Great Quality!
Written: Aug 20 '02
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Pros: Solid, clean power, flexible
Cons: Not enough inputs, no video transcoding
The Bottom Line: Excellent sound quality, plenty of power, feels rugged and reliable, but difficult to set up, and will not translate between S-video and composite video.
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| marchi's Full Review: Onkyo TX-DS676 5.1 Channels Receiver |
When I saw a refurbished Onkyo 676 for sale on-line at $300, I quickly snapped it up to replace my aging Techniques home theatre receiver. Onkyo has always represented a top of the line Japanese audio company, similar to Pioneer's Premiere line or the very nice Denon line of products. I could not pass up the deal.
Out of the box the unit is impressive. Beautiful cosmetics, very heavy and solid, it looks and feels like a quality device. Then I looked at the owner’s manual and the 15 pages of set up instructions, and thought, "Whoa. I better wait until I have three hours to install this thing." The sophisticated DSP circuitry allows setting of many parameters not normally found in home receivers at this price point: individual cross over frequency for each of the five built-in amps and the subwoofer pre-out, distance from primary listening location to each driver, digitally assignable outputs for each input, default DSP mode for each input, etc. etc. etc. Although I had great fun experimenting with the different settings and fine-tuning it to my taste, this is NOT a plug-and-play receiver for the novice! My three-hour estimate was about right for the time it took to get the settings right, and I find myself playing with the settings now and then just to hear what they can do.
It is interesting, though, that I always seem to return to two settings: "Stereo" for audio sources such as CD, and "Pro-Logic" for video sources. All the others are cool to play around with, but not "natural" sounding for extended use. Maybe they should have cut out some of these "toys" and put their development money into correcting two things I see as major shortcomings of the unit.
The major shortcomings are these: The receiver does not have enough inputs, and the video system does not transcode between S-Video and standard composite video.
This receiver only has four back panel video inputs and three audio inputs. This is two fewer on both counts than my ten-year-old Techniques had. And I need more. I have a VCR, Laser Disk, Satellite receiver and DVD player, plus I need to run the audio outs from my TV through the receiver to listen to the cable tuner in the TV. I also have an audiocassette and CD player in the system, and I ran out of inputs.
One of the audio inputs on the Onkyo is for phono (you know, vinyl records? You remember those, don't you? While I still hook up my record player from time to time, the phono input is not suitable for anything else, as the input amps necessary distort other line-level signals such as from the TV audio.) There is one front panel input, which will be nice for dubbing from a camcorder, but I do not like having cables hanging off the front of the receiver all the time, so will not use it for the permanent installation. One more audio input for the TV would have made me very happy. As it is, I had to buy an s-video switcher to select between my DVD and my laser disk and put this between the players and the receiver.
The second shortcoming is the video system inside the receiver. The Onkyo routes s-video inputs to only the s-video output, and composite inputs to only the composite output. This means my standard VHS deck cannot record the s-video output from the satellite receiver unless I also hook up a standard video (RCA) cable, and playback from the VHS deck cannot be seen on the s-video connection to my TV. I have to use the second video input to the TV as a standard video signal and select this to watch VHS tapes. The ability to convert between composite and s-video is, I understand, an expensive chip to add into the receiver, but I would gladly have given up all the DSP flexibility for this feature.
The Onkyo is rated at 85 watts X 5 outputs into 8 ohms. It is also rated at 105 watts into 6 ohms and 120 watts into 4 ohms. My Cambridge Sound Works speakers are 6 ohms, and the volume is great with lots of overhead. No complaints about amplifier power. The sound is clean, natural, and a big improvement over the Techniques.
However, I do have one more complaint. The subwoofer pre-out is a very low level signal. I believe the book rates it at 250 mili-volts, which is very low indeed. I had to crank up the sub output to "+9dB" in the DSP controls to get an acceptable signal to my subwoofer amp, and then I had to set the sub amp gain to max to hear it. At the out-of-the-box setting of "0", the sub amp barely whispered.
Overall, I believe I will be happy enough with the Onkyo that I will keep it, but if my home theatre system expands any more, the Onkyo will have to go, or have to be replaced with one of its bigger brothers.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 300
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Epinions.com ID:
marchi
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Location: Redwood City, CA
Reviews written: 12
Trusted by: 2 members
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