Marantz or Onkyo??

ls7z06 wrote: »

I am real happy with my Onk 806 but I am only running RTi series speakers.. I know a lot of guys bash them but I have been pleased with mine. To get 130w per channel with a Denon or ? it would have cost me 2 to 3 times as much.

Be careful with getting caught up in the wattage numbers game with AVRs. Like wutadumsn23 said, AVRs rarely put out the watts in real life that the specs say they do. Additionally you have to double the wattage of an amplifier to get a 3 decibel increase in sound level. I also own an Onkyo 806 rated at 130 wpc as well as the Denon 2809CI rated at 115 wpc. The Denon pushed my speakers equally well as the Onkyo (and this was pushing RTI 12s as fronts, RTI-10s as sorrounds, and RTI-8s as rear sorrounds). There was no discernable difference between the two as far as loudness and headroom goes, and in fact the Denon pushed the speakers much cleaner, with less distortion and ran cooler to boot. Some of the Harmon Kardon AVRs out there have much less published wattage specs as most of their counterparts, yet perform just as well if not better than many of their competitors from an amplifier standpoint. They are actually publishing specs that were actually measured in real world, all 7 channels being driven listening condiitons.

This may sound crazy, but not all watts are created equal! The fact is neither reciever being used alone to push the speakers can hold a candle to my current set-up with all external amplification. Most recievers out there do not have the headroom, reserve power, and sheer muscle of a seperate amplifier (with the exceptions being some of the high end Adcom, NAD, Rotel, etc. and the Pioneer Elites with the ICE amps). Think about this, according to Onkyo, the 806 is rated at 130 wpc x 7. If this were true, this would work out to a total of 910 watts. The 806 weighs about 36 pounds. My Adcom GFA-555 is rated at 200 wpc X 2 for a total of 400 watts and weighs over 40 lbs. So an amplifier puts out a total of 400 watts and weighs more than a reciever that supposedly puts out 910 watts, but yet the reciever has a ton of other processers and circuitry that the amplifier does not have. Why is this? The answer is the amplifier sections of most recievers built today are far less robust, have inferior components, and are much lighter duty than a typical quality external amplifier.

For the record I'm not writing this to bash the 806 or any other reciever out there. The 806 is a solid reciever, especially considering some of the deals on it out ther right now. I am just trying to point out that it's really fruitless to chose one AVR out there over another purely on a watts per channel basis and that adding external amplification is the way to go to get the most out of your system. Chose an AVR on features, overall sound, and all other things being fairly equal, what kind of deal you can get.

That's a really good question. The best thing to do is to try to get out and actually listen to the recievers you are interested in. It would be even better if you could listen to them in your room using your speakers during a trial or looner period, but this rarely happens. There are articles which actually provide the results of actual bench tests on respective amplifiers. Do a google search for bench tests of the recievers you are looking at and you can see the results for yourself. This board is also a great resource. There are lot's of knowledgeble folks here with lots of experience.

As far as the HK 254 goes, it's a great sounding AVR with preouts. Unfortunately some of these have had many problems and reliabiliy issues. If you can find a good one, they are an outstanding entry to lower-mid AVR. The amplifiers on the 254 will hang with the 606 with no sweat. It's just a matter of not finding one with reliability issues. If I were to buy one, I would make sure I got one from an authorized HK dealer, or a refurbished unit directly form HK, that way you would still have a warranty if anything went wrong.

Depends on the AVR+AMP combination, wires between the two, etc but yes genereally going seperates gives you better sound. XPA-5's get good reviews from people that go from just an AVR to adding an amp but it also depends on the AVR. Some AVR's have great internal amplification so the difference may not be so drastic.

I don't really know of any AVRs off the top of my head that truly put out the power that the XPA-5 is capable of, so i'm going to go ahead and say that it's probably not real possible on a similar budget of what it would cost for a decent AVR with pre-outs + XPA-5.

Onkyo!!!!! untill it would break under warranty , and if thats the case just junk it. Onkyo customer service does not exist. Kinda like pay-pal. NEVER wrong. The good side is VERY LOW percentage of ONKYO defective. They have built theyre reputation on innovation and quality.