High impact

Movies like WALL-E highlight this AVR's other great strength – dynamic impact. While our hero gently peeks at EVE from behind a boulder the scene is fairly quiet, punctuated by EVE's scanning effect and WALL-E knocking over some rubbish. Yet when EVE spins and shoots at the boulder it creates a ferociously large explosion that damn near takes you off the sofa.

With the system set-up as 'large' speakers all round, the bass explosion powers through all channels and the subwoofer with a stunning percussive impact that you can't achieve with small speakers and a subwoofer alone. Clearly the Sony has plenty of dynamic pep to back up its RMS Watts and it's not afraid to use it when required. If I was a set of speakers and saw my owner bringing in an STR-DA5400ES I would be afraid. Very afraid.

During the review I had the pleasure of borrowing Sony's matching SCD-XA5400ES SACD player and the BDP-S500ES Blu-ray deck, creating quite a family of serial over-achievers. Multichannel SACD over the HATS (High quality Audio Transmission System)-enabled HDMI connection adds a new level of clarity to multichannel music SACDs and the Blu-ray player will leave your eyes begging for more.

Serious AV

The Sony STR-DA5400ES is not a receiver for the faint-hearted, as it's far too demanding of accurate setup and top-notch ancillary equipment.

But, give it time, respect and some elbow grease to move your speakers around, and it is more than capable of seeing off the competition. Unless, of course, you want an AVR with Ethernet connectivity...