What’s the most important receiver feature for...

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sbinkley

Junior Audioholic
I have a room that’s just about 3k cu. ft. Speakers I am running are Emotiva B1/C1 up front, JBL in the rear, and dual 12” SVS subs.

What is the most important feature I should look for? Power (watts/channel) or something else? I just picked up an Onkyo TX-NR676 but I feel that it has to be turned up pretty loud for listening levels (around 60, which is more than half the total volume), so I’m not sure if I just don’t have it set up correctly that it sounds so quiet? It is rated at 100 watts/channel.

I chewed up a good amount of my budget on my speakers/subs, so I would prefer to keep the receiver around the $400 price point (not sure if that is possible). I have received so much help when it came to doing my speakers, so I appreciate all the help I can get around this. As always, thanks.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
The volume control isn't in percentage, it's a logarithmic dB based scale. At 60 you've got plenty left. Every 3 dB on the volume scale is a doubling of power.

(and 80 would be reference volume, same level as a movie theater)
 
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sbinkley

Junior Audioholic
Ok, I’m an idiot. I am use to having dB as a volume reference. I thought on the Onkyo 60 was out of 100 and that I was really working it hard.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Could still be working it hard, that's more speaker dependent. I saw you only have one volume scale on that avr, you can't flip it between absolute and relative scales like some, yours is just absolute....and assuming you've calibrated the avr.
 
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sbinkley

Junior Audioholic
Yup I’ve calibrated it, only adjusted the crossovers. Thinking maybe I didn’t purchase enough receiver?
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Sometimes it's good to have an avr with a full set of pre-outs just in case you want to add an external amp....

OTOH your avr is fairly typical....and most are within 1-2 dB of each other.
 
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sbinkley

Junior Audioholic
Yeah I got so caught up in making sure I got one that could at least pass through all the latest video that I may have overlooked the power aspect. Just not sure what to think of it.
 
S

sbinkley

Junior Audioholic
I will have to tinker with that at some point.

Any opinions on these three?

Yamaha TSR-7810 (factory refurbished) $399 on Amazon. 95 watts/channel but looks like quality parts. Not that familiar with Yamaha, especially the TSR line.

Sony STR-DN1080 $450 everywhere. Seems like a lot of people have been happy with the sound, however my center is 4ohm and I’ve heard this does not play nice with that.

Onkyo TX-RZ810 $480 on Amazon. Definitely has the most power, but is reliability a concern?

All 3 have support the for latest video features.
 
highfigh

highfigh

Seriously, I have no life.
The volume control isn't in percentage, it's a logarithmic dB based scale. At 60 you've got plenty left. Every 3 dB on the volume scale is a doubling of power.

(and 80 would be reference volume, same level as a movie theater)
Only if the scale shows the number as a negative to express attenuation and starts at - infinity; if it goes from 0-100, it's not log and it just shows a number for people to use as a rough marker for listening level.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
Since they all sound great in Direct/Through/Bypass modes, the salient factor to me is reliability. 2nd would be HDMI compatibility. 3rd would be price.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Only if the scale shows the number as a negative to express attenuation and starts at - infinity; if it goes from 0-100, it's not log and it just shows a number for people to use as a rough marker for listening level.
Not necessarily, an absolute scale can still be log based and reflect reference level at 80/82 depending on avr. From what I read about this unit, and it was a user comment, it only has an absolute scale with a reference level of 80....whether that's correct or not I didn't dig into the manual (can't access their site yesterday or even now for some reason). Onkyo used to use both absolute/relative scales so don't know why they'd cut out the relative scale OTOH....it's possible the owner hasn't found this feature I suppose, too. My old Sony had just a number scale, tho I think it was still dB/log based, just not tied to a particular standard but never measured to see.
 
S

sbinkley

Junior Audioholic
Not necessarily, an absolute scale can still be log based and reflect reference level at 80/82 depending on avr. From what I read about this unit, and it was a user comment, it only has an absolute scale with a reference level of 80....whether that's correct or not I didn't dig into the manual (can't access their site yesterday or even now for some reason). Onkyo used to use both absolute/relative scales so don't know why they'd cut out the relative scale OTOH....it's possible the owner hasn't found this feature I suppose, too. My old Sony had just a number scale, tho I think it was still dB/log based, just not tied to a particular standard but never measured to see.
When you turn the volume up there is also a bar, the bar is over the halfway mark when the volume number is around that 60-65 mark, which is what made me think it was out of 100.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
The whole range of the scale could be up to 100 (99 I believe in your case), but what I'm talking about is the general reference movie level (85 dB average with allowance for 20dB peaks on speakers, 10 dB more for LFE channel) and where that is on your particular volume scale I still can't access onkyousa.com but did for europe and don't see anything in the 676 manual to explain the volume scale used. It seems the range is 1-99. Hard to know what it means, probably a question for Onkyo. My older Onkyo could be set either for absolute or relative volume scale (try this article from Denon, same principle applies https://denon.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/136/~/relative-and-absolute-volume-ranges)
 
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