New Onkyo 805 owner - a few questions

Well, the difference between 130 clean watts and 55 clean watts is probably only 2-3 dB with those speakers. Most of the time, you are only hearing a 5-10 watts or less. Gunshots and other extremely loud sounds will really require the extra power, but in most cases, even 130 watts is not enough to truly reproduce those types of sounds.

Bottom line: The SR805 won't blow you away with the extra power (over the HK), but it will when you hear some TrueHD and DTS-HD Master soundtracks. Its not that they are louder. Its that everything is cleaner, more detail, more natural sounding.

Dennis Gardner wrote: »

Isn't it true that the international conversion rate is 55 HK WPC = 130 Onkyo WPC. Seems reasonable for us HK guys.;)

One thing I think HK has over some others is the power supply seems to be much more stout than other competitors in the price range. I would surely go HK again. The sound is just sweet. Vocals were just much better than the Denon I had, and the Yami in the same price range.
Ben

RichterCAG wrote: »

OK.
I have run Audyessy.
Front L/F set to Full Band
Surrounds set to 80hz THX
no subwoofer

Measured distances for each speaker to 1st listening position with a tape measure. I have adjusted each speaker to 75db with an SLM.
The SLM was set to c weighting, 70, and slow response time.

What else should I do?

I am considering recalibrating the speakers to 80 or 85db.
I am very, very pleased with the reciever so far.

FYI-'SLM' is actually more familiar as 'SPL Meter' SPL being 'Sound Pressure Level'.

As long as all the speakers are calibrated to the same SPL, it should be the same at any volume. I used a CD with test tones to calibrate mine after the Audyessy setup ran. The test tones from the Onk moved too fast to get a good steady reading and it was near impossible to adjust the levels without having towait until the next fast run of tones.:mad:

I slightly modified the levels Audyssey chose for me. I bumped up the center channel a few dB and had to mess with the surround's as well since I have non-ideal positioning for my surrounds. Most don't want to know they're there-I wanted more presense from them so I bumped them up a bit as well.

So you measured with a tape-How accurate was audyssey for you here? Or did you make changes? Keep in mind Audyssey takes at a min 3 seating positions and does some calulations-so if you only use the one seating position, it might affect how things sound to the other positions. Of course if you're the only one going to be using it....

Even a low end sub will make a difference. And actually if you use a sub, and set the mains to crossover at 80Hz, then all the power that would have normally been used to power those lower freqs will now be available for the mids and highs so you have even more potential for providing more power or head-room to the rest of the speaker. Not sure how much of an impact that will have but its gotta have some positive benefit.