Meanwhile
the rest of us listen to the music wafting from the mob's single speaker in the background :)
Last week, amid the playboy splendour and shabby chic that is Monte Carlo, two giants of the AV and Hi-Fi world were busy putting a glam new spin on the latest audio tech. Sibling brands Denon and Marantz took the wraps off a slew of cutting edge audio components at an impressive dealer product showcase. Vintage Denon PMA 7000 …
I don't think i'll go Onkyo again since my tx-nr609 melted it's chips on the HDMI board, manifesting as sending crackles as loud as gun shots to the poor speakers before going completely dead on the audio side. the rest of the amp was blissfully unaware that anything was wrong.
gave the feeling that it was certainly "built down to a price". bless richer sounds cotton socks, they managed to get Onkyo to admit it was a known fault, ship it for free, fix it for free, and supplied me with a replacement in the mean time.
when it came back, can see the new board through the top vent, but no heatsinks on the chips to maybe prevent this problem in future. so it's working. but for how long... (un
so atmos is 5.1.2... I guess it must scale up to 7.2.4, as that's what I previously had been lead to believe as a "true atmos"(?) setup. are the "tops" separate channels, or effectively the same?
I'd second that, had a different onkyo system that started bugging out and wouldn't come out of standby without doing a reset. Plus the remote died after my eldest tried eating it.
So back to a 1976 pioneer sa-500 II with a/b speaker loops. Just the thing for multi room setups (did require a rewire though to upgrade the speaker terminals to proper posts though). Bloody things bomb proof and sounds more alive than the onkyo ever did.
Two Onkyo's in my 'circle' gone pop as described.
My old Yamaha got replaced some 3 months ago. Final choice was the Denon as I wanted dual (but independant) HDMI outputs. The Sony alternative was like a chocolate box, I have no faith in Onkyo now and Marantz were too expensive for same feature set, unless i went open box on old stock.
Still not sure I need, want or could use 'Atmos' or it's alternatives
Same thing happened to me, TX-NR509 suddenly dropped dead on the HDMI output at fourteen months old. Onkyo said they couldn't repair it since they didn't have any spare HDMI boards (from reading up on it at avsforums they'd basically run out of all their spares repairing the HDMI boards of everyone else who'd had theirs fail) and when I requested a replacement product told me the old "out of warranty" bollocks. Since it was a systemic design flaw that was affecting multiple owners of these things I swiftly went down the small claims court/richer sounds/yamaha route. A shame since I couldn't fault the onkyo whilst it worked but they handled the repair/replace situation terribly badly.
Harrow Audio (http://www.harrowaudiohifi.co.uk) recently supplied a friend of mine with a wonderful 5.1 Monitor Audio Radius setup (including the W12 sub and the larger front speaker) - the whole shebang including a discount Marantz AV Receiver cost around £2150 which I thought was bloody good value for a top-notch home-cinema audio system.
I witnessed a fully-outfitted Atmos system at Bjorn's in San Antonio, playing the movie Gravity. Between the ultra-wide screen and the 4 extra ceiling speakers, my senses were over-whelmed to the point of having to close my eyes and cover my ears. It wasn't that the sound was too loud. It was my brain unaccustomed to the visual/aural emersion simultaneously. it reminded me of the first time I went to an IMAX movie, except now it fits into your living room.
To run a proper ATMOS system, I must add 4 extra amplifiers on top of the already 7 surround, plus 2 subs. And to have the projection system 4K capable, plus adding the motorized Stewart Filmworks-adaptive-Uniform-Gain system, I'd have to upgrade the electrical service in my house. And let's not forget wireless control. Only thing left is some Magic Finger couches and Magic Mouth groin adapters.