Night and Day Difference...
AsSiMiLaTeD
Posts: 11,728
Okay, so I got the H/K AVR80 MKII I've been waiting on in yesterday and hooked it up last night...all I can say is WOW, what a huge difference. I know this thing is like 6 years old, but I'm going to leave my thoughts anyway.
I tend to ramble on by the way...
First a brief bit of background info... I heard this in a store about 6 years ago, before I knew anything about home audio, and I absolutely loved it, but could not afford it at the time. So, instead I got the H/K AVR 25MKII, which also sounded great. I owned this for a few years and loved it. About two years or so ago, I decided that I wanted to get into the DD and DTS arena, so I sold the H/K and bought an Onkyo TX DS595. I noticed right off that the Onkyo lacked some of the sound I had become used to with the H/K, although only minimally so. This was odd since the Onkyo was rated at a higher power rating than the H/K, yet drove my speakers much better. Nevertheless, the Onkyo was a great unit and I stuck with it for quite a while becuase I liked it for movies. All this time I was driving some variant of the RTi00s, changing speakers every so often but staying around that size. A few months ago I purchased the RTi150s and they just swallowed my Onkyo whole....time to upgrade.
So I did a bunch of listening and looking around, and finally ended up deciding on the receiver that first moved me into the home audio arena, being the AVR 80 MKII. I was a little nervous about purchasing this since it was an old model, but I found a great deal and was able to purchase a new unit that had been in storage.
This thing only puts out 20 or so more watts than the Onkyo, but it must be doing something else differently becuase there literally is no comparison between the two units (maybe I had a bad Onkyo...). Now I've only tested this in two channel mode, will set everything else up this weekend, but my results so far are astounding. This does to my 150s what my previous H/K did to my previous Polks. I've also been looking at amps to help drive my fronts, but am wondering if they are necessary. I'll probably go ahead and get them just to see how it sounds, but I can't imagine it sounding alot better than it does now. (Note, I like my movies loud, but don't listen to music at blaring decibels).
It's hard to describe the difference in sound... To start with, I have perfect pitch (they say that most people are born with it, but that most lose it at an early age), which means that I can hear a note or chord and identify it by tone only. It's pretty cool becuase I can differentiate between things that other people can't. The downside is that I also hear distortion that most other people can't, it literally gives me a headache (that's why I truly just cannot listen to Bose or the cubes made by any company, including Polk). Since my ears are very sensative, I'm very picky about the components that I can listen to...the H/K gives me no issues (even their newer stuff sounds good). I couldn't listen to music on the Onk for more than a few minutes (the same applies with alot of other receivers as well).
My ideal music listening experience is when I can close my eyes and not hear the speakers...it sounds like the person singing is there in the room with. The only speakers I've heard that do that completely are the B&W Nautilus 801s, which I consider to be perfect. I've even listened to those German Tiebreaks which are like 150 grand and wasn't as impressed. The Polks don't do that completely, wouldn't expect them to at this price, but they come VERY close.
Anyway, this receiver is truly an awesome unit, am very pleased with this purchase. This thing does pump out a little less power to the front when driving all speakers, so we'll so how she does this weekend.
I tend to ramble on by the way...
First a brief bit of background info... I heard this in a store about 6 years ago, before I knew anything about home audio, and I absolutely loved it, but could not afford it at the time. So, instead I got the H/K AVR 25MKII, which also sounded great. I owned this for a few years and loved it. About two years or so ago, I decided that I wanted to get into the DD and DTS arena, so I sold the H/K and bought an Onkyo TX DS595. I noticed right off that the Onkyo lacked some of the sound I had become used to with the H/K, although only minimally so. This was odd since the Onkyo was rated at a higher power rating than the H/K, yet drove my speakers much better. Nevertheless, the Onkyo was a great unit and I stuck with it for quite a while becuase I liked it for movies. All this time I was driving some variant of the RTi00s, changing speakers every so often but staying around that size. A few months ago I purchased the RTi150s and they just swallowed my Onkyo whole....time to upgrade.
So I did a bunch of listening and looking around, and finally ended up deciding on the receiver that first moved me into the home audio arena, being the AVR 80 MKII. I was a little nervous about purchasing this since it was an old model, but I found a great deal and was able to purchase a new unit that had been in storage.
This thing only puts out 20 or so more watts than the Onkyo, but it must be doing something else differently becuase there literally is no comparison between the two units (maybe I had a bad Onkyo...). Now I've only tested this in two channel mode, will set everything else up this weekend, but my results so far are astounding. This does to my 150s what my previous H/K did to my previous Polks. I've also been looking at amps to help drive my fronts, but am wondering if they are necessary. I'll probably go ahead and get them just to see how it sounds, but I can't imagine it sounding alot better than it does now. (Note, I like my movies loud, but don't listen to music at blaring decibels).
It's hard to describe the difference in sound... To start with, I have perfect pitch (they say that most people are born with it, but that most lose it at an early age), which means that I can hear a note or chord and identify it by tone only. It's pretty cool becuase I can differentiate between things that other people can't. The downside is that I also hear distortion that most other people can't, it literally gives me a headache (that's why I truly just cannot listen to Bose or the cubes made by any company, including Polk). Since my ears are very sensative, I'm very picky about the components that I can listen to...the H/K gives me no issues (even their newer stuff sounds good). I couldn't listen to music on the Onk for more than a few minutes (the same applies with alot of other receivers as well).
My ideal music listening experience is when I can close my eyes and not hear the speakers...it sounds like the person singing is there in the room with. The only speakers I've heard that do that completely are the B&W Nautilus 801s, which I consider to be perfect. I've even listened to those German Tiebreaks which are like 150 grand and wasn't as impressed. The Polks don't do that completely, wouldn't expect them to at this price, but they come VERY close.
Anyway, this receiver is truly an awesome unit, am very pleased with this purchase. This thing does pump out a little less power to the front when driving all speakers, so we'll so how she does this weekend.