used several different speaker systems with the AVR. I even hooked up a pair of Altec Voice of the Theater professional cinema horn cabinets. The high efficiency of the Altecs made the AVR154 sound absolutely amazing.
If you want to buy a AVR to make the centerpiece of you home theater system and not waste thousands of dollars, the AVR 154 or any other HK AVR is exactly what you want.
And no, I don’t work for Harman Kardon.


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## KASR

I also have the HK AVCR 154 and have been very happy with it...I am however, looking to upgrade and if I stick with the HK family, I will moving up to the 254 or the 354 for their HDMI Audio and Video pass-through as well as TrueHD sound support - but for the money, the AVR154 is a solid performer that still continues to impress me with it's feature set.


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