Was there ever a better value in a stereo receiver than the Onkyo TX-890?
($820 new list price in 1990)
Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
241–250 of 297 posts
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
You keep stating this phase destruction like it is gospel. However, if a crossover is negatively affecting the phasing, something is wrong. Maybe it's a cheap design on a cheap product, or a poorly made something with a good design, but if you have a crossover doing this, then replace the crossover. Many many sound systems do not have this issue that you seem to be convinced is normal operation of a crossover. If thi…
Lot of discussion of crossovers and phase here: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/how-does-a-crosso... It appears it is possible to create a crossover that preserves phase but it is difficult. Most designs instead try to minimize the phase difference. (And the worse crossovers don't bother at all.) Regardless, as soon as I listened to full range drivers (with no mid-range, crossovers, etc.) it was clear noth…
> It appears it is possible to create a crossover that preserves phase but it is difficult. Most designs instead try to minimize the phase difference.
This is correct, I'm not convinced being slightly out of phase is a big issue though, and wildly out of phase shouldn't happen in a good design. Full range drivers have other issues, there is no way you can construct a chassis that is equally good at reproducing bass and treble as a n-way system, and its usually the treble that suffers. This is why commercial coax systems often are layered two-way systems, eg the KEF LSX50. I'm not saying what you are experiencing isn't real, but if there weren't pros and cons then high-end Hifi (as opposed to PA) speakers would have moved to that concept, which they haven't.
Maybe what you are experiencing is due to better dispersion. You can improve that in n-way systems by adding strong chamfers to the enclosure, see popular DIY projects Disco-M [0] or LYC [1] or DXT-MON[2] (phase chart at crossover included in comment).
[0] https://heissmann-acoustics.de/disco-m/ [1] http://www.donhighend.de/?page_id=3212 [2] https://heissmann-acoustics.de/en/dxt-mon-vs-neumann-kh-120a...
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bought an Onkyo 5.1 receiver at a garage sale yesterday for $5. This house I moved into has prewired surround speakers and I felt like I should take advantage. What a hassle though, I can’t get audio flowing from the tv, can’t get it to drive all the speakers, it runs super hot. It really seems like a hardware hobby more than a way to enjoy movies so far.
Unfortunately a modern receiver is worth the money. A modern one will have Bluetooth and Wifi connection, so you can stream and control music direct from your phone or computer in another room. On the TV side, a modern receiver probably has built in chromecast. It will support eArc so your TV can control the receiver directly - when watching TV you don't need to use the receiver remote at all, it will switch sources…
This matches my experience, too. Setting up eARC and especially getting PS5 to use all speakers while being connected only to the TV took quite a bit of time, though.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think “listening to music as an activity” and “buying, tweaking and upgrading expensive audio setups” are two separate activities that often overlap but do not require each other. As an example, I fiercely enjoy sitting on my couch with my eyes closed listening to full albums of the White Stripes or Stars of the Lid or Boards of Canada or Sufjan Stevens on my AirPods Max, streamed via Bluetooth from my iPhone. Ever…
It’s exactly this. “Audiophiles” are a weird bunch. Much of what they claim to hear is scientifically proven as total nonsense. Audio Science Review is a great place where they scientifically analyse audio equipment. The quality of speaker wire for all meaningful measurements is utterly irrelevant for instance. Realistically, as long as you are enjoying the art, how you are enjoying it should be irrelevant. I often m…
> The same with music, and inversely - a great song will still sound great and enjoyable on a really crappy car stereo.
Not really agree on this one. I would say you will still like it and maybe enjoy it because this is the only way you can enjoy it while driving. But that doesn't mean it sound great.
The issue is that most music is overcompressed these days to make up for the fact that most people are listening to music in hostile environment or with bad devices. Which make the difference with higher fidelity equipment less important. Without being an audiophile I have records from the 90's that only felt so great on headphones or decent hifi. The music was less compressed these days, there were much higher amplitude difference between parts of the song, instruments. Back in the days listening on the radio felt weird and flat. We just lowered the bar to the point that everything feel weird and flat. Like fast food or premade dishes that only have a general way too salty or too sweet tastes where your palate cannot do the sorting anymore of the different ingredients that have been put to it.
I still think a decent hifi equipment would make a ton of difference for someone into classical records. Modern POP music? Waste of money.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can't hear the TV, which of these three remotes do I need to push the "source" button on? I have a fairly dumb amplifier (it does BT, and the DAC can be fed through optical and coax, too). It can also be controlled over RS-232 and Ethernet. It doesn't have any kind of HDMI or other "home theater" related functions. But the remote of my Fire TV can be configured to control the input and the volume of this amp. So…
modern day i expect to not have to turn off/on my receiver: it should wake on input and go into a standby state after so much inactivity. hence my problem: i’ve got the Technics receiver + stereo speakers i inherited, but if you leave the receiver on for more than a couple days without explicitly venting it’ll cut out (even if it’s inactive: its idle power draw is incredible). that’s fine for me, but if i’m the only…
Mine does wake on input, but it doesn't change inputs automatically. So if it's off and I send sound to it on some input, it'll wake and set that input. But if it's already on on a separate input, it won't switch.
In my case, I turned that off, because I don't want it to randomly turn on while I'm away (it's connected to a computer I tend to leave on with spotify running). But the fire TV remote is actually able to tell it to switch to a specific input, which is exactly what I need, since that will also turn it on if it was off.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Both are downmarket now. They are shells of their former selves.
I bought a new Marantz receiver a few years ago. Technically, it's great! 4K60Hz on multiple outputs and drives 7 speakers. It's less powerful (W per channel) than the previous Marantz I had (SR8000). The remote and the case feel very cheap, though.
Not going to complain much, I put it in a covered shelf, so I don't have to see it much and it automatically takes input from the TV most of the time. Just shame about not being better about that detail.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't this contradicts the "gone the way of the DSLR market" claim. Sonos and similar systems are simply good enough for most people. Whether it's TVs, cameras, surround sound systems, we reached a point of diminishing returns by cramming in more pixels or speakers. At that point, you're competing on factors like convenience. There will still be markets for 7.1+ surround sound or DSLR cameras, but they're smaller n…
DSLR just got replaced by mirrorless basically same thing but without a mirror, cameras still have a more tech advancements to come, better EVF,global shutter, lower noise, higher fps, better AF, better metering, better IS, better battery life etc etc, a bit difference to a speaker that can only improve audio quality and at this point i probably can't tell the difference between a good 20 year old speaker and one bou…
Lower noise is not going to do much.
Most of the noise in a modern camera at 'high' iso is present in the light signal you are capturing, rather than the result of a noisy amplifier.
Light (the arrival of photons at a pixel) is approximately a poison process with the brightness being the arrival rate of photons.
At low brightness, short exposure time, the variance in the total photons received at a pixel starts becoming relevant and visible.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
And here I am: still using my first receiver ever, an Onkyo. It's still runs great after being in use for over twenty(!) years. My Philips CD player won't open the tray and my Aiwa Cassette deck won't play any cassette, but my Onkyo is still kicking. Maybe the models from the recent years don't have the quality as it used to be. By the way, I just checked the backplate and it's an Onkyo TX-9031 RDS receiver from 1993…
> Aiwa Cassette deck won't play any cassette If you're interested in fixing this: it sounds like power comes on. So maybe the drive belt has disintegrated? Recently replaced a belt on a thing from the late 1970s. The belt was no longer elastic, which means it had snapped, and you could "cut" it some more by merely touching it. On Amazon you should be able to find packs of cassette rubber belts, and one or more of the…
> try cleaning the heads with IPA
I've had mixed results with cleaning heads with IPA. My head often seems very sluggish the next morning, and other people with whom I spend such evenings have reported similar results with their heads.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#249There'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…
I think this is increasingly true of us as a society. We have been consistently elevating "ease of use" over every other objective and/or subjective quality. We've reached the point where easier is better, even if it is objectively worse. We are all settling for local maximum that are significantly lower than several other maxima because apparently making the effort to move further along the x-axis is now almost cons…
One might argue that our strive for convenience, especially around transportation and throwaway plastics, is about to ruin the whole planet.
Re: Japanese audio brand Onkyo files for bankruptcy
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many modern receivers support both Chromecast and Airplay, as well as some level of HomeKit / Google Home / Alexa integration. I think for Onkyo, they just fell in an awkward middle. Not as high end as Denon/Marantz/etc. and not as cheap as . Combined with the drastic decrease in people "needing" receivers and speakers (many people now just get a sound bar, or Bluetooth speakers) and the market squeezed them.
Shame, middle was right where I liked to be audio equipment wise. Ive had my Onkyo receiver for a long time, guess when I do finally replace it I’ll go high end.
Consider trying a current generation class D amp first. I switched to the SMSL SA-50 from a pretty decent Marantz. The SA-50 sounds MUCH better for a fraction of the price, and it's tiny and uses very little power.