First receiver I ever bought was an Onkyo ... in 1985. It still works.
Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
61–70 of 297 posts
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#62I feel that the AV-receiver market has gone the way of the DSLR market. Compact speaker systems like Sonos (that don't need a separate AVR) simply got good enough. Thus the need for buying a separate AVR to drive your Dolby / DTS / etc. setup has all but vanished except maybe for the most determined audiophiles (and even most of these would do well to simply get a compact wireless speaker setup instead of some monstr…
Are there any of those compact speaker systems that actually sound good, though?
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#63They screwed up their receivers circuit board from 2009 to 2015 ish. All their receivers would fail after 5 years and Onkyo did a massive recall campaign to replace the main circuit board (with all the amps attached.) That must have costed them.
I always thought that was part of the capacitor plague but I guess not since the timing doesn’t quite line up with what you’re saying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague I had an Onkyo from the bad cap era that blew its capacitors, it was maybe 15 years old when it died, FWIW..
The Wikipedia article is wrong - it only talks about "the capacitor plague" of water-based elcos from 1999 onwards.
There have been multiple capacitor plagues. E.g. in the late 80s/early 90s SMD electrolytics entered the market and these had absolutely atrocious reliability because their lead seals kept failing, so they'd empty their electrolyte into the PCB. Before that the Japanese brands had a plague. Philips "blue axials" had a plague in the 70s/80s. I don't remember the brand right now (small, red-cased caps), which also had a plague in the 80s. Rifa MP safety caps have had moisture ingress issues and associated explosion and fire issues since forever.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#64This isn’t big news, the actual “Onkyo” that consumers know will carry on, the Bankruptcy is the remains of the company that had already sold off the hardware divisions. “The company sold its core home audiovisual business to Sharp and U.S.-based Voxx International and its earphones and headphones business to an investment fund, both in September. A joint venture between Sharp and Voxx is expected to continue using t…
I was window shopping for an atmos receiver and noticed the manuals and even product design between a certain Onkyo and Pioneer receiver were basically identical. The design of the manuals, including the fonts and screenshots were almost identical. The back and front of the units were almost identical. I bet even the guts were identical! Here is the pioneer unit: https://intl.pioneer-audiovisual.com/manuals/docs/SN29…
Pioneer sold their home A/V business to Onkyo in 2015.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#65It's too bad Denon (DENki ONkyo) didn't buy this Onkyo to make the merger complete :). I'm guessing it wasn't worth it to go downmarket via Onkyo, and it sounds like Onkyo had been accumulating debt for years.
Denon is already the downmarket brand for D&M though (Marantz being the high end), there wasn't much difference in cost between Denon and Onkyo.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#66I feel that the AV-receiver market has gone the way of the DSLR market. Compact speaker systems like Sonos (that don't need a separate AVR) simply got good enough. Thus the need for buying a separate AVR to drive your Dolby / DTS / etc. setup has all but vanished except maybe for the most determined audiophiles (and even most of these would do well to simply get a compact wireless speaker setup instead of some monstr…
Sonos still has severe limitations and I regret buying two 5.1 setups from them.
As a simple example: there is no 7.1 support at all and the Atmos support is a sort of faked 5.1.2 support where the upward firing speakers try to bounce some sounds off the ceiling.
Sonos only supports 2.4GHz (no 5GHz support at all) so in a congested area network degradation is a big issue.
Codec support is limited as well. For example if your source outputs in DTS, you may need to throw away the whole system and buy a different sonos system just to get audio working. The same thing applies to dolby atmos or vision - you need to buy new speakers just to listen to those type of sources.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
When we started our quest to double, triple, even quadruple the money supply.
The US has been talking about the "Japan [central bank] Model" as a model of success for much longer than two years. This meme first got really big in central-banking circles after the 2008 crash. Japan has been following this model for 35-40 years of managed-decline. The US has been toying with the same model for more like 10-15 years than 2-3 suggested above. The US so far has managed its decline better, but not fo…
The US has a healthy immigration system that brings in a consistent stream of workers and tax payers to support all the old people about to clog social assistance channels for decades. That's the strong trap that Japan has been stuck in for decades, and the one that'll start befalling China in a decade or so. It'll be interesting to see if Japan can escape the population deflation or if this is a constant shrinking population from here on out until it's untenable to continue as-is.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#68I feel that the AV-receiver market has gone the way of the DSLR market. Compact speaker systems like Sonos (that don't need a separate AVR) simply got good enough. Thus the need for buying a separate AVR to drive your Dolby / DTS / etc. setup has all but vanished except maybe for the most determined audiophiles (and even most of these would do well to simply get a compact wireless speaker setup instead of some monstr…
Are there any of those compact speaker systems that actually sound good, though?
Most people think so. Audio nerds don't.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#69expect more. Japan Inc. has been running on fumes for decades. The US only started 2 years ago, and will likely last another 20~40 years of stagnation.
Japan has a demographic crisis for sure. A weak Yen may actually help them stay competitive in the manufacturing space though.
with inflation???
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#70I feel that the AV-receiver market has gone the way of the DSLR market. Compact speaker systems like Sonos (that don't need a separate AVR) simply got good enough. Thus the need for buying a separate AVR to drive your Dolby / DTS / etc. setup has all but vanished except maybe for the most determined audiophiles (and even most of these would do well to simply get a compact wireless speaker setup instead of some monstr…
Are there any of those compact speaker systems that actually sound good, though?
Yes - the Sonos Arc + sub + 2 rear channels sounds amazing after using the built in sound tuning, and got a pretty damn good review in What HiFi.