Pioneer ELITE VSX-97
(1993 - 1994)

King of Home-Theater - suprising for a brand so renowned in pure high-fidelity.
Pioneer took over the nascent market Sony didn't give a hoot about by way of supporting Laserdisc. It really should have been the other way around since Sony was selling TVs and researching on digital technologies long before Pioneer became an industry major...

Anyway, the VSX-97 was the last Pioneer home-cinema receiver that didn't bear the AC-3 / Dolby Digital feature which the VSX-99 introduced in 1994. It was built as a good integrated amplifier with a non-resonant black-galvanized chassis, rubber-coated capacitors, black-coated alumite heatsink, two copper-topped transformers, Legato Link conversion, 50-bit DASP chip, a complete (and somewhat cheesy) GUI, multi-room capability (with the optional MR-100 adaptor), programmable remote, video edit modes, digital bass enhancer, digital parametric equalizer, digital expander / compressor, ADLC Non-Switching Type II circuits for the front and center speakers, Noise Gate and DC offset dither, and, and, and, and, and...
The features are too many to list - as with all serious modern audio/video stereo receiver, one may wonder why the engineers didn't include a coffee timer and fruit mixer.

Will the VSX-97 be considered vintage one day ? I don't know but I'm not really sure it could, however well built...