Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Receiver help--Onkyo or Denon

A friend of mine has the Onkyo 875. I recently spent some time working on it with him. It's got a very nice interface, and certainly powerful amps, but the pre-outs don't work properly. Sometimes you get volume control, sometimes you get full signal straight to the amp! That's a tad hair raising in a 15x15 room (guesstimate, probably totally off) when you're dealing with an Emotiva MPS-1.

I haven't had any problems with my 805 so far with anything (and I would notice with a A1400! ).

On the video side, it is a just an HDMI pass-trough (unlike the 875 and the 905) so I am not sure that "video sync" is applicable.

EDIT: Sorry, I hit the send button before completing.

I didn't see any problems with HDMI, other than the arcane interface on the Denon 2910 which made playing SACDs difficult. But as I've said before, I'm not nearly as sensitive to audio/video issues as other people 'round these parts.

I called Jr.com and they have the 3808 for 1299.

Ken, that preout problem with the Onkyo sounds bad. That kinda scares me.

It's as if the volume control suddenly doesn't work. He's (obviously) had the problem happen more than I saw it happen, but it happened once when I was first working on the thing. Decidedly unpleasant.

I have the 705 in my upstairs system and never had any problems with the volume control but of course I use the internal amps so....

I do notice the lip sync issues and have had to do some playing around with the delay to try to fix it.

Oh great, I have a brand new Onkyo SR805 sitting in my living room...I havent hooked it up yet as I'm waiting on my home theater centers extension shelf to arrive...what kind of problems am I going to have with it???

I ended up returning my Onkyo SR805 (about 3 weeks ago). The Onkyos have a well known issue with audio/video syncing. Some people don't notice, but once you know about the problem, it might be hard to ignore. You are always looking for it. I also had a serious problem with Audessy set-up. After I used it, a volume limiter would kick in. It was really bad with my HD-cable for some reason. I honestly could not turn the volume loud enough (and my room is not very big). If I turned the Audessy off though, the volume problem went away. I was really bummed too since the receiver sounded really, really sweet!

I now have a Marantz 7002 which has been rock solid and sounds incredible, especially at louder volumes. The Onkyo did sound better at lower volumes, but heck, I could really only get lower volumes.

Hard to believe you are still chewing on this and haven't ordered the Denon yet!!!

You might find the ability to stretch your $$$ with a refurb unit from ecost.

get over to AVS and check out the 3808 thread. you can still get one for $1098 from an authorized online retailer by calling the sales guy direct. i think its steve from electronic expo. read the thread and you will find many happy customers of his. later.