Time to downgrade Onkyo receivers to Junk status?

[TLS Guy]

Except it's an extra cable that has to go somewhere different than the first cable. Would turn my living room into a spider's web of cables.

This is the whole trouble now, everything is in the hands of big conglomerates. There is no imagination, innovation or significant progress.

You could easily do this with one cable. To do it you need a standards agreement. You would not want an AC cord coming out of every speaker. That would encourage a boat load of ground loops.

The answer is phantom powering. Since the length of cables to the speakers would likely be large anyway, you would want to have balanced connections.

I would make compact and neat pre/pros. With economy of scale it is obvious these could be made much cheaper than a receiver.

Now I would put half the speaker power supplies in a unit that the pre/pro connects to, this would not have to be a balanced connection.

Now the power supply would have a transformer and put out an agreed DC voltage. This would be high enough to power any amps of power that you would want under domestic condition.

Now the power supply unit converts the signal to balanced if it receives an unbalanced signal. It also puts the +ve DC voltage on pins 2 and 3 and the ground on 1 the ground. The signal goes on pins 2 and 3 as it does now in balanced connections. No DC current flows between pins 2 and 3 as they are at the same DC voltage. This is standard phantom powering practice.

You would have to design a new balanced connector most likely, as the pins of the current connector would not handle the currents involved. This would be an agreed standard.

Now in the speaker you have the regulation side of the power supply, with regulated DC voltages supplied to the various crossover amp stages. This would be cheap to build.

Active crossovers could be built much cheaper than passive ones, as chips, caps and resistors are bought for pennies in quantity, whereas inductors and large passive caps and power resistors are expensive.

The you need class D amps tweaked for the drivers they are supplying.

There you have it. Straightforward and easy to connect, but different from what we are used to. Is it worth the effort? Absolutely!

With the resources of a manufacturer I could have this fleshed out and working in no time. If any want to hire me I'm in.

So you have much cheaper pre pros away from a lot of sources of heat. The major heat generators would be the processor chips.

The power transformer would be in its own unit. That would be best, but you could make pre/pros to output the balanced audio signals and the phantom DC power.

There would be big savings in the crossover. The regulation would just be moved from the receiver to the speaker.

I'm sure the class D amps with economies of scale could be produced very cheaply.

The benefit would be a big improvement is sound quality. Reliability and and longevity would go up through the roof.

With changes in processing technology you would only have to update the pre/pro pretty much.

 

[lsiberian]

Good power supplies are not cheap. On a limited budget it's probably better to go with one big one than 7 separate ones.

Why would you need seven separate ones? How are the power requirement any different from the way things are done now?

 

[TLS Guy]

Why would you need seven separate ones? How are the power requirement any different from the way things are done now?

Under my plan the expensive part of the power supply would not be reduplicated. There would only be one power transformer and one set of expensive smoothing caps.

There would be the inexpensive parts in the speakers, mainly to do with regulation.

I'm certain a scheme like this could be worked out, and be no more expensive, than current practice, and may be cheaper. Certainly it would win hands down on performance per dollar.

We just to rethink the whole thing now multichannel audio is common place.

Sometimes reinventing the wheel is the right thing to do, and this is one of those times.

 

[avnetguy]

We just to rethink the whole thing now multichannel audio is common place.

So why not just keep the current AVRs but put active crossovers in them?

Steve

 

[jonnythan]

That's a complicated setup with more parts and more complicated equipment than we have now.

 

[avnetguy]

Not sure I follow you jonnythan, maybe I need to elaborate a bit more.

I just meant to that instead of retooling the enitre setup as TLS Guy suggests you just redo a segment (high end?) of AVRs that would be setup to drive speakers directly, ones without a passive crossover. I gather speaker makers could also allow bypass connections for these new AVRs and specifications for the crossovers. Plus these new speakers could still be used for regular AVRs and either way, no additional home wiring is needed.

Steve

 

[jonnythan]

You can't separate the crossover from the speaker, as the crossover is highly customized for the particular driver and enclosure arrangement.

 

[avnetguy]

You can't separate the crossover from the speaker, as the crossover is highly customized for the particular driver and enclosure arrangement.

I didn't know you can't run an active crossover away from the speaker, what's the reason for this? I though that if you could input the crossover parameters it would be the same.

I also forgot that you need to run separate speaker wire for each speaker, 2 sets of wires for 2 way, 3 sets for 3 way, etc .... that gets a little ugly.

Steve

 

[TLS Guy]

So why not just keep the current AVRs but put active crossovers in them?

Steve

Active crossovers, just like passive ones have to be customized to the speakers. You want the amps close to the speakers to keep the speaker wires short.

Also you have four way, three and a half way, three way, three and a half way, two way, two and a half way and two way speakers out there and some I have not mentioned. You can not allow for that in a receiver. Also you really would have a birds nest of wires round the room then.

Besides the whole point is to get sources of heat away from increasingly complex and therefore increasingly fragile processing chips.

The will increased performance, reliability and longevity.

The quality you have now would be a mere shadow of what could be achieved with my approach. Further it should not be for the high end. One of the big points of all this is to bring the high end and professional practice in reach of the majority of HT enthusiasts.

 

[avnetguy]

Active crossovers, just like passive ones have to be customized to the speakers. You want the amps close to the speakers to keep the speaker wires short.

But this can easily be acomplished by just uploading the correct parameters into the active filter right? Not sure why speaker wires need to be kept short.

Also you have four way, three and a half way, three way, three and a half way, two way, two and a half way and two way speakers out there and some I have not mentioned. You can not allow for that in a receiver. Also you really would have a birds nest of wires round the room then.

Yes, definitely would be an issue for speakers with complex crossovers. Of course many HT setups don't use more than 2 ways for surrounds but it could become a birds nest for the fronts/center.

Besides the whole point is to get sources of heat away from increasingly complex and therefore increasingly fragile processing chips.

Wouldn't this step remove a significant amount of heat? You previous post stated 50% or more power is wasted using passive crossovers (honestly, I wasn't aware of this much loss) so now the amps (and power supply?) could be smaller in these units leading to less heat.

Maybe even taking this half way, use pre-pro and a separate amp(s) w/ active filters.

Steve

 

[TLS Guy]

But this can easily be acomplished by just uploading the correct parameters into the active filter right? Not sure why speaker wires need to be kept short.

Yes, definitely would be an issue for speakers with complex crossovers. Of course many HT setups don't use more than 2 ways for surrounds but it could become a birds nest for the fronts/center.

Wouldn't this step remove a significant amount of heat? You previous post stated 50% or more power is wasted using passive crossovers (honestly, I wasn't aware of this much loss) so now the amps (and power supply?) could be smaller in these units leading to less heat.

Maybe even taking this half way, use pre-pro and a separate amp(s) w/ active filters.

Steve

A speaker connected to an amp by a short wire, can be,b and is damped by the amp. You need a short low resistance connection, for this to happen. A passive crossover has far too much in line resistance to make this happen. This negates totally any damping factor a power amp my posses.

I just don't see why you are so opposed to power amps being in the speakers. It is the logical place to put them and where they belong.

Your solution is totally impractical, in fact impossible to engineer.

My solution is elegant and would be highly effective.

 

[avnetguy]

I was just trying to envision a solution without the need for a complete departure from what is currently being offered.

Steve

 

[LAB3]

You likely are on target with these comments.

I guess in reviews, running the receivers with temperature probes at critical point under conditions of normal use would provide useful information.

However it seems clear that Onkyo receivers are running hotter than the competition and that is a very big strike against them. There is just no way that that can not have an adverse effect on reliability and longevity. This will be especially true for equipment run at high altitudes like Denver.

Equipment run at high altitudes Doc you got me on this one. Motorcycles with carb's run at Denver I understand. Too High too lean A/F ratio.

I know how much you love AVR of any brand but this Onkyo thread is for Real. My TX-SR 805 fried HDMI parts several times in the first 20 months.
Hope my Yamaha HD AVR lasts as long as my older 2003 Yamaha 2400 AVR (no HDMI or HD )that still works great.

 

[TLS Guy]

Equipment run at high altitudes Doc you got me on this one. Motorcycles with carb's run at Denver I understand. Too High too lean A/F ratio.

I know how much you love AVR of any brand but this Onkyo thread is for Real. My TX-SR 805 fried HDMI parts several times in the first 20 months.
Hope my Yamaha HD AVR lasts as long as my older 2003 Yamaha 2400 AVR (no HDMI or HD )that still works great.

Thanks for the report. There is enough on the NET now to see that Onkyo have a serious problem with the HDMI boards of their current crop of receivers.

There are enough credible reports like yours of not just one failure, but recurrent problems after repair.

Now I can understand the odd failure, but the same receivers having the same problem recurrently after repair indicates a fundamental design problem.

We should NOT be recommending Onkyo receivers on these forums at present. If they don't get this problem corrected pretty quickly, they will be out of business.

Being bought by Gibson, does not fill me with enthusiasm for the brand.

 

[LAB3]

You likely are on target with these comments.

I guess in reviews, running the receivers with temperature probes at critical point under conditions of normal use would provide useful information.

However it seems clear that Onkyo receivers are running hotter than the competition and that is a very big strike against them. There is just no way that that can not have an adverse effect on reliability and longevity. This will be especially true for equipment run at high altitudes like Denver.

Onkyo AVR that runs hot in a city at sea level in a HVAC home.......runs hotter in Dever in a HVAC home? Explain please.

 

[TLS Guy]

Onkyo AVR that runs hot in a city at sea level in a HVAC home.......runs hotter in Dever in a HVAC home? Explain please.

Because the air is less dense at higher altitude. So there is less mass per liter of air. That means there are less molecules to take the heat away. A gas, or liquid carries away heat (energy), because you speed up the molecules of the gas. Less molecules per liter of gas means less molecules to speed up and therefore less energy is extracted from the components.

The components will run hotter, which will speed up air flow, to carry the heat away.

You could only counteract this by using forced cooling, a fan, but that would have to run faster and move more air in Denver than sea level.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

While under warranty, my Denon AVR-5308CI also had HDMI port issues. I had to send it in and they replaced the HDMI board.

 

[LAB3]

Because the air is less dense at higher altitude. So there is less mass per liter of air. That means there are less molecules to take the heat away. A gas, or liquid carries away heat (energy), because you speed up the molecules of the gas. Less molecules per liter of gas means less molecules to speed up and therefore less energy is extracted from the components.

The components will run hotter, which will speed up air flow, to carry the heat away.

You could only counteract this by using forced cooling, a fan, but that would have to run faster and move more air in Denver than sea level.

I installed a 6" fan in back of my cabinet that blows across the back and top of my AVR after the 805 failed the second time...never stacked and had 6" of open top space for venting. It failed again just after warranty expired... sold it for parts. My Yamaha is cool after two Bluary movies in a row with the volume at 85 to 90 Db. All my vintage equipment has fans behind them.

Thanks for the "Denver" info. Really?? A AVR in Denver will not last as long as one in Fort Worth........ both setting out in the open in HVAC homes???
It's a good thing Pop never installed a AVR in his Air Commander... my parents owned a flying school here when I was kid. Do you have a link that I can read about how high altitude effects stereo equipment? None of the new AVR I have purchased had any info on operating them at above sea level. It seems to me if this was effecting the life span of a receiver the factory would have warranty warning notice.

 

[sholling]

While under warranty, my Denon AVR-5308CI also had HDMI port issues. I had to send it in and they replaced the HDMI board.

Junk status?

 

[TLS Guy]

Junk status?

The issue is, did the unit blow up in the same way again. Onkyo's problem is that there are credible reports of their receivers being fixed multiple times for the same problem, which indicates design problems and not bad luck.