OK home theatre savvy Dopers,
I have an Onkyo TXNR646 AVR that has given up the ghost on the HDMI board. I’m looking for a replacement that won’t suck that is 5.1.2 Atmos capable since that is how my room is configured. Cost to repair is going to be $300-400 and Onkyo won’t sell me a replacement board to install myself. If I have to spend almost the same price to repair the thing, and wait for the crappy design to fail, I’d rather spend it toward a new one.
I don’t want to spend any more than $1000 USD if I don’t have to. My top contender right now is an NAD T758 v3 but it’s at the very top of what I could possibly spend.
I used to be a big Onkyo fan - there’s a certain “trinity” of Onkyo amps, NHT speakers, and Velodyne subwoofers, but for me, no more. I think I had a 646, and yes, the caps on the HDMI board cooked and Onkyo was uninterested in helping. Don’t buy another Onkyo - the bad cap problem is all over their product line - I also had a TXSR607 that was bad in a weird way - it would mute when switching inputs (good) but would occasionally mute during quiet spots, then nip off the first half second or so of sound.
For my main system, I got a Denon AVR X3200W. It will do 5.2.2 Atmos or as I use it, it can bi-amp the main speakers. So far, it’s been well behaved.
To echo gotpasswords, myself and a surprising number of coworkers have had Onkyos go belly-up in the past 3-4 years. I like their price+performance, but the reliability simply isn’t there.
I just bought Denon AVR-S740H that seems to be OK so far, I’ve only had it one week. I was considering the Onkyo (6 something something) because it had Chomecast built-in, but the Denon has HEOS which seems to handle streaming services just fine, even FLAC files. It has 7 amplified channels, I’m just using it in 5.1, but it will do Atmos.
I’ve had a NAD T-747 for some years now. Here are my thoughts on it since I suspect the never NADs still compare to this older model.
Pros:
Good audio (except radio, see below).
Quite flexible in how you can hook it up. I’ve gone through a few iterations on my media center PC. First TOS link, then HDMI audio and the NAD was easy to re-configure.
No hardware issues, everything has always worked.
Cons:
The remote is beyond cheap. Thin, flimsy plastic. Crappy buttons, hard to press. Luckily I use a Harmony remote so don’t have to use the NAD remote except for setup. But to include such a cheap remote with what was a $1,000+ AVR is inexcusable.
The FM radio is garbage. Even with a good antenna stereo mode has so much noise to be unusable. I have to switch it to mono. I tested the antenna with another radio and no noise. The NAD just has really low sensitivity.
I love my Pioneer Elite receiver. Don’t remember the model, but it’s a few years old and going strong. I like it because it has a phono input for my turntable (a lot of others do too, but not all). Looks like Best Buy has it for $600 now.
I’ve owned (and continue to own) four Yamahas over the last 12 years and I’ve never had a problem with any of them. I bought two of them from “gray markets” and saved quite a bit. I can’t address Yamaha’s service, since I’ve never needed it. They DO seem a bit underpowered on the main channels, but I use an external Adcom power amp on my larger system and so it makes no difference to me.
And the remote controls seem to be very durable (and interchangeable between related model lines). I’m still using original remotes from 10-12 years ago.
Interesting. My first AVR was a Pro-Logic Denon and it gave me faithful service for 10 years plus. Good to know about the remote on the NAD; that does seem pretty inexcusable when they charge that much. I’ll look at the Yamaha and Pioneer line-up. I’ve kind of avoided Sony just because their lower end AVRs (sub $700 US) always seemed to focus on gadgets rather than quality of sound.