121–130 of 297 posts
One reason I stopped buying Onkyo AVRs is that they don’t have a good room correction system like e.g. Audyssey or Dirac. Edit: Apparently Onkyo caught up at some point, but at the time I switched away from them they were lagging behind regarding room correction.
Onkyo has had Audyssey for quite som time and current models have Dirac.
Ah, I missed that, haven’t kept up to date in recent years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But doesn't the brand itself have value outside of Japan? When liquidating the company, why not license it to another manufacturer?
Whats the good of licensing a brand if the company was known for high quality products? Its kind of like how toshiba made laptops 25 years ago that still work today but now they just license their name out to be stamped on cheap crappy laptops that barely make it through their warranty period.
Eventually, consumers catch on:
> but now they just license their name out to be stamped on cheap crappy laptops
I 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…
annoyingly, you can't get a system without a wireless subwoofer.
I have a soundbar that creates a wifi access point for the subwoofer and it's really annoying. I really just want a wire.
So, I've been considering an a/v receiver and dedicated speakers, which means I can't mount them on the tv
There's no doubt that, for a lot of people, there is just a better convenience/quality trade-off. I had a good size Onkyo system for watching movies and I configured it meticulously. But it's hard to explain to others why there is so much ceremony and bulk, especially when watching habits degenerate from immersive movies to binge watching netflix serieses. Part of the experience with hobbies is some kind of sacrifice…
Weirdly in the last couple of weeks we’ve been clearing out our house and I found three(!) Onkyo home cinema amp boxes in the attic. I don’t own a single Onkyo amplifier anymore. Every single one got returned due to a serious fault (from suddenly producing no sound, to literal smoke coming out of it) within a year or 18 months, and typically swapped for another, slightly newer model Onkyo amp - rinse & repeat yearly.…
By the way, I just checked the backplate and it's an Onkyo TX-9031 RDS receiver from 1993 - time just flies ...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
FWIW they do support DTS (but not DTS-HD) now.
I 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?
This 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…
> the actual “Onkyo” that consumers know will carry on I’m not so sure. The mainstream market (by that I mean excluding expensive “high-end” brands like NAD) can’t support a lot of independently designed products. In the AVR mainstream market there’s currently Denon/Marantz, Onkyo/Pioneer, Sony, and Yamaha (did I miss any?). There’s bound to occur more consolidation if the market keeps shrinking. The brands may conti…
But multi-channel sound is sewn up - to enter that market you have to ask permission from companies like dolby. Same with video.
They 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately AirPlay doesn't support Atmos music. Despite spending thousand dollar plus on a Denon and Klipsch setup, I quickly found out that my Apple Music Atmos songs play only as stereo using AirPlay. It's probably Apple's fault...but it reduced the value of my receiver for me. Buy a 7.1 channel setup and effectively listen to only 2 channels :/
It’s entirely limitations of Apple Airplay that are known and not new. Whether it’s Apples fault - I mean Airplay does what it says it does. Anybody that cares about would simply not use Airplay. If you want to use Apple Music then the best bet is an Apple TV which can stream it over HDMI to the receiver. But it’s not like there aren’t alternative music providers - Spotify, qobuz, tidal, your own pick your poison DLN…
I 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…
Soundbars are what's killing AVRs for what's left of the 'home theater' market. They're much easier to setup and deliver a good enough experience. For everyone else, it's laptops & tablets with maybe a pair of headphones.