Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Pioneer Elite 45TX vs Denon 3803 vs Onkyo TX-SR800

You guys have any comments on these 3 receivers? I think they are all very close in price, about 850-900 online. I hear the Denon has problems with it's video upsampling. I've heard nothing bad about the other two so far.

Dan, I'll comment that the MCACC feature on the 45TX might be the deciding factor. You might check the discussion on the AVSforum.com board about this.

I have one area of caution regarding the Pioneer 45TX...RESERVE POWER. I have the Pioneer brochure that completely specs out their receivers. When I read the specs on the 49TX(Pioneers 'flagship' model)I noticed the power rating is 160W at 6 ohms and 130W at 8 ohms. This is their flagship model which I don't think represents a good power reserve. Odds are that the 45TX performs similar....or maybe even worse. In fact, Pioneer does not offer 6 ohm specs for the 45TX, but they do for the 49TX. Kinda makes one wonder.

As an afterthought, have you researched the Marantz SR7300? You might want to consider researching this receiver well. It is in the same league as the others you mentioned and you can find it from an authorized dealer on the net for around $850-900. I also like the Crestron remote that comes with this receiver. Just my two cents.

I'll echo the Marantz suggestion in addition to the new Integra (near as I can tell, it's the same unit as the Onkyo). Listen to them all.

The Denon, however, has the ability to upconvert S-Video and Composite Video to Component and output it all via one component monitor cable. This is a very convenient feature when setting up your system as it allows you to change sources with much more simplicity.

Regards,
Semi

KC, you have echoed my previous comments about the pioneer receivers (posted sometime last week).
For a rather expensive 'Elite' model, their specs are somewhat suspect (or perhaps feeble is a better word) when compared to other brands in a similar price range. Who owns a $2400+ (msrp cdn) receiver that doesn't support (at least in the whitepaper specs) powering a 4 ohm speaker?
Although i find the sound of Pioneers' receivers to be just fine, i've also been told by some electronics repair guys that in general the build quality is really not that good.
Considering how ridiculously hot these receivers can get, it only supports this hypothesis.

Great advice guys, I'll definitely look at the Marantz as well. I haven't heard many bad things about Pioneer Elite on avsforum, but have heard about the Denon 3803 video conversion displaying something like a de-sync or ground loop problem. That worries me. I've also read that many consumer grade receivers do not meet specs as far as advertised wattage, Onkyo, Denon, and a few others, although H/K usually does. But I think H/K runs hotter than Pioneer. I wrote an e-mail to Ascend Acoustics because their speakers are 4 ohm rated and they said many customers use the Elites, which have a 6 ohm setting, but no 4 ohm, with no problems.

Just curious; but have you considered Rotel? I was looking at some of their products and they seem very nice But if you want more than 5 channels; youd probably have to get the higher end Rotel and a seperate stereo amp for the extra back two; it seems rotel only powers 5 - Or then again you could just stick with the Denon or the others you are considering Happy hunting

DanTana,
As i mentioned, the Pioneer receivers are not spec'd for 4 ohm speakers offiicially, but do you really want to use such a receiver for that purpose anyway?
If you have not seen forum reviews about how hot Pioneer receivers get, then you should continue to peruse other forums. Sometimes single forums are biased towards one or more products, much like this forum would be heavily biased towards Axioms speakers being the best above all others.
We started to cook an egg on a Pioneer receiver back in university (although it was running for about 7 hours straight on a rather high volume but that egg had started to cook i tell you). Just offhand some people may say how hot a receiver gets is not indicative of its performance but based on past experience, it is essential to control heat around/with electronics.

As for the wattage, there are few receivers out there in the standard consumer price range that can actually do what their specifications are rated. Most especially the wattage per channel. H/K is by NO means an exception to this.
If i can find the website where someone did a test with a meter, you will see that the more speakers plugged into the receivers, the greater the decrease in wattage per channel (some much more than others). If you are looking for a spec that says more than most about this, try to find something that has tested the wattage with all 5/6/7 channels driven over the entire frequency range of 20hz-20khz.

Was that an Elite receiver that had gotten that hot? I love the MCACC I think it's called. Automatically configures the entire speaker setup for you. But I wasn't stuck to Pioneer as yet. I started to look at Marantz and that is a nice remote with the 8200. I would probably get the lowly Kenwood VR-6070 if it had OSD. A magazine tested it's output at 92 out of a rated 100 watts. And overall great reviews on it.

I don't recall the model of the Pioneer although it was manufactured mid-1990s. But again, don' let the names (advertising) fool you. The Pioneer "Elite" line of receivers are virtually no different than the 'high end' of their non-elite series.
I was auditioning Pioneer myself about 9 months ago and i recalled this hot receiver experience. So i went to a local audioshop and took a look at the Pioneer receivers (i did like many things about them) and i had a listen (with some B&W 603s which i was also auditioning at the time before i chose Axioms). Sure enough, that receiver had probably been turned on since the store opened in the morning but for the whole 10 minutes it was in use while i was playing some music it got quite hot. Far more hot than i would want a receiver to get. Heck, summer is hot enough in Western Canada. I certainly don't need a receiver cranking up the heat in my nice and cool basement by several degrees and i certainly do not want my amp to burn out because it has a sorry excuse for heat dissipation.
Basically my impression of the incredibly warm Pioneers still stands, now based on 2 experiences with them, but as i mentioned, this has nothing to do with my opinion about how they sound or the options they have onboard. I'm still a little surprised at the lack of official support for 4ohm speakers though, especially for the amount of cash you can pay for the Elite lineup.