I almost sent this receiver back without even opening it because of all the bad press its getting on the various AV forums, which I discovered only after I made the purchase. In particular, I was worried about reported overheating issues, comments about it dropping the video signal from Nintendo's Wii, and the "blue dot" problem that reportedly occurs when passing 1080p signals. The last I haven't been able to test as my TV is only 720p, so while I'm still a little bit worried about that, I've been living with it for a couple of weeks now and so far haven't had any problems. In fact, quite the contrary. It's performance has been stellar, and it's packed with nice-to-have features, such as on screen display over HDMI, a plethora of connectivity options, and support for all the high def audio formats, all for a good price. Even my wife commented on how much better it sounds than our old receiver (a Pioneer VSX1017XV-K), and she could care less about such things. It does get warm, but not overly much, and I made sure to leave a lot of ventilation space.
The Pioneer was good, but it developed a mysterious and highly annoying buzz. The Onkyo is better. I'm not sure what exactly accounts for the improvement, but I'm guessing it's the Audyssey setup as much as anything else. I also really like the low-volume listening compensators from both Audyssey and THX. I like it loud, espescially on those rare occassions when I'm watching alone, but I don't listen at reference level even then, and DynamicEQ/Loudness Plus make a noticeable difference. I liked the proprietary DSP options on the Pioneer better than those on the Onkyo, but that's about it. Hopefully, it will last a little longer too.
As for the video, again, I haven't tested pass-through at 1080p, but so far it looks great. Except for the Wii, I have everything HDMI in and one HDMI out, and it all works great. I experimented with using the upconverter in the Onkyo, but ultimately went back to pass-through as I didn't see any improvement.
The only thing it doesn't have that I wish it did was Audyssey's Dynamic Volume. I'm sold on Audyssey at this point and would like to have all their technologies available, but I guess they had to trim costs somewhere.
My experience has been great so far, and I would definitely recommend this receiver.
8-17-09 Update: We do have trouble with it dropping the signal from the Wii. Not sure if it's specifically the Wii, or if it's an issue with upconversion via the component inputs and output via HDMI, but, in any event, it happens. Not too often or too bad, but it happens. I would still buy it again anyway though, as the audio performance is really outstanding.Get more detail about Onkyo TX-SR806 7.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver (Black).
0 comments:
Post a Comment