On the Pioneer Susano, the album feels as if it's finally come home. From the birdsong ambience and harmonics of Because to the chopping riffs and multi-tracked rear-channel handclaps of Revolution, these virtual Beatles are a pure joy.

The boffins at Pioneer rate the LX90's power plant at 200W per channel, but they're being conservative. In our Tech Labs, we measured a constant 250W into 8 ohms  when five channels are driven simultaneously. Its fidelity firewall, our measurement of absolute, distortion-free muscle, is 228W per channel at 0.05 per cent THD. This is a weapons-grade performance.

In control

One feature that will probably get less attention than most is actually one of the LX90's neatest tricks. Pioneer's proprietary Full Band Phase Control technology has been designed to compensate for variances in speaker configurations and drivers. If your system is built with different enclosures front and back, the amp uses innovative DSP to create a coherent, balanced image.

My Definitive Technology reference system actually has good timbre-matching, but just for fun I listened with an odd assortment of boxes and was amazed at how seamless the soundstage became. Given that most living rooms are far from symmetrical in layout, and tend not to use perfectly matched speakers, it's a significant attraction, and one that should be left on at all times.

The amp is not particularly demure. Its most striking aspect is, of course, the LCD 'confidence monitor' on the front panel. This conveys the unit's GUI and allows you to tinker without recourse to a TV screen.
It doesn't relay video delivered via HDMI, though. You'll also need to lace up an analogue feed from your HD component to see video. It's a great way to navigate DVD-A discs without turning on the TV.

Bolt on

When you place the receiver on your home network (via the LAN port on the rear) you can also browse connected PCs for audio and video files, but this Home Media implementation actually feels a bit like a bolt-on. The gallery's graphical style is different from the main GUI and you even have to toggle your remote control from Amp to Source mode to navigate.

Even more perplexing, given how the Susano is so network-savvy, is the lack of support for internet radio. I rarely, if ever, listen to AM/FM on receivers, and can even live without DAB, but no internet radio on this baby is a missed trick.

Naturally, the unit supports CEC control via HDMI – although I'm increasingly finding this a bind. Perhaps CEC is handy in a simple system, but if you have multiple components, annoying things happen (turn off the TV to listen to a CD, and you'll shut down your disc-spinner in the process. Doh!).

Ultra violent amp

It goes without saying that the LX90 can decode all high-rez audio bitstreams. It also comes with a plethora of sound-processing modes, many surprisingly good, plus the very latest in THX post-processing.

If you've not experienced the latest flavours from the THX canteen, you're missing out. The THX Ultra 2 Plus cinema mode is probably the best cinematic post-processing I've ever heard: as rich and taut as Paris Hilton, with pitch-perfect vocal EQ and brilliantly theatrical surround imaging.

Like Clyde the Orangutan, the SC-LX90 can be hooked up any which way. I used the amp in a 7.2 configuration, but even this left digital power modules spare. For those with larger rooms, a 9.2 pattern is possible (using two sets of side speakers).

Alternatively, cinephiles may want to bi-amp the front soundstage for a high-grade 5.2 system. Or you could run a 7.2 home cinema system, with a second two-channel package in a different room, or the same room feeding different speakers (creating a dedicated two-channel music system).