Harman Kardon HK 3490 2 Channel 120 Watt Receiver

Yes, Yes, Yes; I would recomend this receiver to anyone who wants to improve their music listening pleasure.
I have my single disc CD player connected, with Monstercable, to the optical input. My 200 disc CD player ,with Monstercable, to the analog input.
The sound of the 120 watts/channel through my power hungry Polk RTiA7's is phenomenal!
I listen mostly to Jazz both instrumental (Wabster, Peterson) and vocal (Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Holicay, Vaughan, Prysock), Pop (Buble', early Striesand), Opera(Sills, Gheorghiu, Domingo), and some Classical.
I love the sound and sleekness of this receiver. My ears never get tired.
To find a receiver as powerful and beautiful as this one; you will have to look a long time. To find it on eBay, at a nice discount, makes it all more beautiful.
Buy it, you will love it too!

I needed a good Stereo Amplifier with SPDIF input to source it with a PopCorn Hour C-200. After lots of research, this 120W/ch Amplifier was my selection. Even when my PCH C-200 is still in the waiting list, I tested it with a modest RCA audio input from an iPod Classic and even with highly compressed MP3, the sound quality is excellent, even at maximum power. The speakers do half of the job so I got a pair of 100W(250W max)Yamaha NS-777 which made a perfect marriage. The speakers are rated 6-ohm, so the amplifier power maxes out at around 135 Watt per channel, crisp and clear. I was testing the worst scenario and just in very few songs I could hear a minimal background hiss, not perceptible hearing ie. 128KBPS MP3s from Pink Floyd's The Wall. I am still waiting for a 250W powered subwoofer Yamaha SW-315PN since these speakers have 6-inch woofers and my plans are to reconvert all my CD Collection to WAV (yes I will use a 2TB HDD in a PCH C-200, so my 400+ CDs will for sure fit in WAV, uncompressed format). Then I will do a Best Scenario test.

I purchased the 3490 from Harmon Audio as a refurbish. The silver finish was a little polished out but other than that it was like brand new. If your thinking about purchasing a 3490 this is the way to go. I wasn't sure if I was going to like the plain jane face. After all, I was used to all the bells and whistles and knobs of my vintage reconditioned Sansui G-8000. However, after it arrived and I hooked it up and placed it on the stand it looked fantastic and functioned 100%.
The HK3490 and the Sansui G-8000 each have a rating of 125 wpc at 8 ohms. I use the G-8000 as my benchmark against all other units. The HK3490 could not keep up with the Sansui, as if much could. However, it did do very well as compared to other receivers of the same class that I have had. The sheer power of the vintage unit was very apparent as compared to the HK3490.
I found a few drawbacks to the unit such as there not being a loudness function for low level listening. This might not be an issue if there were bass and treble controls on the remote. As it stands you have to go to the unit and adjust the controls on the face whenever you want to make a SIGNIFICANT increase or decrease in listening level. I found the lack of a midrange control also kept me from being able to fine tune the unit as well as the Sansui.
Another drawback that I found to the HK3490 was that the unit only has one optical audio input. My cable box has an optical audio out as does my dvd player and my cd player and I would like to hook them all to the unit. I have read other reviews on this unit and people site a drawback to the unit as being it's lack of a HDMI passthroughs. I can see this also being a drawback if you don't have optical outs on your other accessories.
The HK3490 comes in on my scale as a strong 7.5 overall. If the unit had a loudness function. If the unit had bass, treble, mid and loudness controls on the remote. If the unit had 3 optical audio inputs and HDMI passthroughs it would be a 9 on my scale. If the unit had all this and 125 American or Japanese watts per channel it would be a 10. Then I would pay full retail!

This unit is has room for all of my audio equipment from a 35 year old turntable to the latest DVD player. I found it easy to set up and the quality of sound is good. Switching from one input device to another is generally easy with clearly marked buttons of the remote. I would recommend this unit to anyone wanting a versatile, easy to use, reasonably priced receiver.

This receiver is great.

Cosmetics: much nicer looking than the previous version (3480)

Functionality: several features that are really great such as a nicer remote, white LED instead of blue, and digital optical input which is great for tv/xbox sound.

Quality: AMAZING, powers two Dahlquist DQ10's which are extremely power hungry (2oo watts rms) and two smaller theatre style speakers

Reliability: No problems so far, and have not had to deal with HK yet, but I assume it to be very well built. Ran my 3480 for hours at a time near full volume at parties at ECU and it never failed me.