Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater New Onkyo Receivers

Men's swimming fan?

One of my criteria's for purchasing a new receiver is ease of purchase. If I can't walk into a store here in Calgary and buy one, I'm not getting it. As I plan to buy a receiver and use it for 10 years, or so, I want to be able to have it repaired easily. For that reason I won't be going with an Onkyo. I'm currently looking at the new Denon's or Yamaha's.

One other advantage of the Onkyo 805 over the 605 relates to the zone 2 capability.

hey, got a couple more questions now.

First, despite voiding the warranty by taking the receiver from US to Canada, are Onkyo receivers well built? Do they really have issues (more or less) compared to other receivers? In general are receivers more prone to getting damaged than other electronics?

Second, even though the 805 has 3 HDMI inputs, the 605 has 2, and so is it possible to get a 1.3 HDMI switcher, such as 3 x 1, to be plugged into the receiver, bringing it to total of 4 HDMI inputs? How are HDMI switchers in general?

P.S and yes, i know I brought my 2 questions to 5

Also, I can get a 4 x 1 HDMI for $50 on Monoprice, and so I could save myself a lot of money by not choosing the 805. I won't be using Zone controls, and THX select is just a bonus add on, and I could help resolve the limited HDMI inputs by using a switcher. Only thing is, is 90 W per ch. sufficient enough for how loud I want the speakers (wont be playing them excessively loud, just a decent amount)?

Receivers are less prone to damage than other electronics. Just remember to give your receiver adequate space for ventilation. I don't know if Onkyo's failure rate is lower than other receivers but I would venture to say that Denon, Onkyo and Yamaha have similar reliabilities.

With regard to the power, I already told you that it would be plenty. Don't you believe me ? If not, I'll give you some facts. I have a 90W/channel Denon. I listen to music at a tad over a quarter watt/channel in my 4,000 cubic foot room. For movies, I turn it up to 4W/channel. This represents mean sound pressures of 78dB for music and 85dB for movies with plenty of headroom to spare (and yes, I do have data to prove this ).

If these power levels aren't to your liking, it might interest you to know that my (cheap) Denon starts square-waving (distorting) at about 200W/channel (that's right...it can squeeze out this much power and not shut down). If you are really interested in the background to this, you can read this. I am sure that your Onkyo would perform very similarly.