This is not really a review per say. I played with two awesome AVRs and this is me recapping the fun experience for my AH brethren.
My apartment’s living room HT is about 12 ft. across and 22 ft. long, when including the open floor plan kitchen. My MLP is about 9 ft. from the TV/brickwork. Both speakers are 2.5 ft. from the side walls, Left side is 2.5 ft. from the painted wall and Right is 3.5 ft. from the brickwork. The tweeters are 7 ft. apart and I'm about the same distance away when sitting in my MLP.
It was the best of times...
For some time I was going to be 2.0, running the Behringer monitors from my laptop's headphone out (with all enhancements/eq/etc. turned off). I wanted to acclimate my ears to the sound of the monitors because I wanted the addition of an AVR to make an easily discernible improvement, or degradation, in the sound. I got the speakers dialed in using REW and a calibrated MiniDSP UMIK-1 from Cross Spectrum Labs, I had them as close to flat as possible. It took 15 or 20 measurements per side painstakingly eeking out the most from the monitors and meanwhile determining the best MLP. (The Behringer monitors are downright awesome budget monitors. Even in my previous setup they had provided near flat FR in a small home office. Here though, the room response is not nearly as flat as it was in the home office. That said, it is not too shabby for an untreated small room, $300 ($200 on sale) speakers and no eq/processing whatsoever. But, I digress…) Playing with the toe-in, I settled on a pleasing balance between imaging and soundstage while keeping the FR as close to flat as possible. The monitors have been locked in place since then, with the exception of having to move them once to place the carpet and tidy up the cables. I was OCD about resetting them back to exactly the way they were and confirmed matching before and after using REW.
Meanwhile the SVS sub had been patiently waiting for over a month to even get powered up at my place. (A Craigslist find, from a guy with a jaw dropping, ear to ear grin inducing, dedicated HT. He demoed the Star Trek - Into Darkness, Khan vs. Klingon squad battle scene and blew away my understanding of thump in the chest bass. He was running 4 15” subs powered by a Face Amp. But, I digress again...) Time to get a receiver and go 2.1.
Things started to get fun with the hunt for an AVR. The only decision making logic was, to have the most features at the least price. Duh! Then I decided networking and Audyssey were a must. The list of choices still seemed big and the websites not being consistent in formatting of AVR details meant, a laborious process of going through every Owner Manual before including or disqualifying options. The network capabilities I wanted squarely put me in the $400-1000 bucket and yet the list was 5 deep. It came down to wanting Audyssey XT32 because of the sub-optimal room. The cheapest AVR with XT32 was the Onkyo TX-NR818 on Accessories4Less and after reading the entire Owners Thread on AVS Forum (I'm an Audioholic or what!), the purchase was made. After a few days of stalking the package via tracking updates, the NR818 was delivered on a Saturday. Perfect!
The Onkyo arrived nicely packed though not double boxed.
The AVR itself had nothing on it to remind me it was a refurbished piece, except for a sticker on the back panel. Got everything hooked up and ran through some rudimentary functions to make sure it was fully functional. Everything worked as expected, no abnormal sounds or anything. The relays on the NR818 seemed louder than any other receiver I had come across. Heck, I liked the authoritative clicks too. After playing around a little it was time to square up the wires, put things back in their final locations to run Audyssey calibration.
It was a big heavy sucker!
I ran Audyssey with no hiccups or issues and it sounded fantastic right away. This was a great buy! It was time to kick back and do some listening. Audyssey considerably improved the imaging, but, I lost some soundstage and the patient Sub finally got to sing its baritone notes. Switching between Audyssey on (with Dynamic Eq and Dynamic Vol disabled) and Audyssey off, I felt the Sub volume was a little low. At times Audyssey Music sounded a bit harsh in the treble frequencies and Audyssey Movie seemed to be better suited to my untreated room. But, I really loved the imaging in Audyssey Music and it was relatively less likable in Audyssey Movie (but, even with Audyssey Movie it was much better than Audyssey disabled). I played with the Dynamic Eq settings and was immediately in love with the feature. It completely removed any feeling that the Sub was not loud enough, at any volume. Playing with the Sub trim and Dynamic Eq's Reference Level Offset setting I got the 2.1 blended seamlessly. At times though, the bass sounded a bit boomy and sometimes it felt like the Sub was hotter than I expected. A little bit of critical listening made me realize that it was mostly during movie scenes with really deep bass and some of my DnB music that the Sub seemed to jump in too much, making me want to lower the trim or Dynamic Eq setting. No matter how much I tweaked the level trim and Dynamic Eq Reference Level Offset, I was not fully satisfied. The Sub never bottomed out, but something was amiss. It was time to pull out the REW-UMIK rig.
The Pure Direct setting allowed me to measure the 2.0 sound and the Sub was measured with Ausyssey Off and Crossover set to 200Hz.
Audyssey did a great job with the Left channel. It was +/- 10 dB, more or less to begin with, but with Audyssey Music it was +/- 3 dB across the entire range (with a couple of dips and blips that would be nary inaudible). With an untreated room I was impressed to say the least. I was jubilant that the decision to go with XT32 was a wise move and the NR818 was a great amp.
The Right channel did not fare as well. The room response issues were seemingly less severe on this side and there was plenty improvement after running Audyssey (up to 600Hz). Yet, it overcompensated and made the situation worse between 1000Hz and 5000Hz.
Something weird was going on with the Sub. While it flattened the bass response in a very impressive manner and even tackled the trench between 70Hz and 100Hz, it introduced a high Q peak at 25Hz superimposed with a low Q hump from 20Hz to 40Hz. It seemed odd, so I redid the REW run and confirmed that it was not an anomalous measurement. This might also have explained why movie effects seems to suddenly jump in really hot whereas most music was fine.
Time to rerun Audyssey and re-measure. (Since I never got around to rerunning Audyssey on the NR818, it gets a hall pass on the bass issue.)
