Thanks for the advice John.
The experience isn't irritating, I'm having fun.
The sound was just different, and we simply preferred the SC-05. I know you're a pretty big proponent of amps not sounding any different from each other, and that's your opinion (and many others!), so I respect that. But from the experiences that I've had in HT, I respectfully disagree.
Bypassing *all* of the processing, listening to analog-only SACD sound, the SC-05 and 876 sound different. The most telling example was when listening to our SACD of Janine Jansen playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons, specifically, the third movement, Presto. There are some very violent violin runs in there, about halfway through that end with some very peaky highs. With the SC-05, at those high-frequency peaks, it still sounds like a violin. It's angry, agressive, and sharp, but there's still a beautiful smoothness to it. It's passion. With the 876, those same peaks (at the same volume, according to the db meter), are much sharper with a grating 'ccccshhhh' of sibilance, with a complete breakdown of any smoothness to it. It's not imagined, it's not just 'kind of there', it's went from being a highly emotional musical moment to just a blast of high frequency noise that made me wince. Not cool. My wife, unprompted in any way by me, also said that the SQ was too harsh for her liking before I gave her any opinion.
But yes, I agree with you that it is absolutely possible that something was wrong with my 876. Or perhaps this was some sort of manifestation of problems driving M80's. I left the 876 in 6-ohm mode, per suggestions on AVS, so maybe something was going on there. Who knows. The bottom line is that if that 876 was defective, then I guess I'll never know what a 'good' one sounds like because I'm not dealing with Onkyo's customer service on a brand new unit. Not going there if I don't have to.
But whether it's defective, or unable to drive M80's effectively, or there was some phantom DSP at work (whether pro on the SC-05's side or con on the 876's), or it just simply doesn't sound as good to us, it didn't make the cut for us. Simply put, it just didn't impress us enough to part with a thousand bucks. Neither the audio nor the video nor the features in general. Maybe that's unfair to the 876. Maybe I should spend a few more hours tinkering with it. But I really don't want to, so it loses. That's how it works sometimes.
The SC-05 "just works" and its SQ continues to impress.
Maybe I'm just subconsciously psycho-acoustically brainwashed to prefer the Pioneer. Anything is possible, I guess. Though if we bring psychology into it, I actually really wanted to prefer the Onkyo because of it's greater feature set. I had high hopes that the Reala would blow me away and that the SQ would be fantastic. It also just has more toys, like HD Radio and the pretty GUI. And also simply because it's easier to return the SC-05 to the local Best Buy than it is to ship the 876 back to Amazon.
But I'm not done. We're going to check out a local HT store that sells Rotel and NAD gear this weekend. I'm skeptical that they'll have anything that will convince me to part with even more money on an AVR/prepro. But we're going to check it out. One never knows what they'll have on sale.
And the 3808 is still a very viable option too.
