Onkyo 706 or Denon 1909/789? Hard Decision! HELP!

Welcome javy; any of those will do it; I am biased to Denon because that's what I've owned and has served me well, but Onkyo also has its followers. I don't buy all the THX crap though

I would also recommend the 806, I have had mine for about 3 months now and IMO it is one of the best receivers out there for the price. The 806's pre-outs are also an improvement over the Denon, and like Dawg said so much of this is just personal choice, because you tend to stay faithful to a company/product if you are pleased with it. I looked on Crutchfield's site and the 806 was $699, so not sure if that was an old ad you saw or just a different one than we have here. I found it online for about $600 at Buy.com but not sure if they ship for free, or to PR at all or not. Good luck and if you do get the Onk, I'm sure you will be pleased with it. Oh and welcome to Club Polk.

Link to the 806 on Buy.com http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=208939028&listingid=33068409&dcaid=17902

There's probably a couple of different things. Break-in could cause a change in sound, but it should be more of a gradual thing with that. It shouldn't vary as much as you seem to be describing. It's probably a source thing. Different songs, dvds, tv shows, etc are mixed different. If the shifting midrange seems to be occuring when you are listening to the same cd or dvd, there may be something else going on there, which I cannot put my finger on right now. Of course different songs on the same cd may be mixed differently also, but they should be fairly consistant. I think a good test would be to play a concert dvd of one band playing over a short period of time. Theoretically, it should be mixed the same and have a consistant midrange feel.

Another thing to look at as getting either a CSi 5 or CSi A6 center channel to replace the CS2. Your A7 fronts to a lot of people, are not as strong in midrange as either the A5's or A9's. There are some folks that do not agree with this however. I've had RTi 8s, RTi10s, and RTi12s as my fronts at various times. To my ears, I definitely agree with the people who belive the A7s (or Rti10s) are not as stong in the midrange as the others. The CSi 5 or CSi A6 will be a much better match for your A7s and will provide a much better prescence since they are timbre matched to the RTi line. I used to use a CS2 as a center channel with my RTi8s and RTi 10s, and there was a little bit of a "mismatch" between it and the RTi fronts. The front sound stage did not move as seemlessly going form right front to center to left front, and vice versa. When I replaced the CS2 with the CSi5 and later added a CSi A6 (I'm running two centers now using external amplifiers to drive all of my speakers), it created a much better front soundstage and it really increased mid range presence and clarity. Just a thought. Of course if your midrange is widely changing like you are implying, something else may be going on. What type of reciever are you running currently with your system? Did you run the autocalibration with this reciever if the reciever is equipped with such a feature? This may help things a lot also.

Steve

Check with 6ave.com either chat online or call them up they had it for 598$ with free shipping, if they dont have in-stock check when it will be available or can consider 988 almost same with single remote and 1less zone i think not sure on this... good luck, IMO i would consider RX-V863 or 663 which i am using, 2808 has lot of bad user reviews also.

http://www.retrevo.com/s/Denon-AVR-2808Ci-Receivers-review-manual/id/3124dj389/t/1-2/
http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/review/5472/denon-avr-2808ci-review
http://www.nextag.com/denon-2808ci/search-html?nxtg=e8530a240517-684D4A6162B70CC6
not very sure though when i was deciding on my avr the price was way too high, and i was googling a lot on the reviews and prices, so the best bet was rx-v663 but given a choice i would have indeed opted for O TX 705 or 988 5months ago, but again the pricing was way too high for these also.
My friend back home got a AVR988 and conked within 11months, and had to wait 3 months for him to receive back from the denon guys after repairs.
may be one off case....;)

The CS2 certainly wont sound bad, but the CSi 5 or CSi A6 will sound noticebly better in my opinion (and it did in my case, as I tried them both in my system). Some people have mentioned that you can get refurbished CSi A6s from Polk direct for for something like $99.00 or $129.00 right now. Check out the speaker section of this board. I think there's a thread running right now addressing this issue. You can also get the CSi 5 from 6th avenue for about $200 to $249 right now depending on if they are running a special. I'm not sure about shipping to PR though with either. You're right, any of the recievers that you end up chosing is going to sound appreciably better that your current reciever. It's going to be a nice upgrade anyway you go. I would still look at the preout issue for adding an additional amplifier down the road when considering a reciever. The A7s really respond to more power, and I can see you eventually wanting to add one in your future with the A7s

Javy,

Actually that was probably a pretty smart thing to do! The wife or girlfriend might not be so understanding of it, but what they don't know......Anyways I think you made a great decision. You can here both recievers with your system and decide which is right for you. Direct comparisons are always a good thing. Keep us updated on what you find. I will be curious to see what you think of the two recievers head to head. Happy testing! You are in for a treat btw.

Dawgfish wrote: »

Javy,

It will depend on whether you can select to output the audio on the PS3 via bitstream, or PCM. I'm not very familiar with PS3s. If you can output the audio on the PS3 via bitstream, either of the recievers you will be testing will be able to decode the DTS-Master and Dolby Pro HD sound formats. If you cannot output via bitstream, the PS3 will decode the selected audio format and send it to the reciever via PCM. I'm sure others here on the board are familiar with the PS3 and can give you the correct info on this.

On my Blue Ray player, you can select to output either PCM and the Blue-Ray will decode the selected audio format, or you can select bitstream and the recieve will decode. I've experimented with both and I seem to notice slightly crisper, cleaner sound outputing via bitstream and having the reciever decode the audio, at least for my setup. Others here on the board may have different results. I would suggest experimenting with both output modes on both recievers (if the PS3 can indeed do this) and seeing what sounds best to you.

The PS3 can output via PCM... That's how mine is set up.