What made you decide to return it?
There were a number of reasons. First off, the sound is great, however my current AVR was much more robust when running in direct mode, and no room correction. I want to also mention that my older receiver, Marantz 6012 was made prior to the DAC change. It has the AKM DAC. At that point, I just could not justify the change. Since I returned the 7100, I have tried a couple of other AVRs and none have matched the JBL, MA7100 in performance. I enjoyed the crisp clear sound of the MA7100. I run Martin Logan Motion 40i fronts, and it had no problem driving those.
I have become spoiled with the convenience of HEOS built into the receiver. I control my lossless music from the computer over that along with other streaming methods. I really missed that in the JBL. There is no onscreen streaming directly from the MA7100. The upside to that is there is less chance for interference from internal electronics. Pardon my rambling.
Another reason is the one year warranty, as I mentioned in another post. As I read the posts from seasoned Audiophiles, about the new JBL AVR series, I hope that JBL realizes that their target market may have hit the wrong mark. We, seasoned audio folks, are interested also.
I am considering going back to the MA7100 as a replacement. Now that Dirac Live is available, it should be a game changer. The ez set room correction, is a throwback to HK, as it was on their last AVRs. It was ineffective then to me. I was a die-hard HK owner from the 80’s until they left the market. Thanks to KYUU, I am now waiting to hear from Amir on his test results. If it gets a Happy Panther, I am back in.