Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Good review of the- Onkyo TX-SR805

For those of you looking into buying a new receiver this Onkyo looks pretty darn good.
Onkyo

I KNOW! I have ordered it early July... still backorder (latest promise is... this week... or next week). One of the disadvantages of being Canadian: receivers seem to dislike crossing the border... and their price suddendly increase by 50%! Can't wait to put my hand on this baby though (especially that they seem to have made special efforts to get rid of any 4ohms problems they may have had in the past).

Less than $1000, eh? That means when I'm ready to buy it in two years, it will be around $500.

Got it this PM! HEAVY: 51 pounds. Pretty impressive overall (too tired to give many details). Audessy autosetup is a JOKE (it did not even get the distance right, not even close!). Luckily, it is a charm to setup manually with onsceen menus and stuff.

So far so good... At least, it's HERE....

What do you mean too tired? It's only 8:30 over there. When I first got my Axioms, I was up all night. Finissez travailler.

I actually went for a walk and a beer (I worked 12 hours today... which means I get to decide to come home early tomorrow!).

Neigboors are there (and I am a nice neighboor) so I did not do any "power" test (tomorrow).

I was missing PLII on my old Yamaha receiver, which always annoyed me. I LOVE it! I can't say I will always listen in that mode, but for sure it is nice to have the option. Very good algo. Receiver also has Neo:6 and Neural-Thx 5.1. Did not explore too much yet to see which one I like best (so far it is PLII).

Love some little details like assigning names to inputs so that, instead of spelling "CD" it now says "SoundBridge". Too bad it does not change the label on the remote... which is quite good. It already knows a lot of equipment and it can learn missing keys. DVD + Cable + TV + Soundbridge keys (the ones I use) are ALL mapped, either auto or manually. THAT is cool. Never happened to me before. There is ALWAYS a key key (sic) missing.

Audio switching is a bit slow. Did not measure, but it is many seconds. Video I don't mind too much (I understand the complexity), but audio is a bit annoying. Especially since the receiver can have multiple inputs for the same device that are then accessed with a remote control key (useful for DVD/DVD-A players requiring both digital and analog inputs). So to have the thing shut off for at least 2-3 seconds (again, I did not measure so it could still be a perception thing) is not particularly pleasant. But, then again, once the fiddling stops, it may not prove to be a practical inconvenient.

So far, not yet "impressed" per se (did not put it enough to the test yet), but I am quite pleased.

OK. Going back to do some listening... and then bed time!

Eric, enjoy. Yes, I always use DPLII for any music source and it significantly improves the realism. On Audyssey, if the distances weren't even close, the microphone positions may not have been correct, or some other point of procedure wasn't done, because all of these auto-calibration systems now do a pretty good job with that. When you have more time, try the whole procedure again.

That was my intention, especially since it is not intrusive (will not override my own settings until I say so). My fridge was running at the time, so it could have been fooled by that humming noise (but it was too late to stop it since I only had 10-15 minutes to try it!)

I messed around with Audyssey quite a lot during the short time I had my 805, and without fail it was correct on speaker distance except for my sub, which it would always claim was 30+ feet away. If you do some reading on the Audyssey thread over at AVS, this is common and IIRC Audyssey claims to be by design. Speaker size detection was inaccurate at best. The major issue I had when enabling Audyssey EQ settings was a near non-existent LFE experience. I never could get it to dial in correctly, so I ultimately ended up disabling Audyssey.

How many mic positions did you use for calibration? I always used all eight, however the first pass is the only one where distance/crossover are detected.

Hi Efalardeau,

I routinely urge Axiom buyers of the 4-ohm M80s to avoid any Onkyo AV receivers because of past history of Onkyos overheating or shutting down when connected to M80s (or going into current limiting with great reductions of output power).

I'm curious about your statement: " Can't wait to put my hand on this baby though (especially that they seem to have made special efforts to get rid of any 4ohms problems they may have had in the past)."

Where did you read or hear that Onkyo had re-engineered the power amp sections of their receivers so they'd be more stable with 4-ohm loads?

I think Haylo had to return his Onkyo AV receiver because of problems driving 4 ohms.

Anyway, once you get the chance, it would be interesting to get some feedback on your new Onkyo and whether it will drive the M80s really clean and loud without overheating or any audible distortion.

Regards,