That's just a bunch of hooey. Not a knock on you. I know a lot of folks say it, but none of them have ever done a proper blind comparison. It's a bit of magical thinking and there's always expectation bias and/or sighted bias involved with those conclusions. In a proper double blind test those differences always melt away and participants don't show a preference one way or the other with electronics and interconnects. It always boils down to speakers when it comes to preference.
Amps and receivers are all designed with the same goal in mind. Transparency and accuracy, and the tech is so well refined now that any type of measurable distortion or metric that could or would impart any audible differences has been pushed down so far below human hearing thresholds that most of the big players have leveled the field in sound quality. The main differences lie in types of eq, room correction software, connectivity and to a lesser extent power.
I understand what you're saying here; I was just relaying what I have read under YouTube videos and in forums like this one. Seems there are many who can distinguish between the "house sound" of certain brands, irrespective of what kinds of speakers are connected to the amp.
In my case, I don't actually use room correction software or EQ, so I tend to run my systems by actually
hearing my speakers' inherent signatures. But, in taking your thoughts into consideration, I'll leave behind any notions of Denons not sounding as good as Onkyos, et al.
There is a way you can do that with Denon/Marantz, yes (they're owned by the same company and share many of the same features. Going forward when I say Denon I mean Marantz also).
Yes, I know they're the same company; D&M Holdings I believe was the umbrella name, unless it still is?
I actually don't care much for the Marantz aesthetics, what with that goofy porthole display window (I actually am a Marantz CD player fan, and use one of their five disc changers in my separate two channel rig; never heard their amps or AVRs, though). Because aesthetics are important to me with gear, I need to take that into consideration. But I appreciate the info...
You can adjust individual speaker output levels differently for each source separately from your main volume and it will save it.
Thank you -- but are you referring to SOURCE volume, like the Onkyos adjusted via IntelliVolume, or individual SPEAKER LEVELS as set in the calibration sections of receivers? If it's the former, how does the adjustment scale run -- do you set it from, say, -12dB to +12dB like the Onkyos were?
I'm not sure if I understand what you mean here, but if you mean the sound mode (stereo, multichannel or Dolby) you used last is remembered when you switch sources and switch back it remembers that as well.
What I mean is, in the old AVRs, there were "Listening Mode Presets" (as seen in the screen grab I provided from my TX-SR605) wherein you could set a playback mode for each type of signal being sent to the receiver.
So, in the example from my pic, you could set "PRO LOGIC II MOVIE" mode when two-channel digital sources are sent and "MONO MOVIE" mode when one-channel digital sources are sent; likewise, for uncompressed PCM soundtracks on Blu-rays, you could process these with "Multichannel" mode on the AVR. The Onkyos would allow you to apply each kind of listening mode depending on the specific kind of signal coming in from, say, a disc player.
From what I understand, this kind of functionality just isn't available anymore on new AVRs.
Denon does have room correction (Audyssey MultEQ, your Onkyo might have the same) and an initial setup routine involving an included mic. It only takes 15 minutes to run it and it will set your distances and levels as well as eq for your room. You can turn that off if you don't like it and change the level and distance settings after if you choose. I tend to trust the distance settings tho because it's actually kinda mislabeled and should be thought of as delay. It's not about feet and inches so much as milliseconds so the sound from all speakers arrives at your seat at the same time. Room acoustics and dsp can affect the distance settings to get the timing right.
I realize every receiver has a setup mic and auto calibration routine -- my current AVR uses the Audyssey 2EQ system, but I never used it because I prefer no EQ in my room and like to set up my speakers manually. I understand how to set the crossovers for each channel, etc.; it just seems like with the new models, these systems like DIRAC Live are SO complicated and I am not going to use my phone to download an app in order to use an auto setup routine. I'd like to know if you can STILL set up a receiver manually.
I prefer Denon or Marantz, but Yamaha make a great receiver too, tho their brand-newest models are still a bit of a question mark due to some dubious specs. Of the 3 Denon (not Marantz) has shown superior specs on paper as far as low distortion, linearity and good preamp output levels rivaling and even out doing some very high end standalone prepros.
I don't care for the aesthetics of the new Yamahas, either, with that hideous oversized volume knob in the center of the front panel, so it's not one I'd consider (I did use their stereo and PLII receivers in the past).
Basically, my brand choices are coming down to Onkyo, Denon or perhaps Pioneer (I know Pioneer is the same company as Onkyo now), but I need to know if the Pioneers and Denons offer some things I'm looking for that the Onkyos do not, apparently, any longer.
I didn't cover all of your points but took a crack at a few of 'em, lol. I'm not sure what you're saying about Dolby stereo surround (it's either stereo or Dolby surround. Can't be both, lol), but I think most modern av receivers will upmix 2.0 stereo to 5.1 Dolby really well and the center is active. I'm not sure if Pro Logic II is a thing anymore tho...
From what I have been reading since posting this, Pro Logic is not in receivers anymore -- it's been replaced by Dolby Surround or Neural X, which supposedly does the same thing. However, you need to manually press buttons on the receiver's remote to engage these once these soundtracks begin playing (two-channel soundtracks I mean); it's not engaged automatically any longer like with the older AVRs.
Let me see if I can explain what I mean regarding the Dolby and surround stuff...
We have a lot of DVDs in our collection that have "Stereo Surround" audio tracks (Dolby Digital), which are two-channel tracks but with encoded matrix information that is processed by (our current) AVR via Pro Logic II Movie mode, sending the dialogue for the track to the center channel and then extracting the surround information as necessary.
We also have a number of old titles on Blu-ray that have either a two-channel stereo or two-channel mono soundtrack encoded in DTS-HD Master Audio, and these, too, need to be decoded properly for playback -- however, the receiver we have now doesn't have the processing power to take DTS-HD MA two-channel signals and send them where they need to be (with 2.0 mono to the center channel only and with 2.0 stereo to the center channel and surround channels), so it just collapses the entire two-channel signal into the two left and right main speakers (in my case, they're Polk RTi12 towers). This creates a weird "combing effect" because the dialogue is coming from those left/right speakers, even if I am smack dab in the middle of the sweet spot, and I was hoping a new receiver would allow these soundtracks to play back from where they SHOULD.
