Onkyo TX-NR626 vs. Sony STR-DN1040 based on my speakers?

[pieper53]

Howdy,

First off, great site; this is my first post and am excited to join the whole crew here.

I recently just started to have a re-kindled interest in my home theater/audio system after being absent for many, many years.

That said, I am a newbie at all of this so please bear with me.

I am looking to purchase a new receiver for my home theater system and have a few questions about which one would be best for my set up.

Per the title, I am debating between the Onkyo TX-NR626 & Sony STR-DN1040. These maybe a little overkill for me right now but am looking for a high quality receiver to hold on to for several years with internet connectivity.

Any thoughts on these receivers with my speakers (below)? Not sure if the Sony STR-DN1040 with 165 watts per channel is too much. I didn't spent a lot of money on my speakers (paid a fraction of their websites listed price) and don't want to spent more money on my receiver than my speakers can handle.

Front speakers:
S-FIT TWR 1050

Center speaker:
S-FIT CTR 350

And plan on buying the following sub (recomendations are welcome for my sub:
Baby Boomer Powered Sub

New rear surround speakers will be purchased soon too (again, recommendations are welcome).

Any thoughts on these receivers with my speakers? I love watching movies at fairly high volume and also enjoy listening to various styles of music every day (looking for a receiver that is both good for music listening and movie watching).

Again, I'm a newbie so all comments are welcome. I'm eager to learn.

Thanks,

p.

 

[Adam]

Welcome to the forum, p.!

Either of those two receivers can handle those speakers based on the speaker impedance specs, and neither receiver has too much power for them. The Onkyo and Sony have similar power ratings - you just need to look at their specs and try to compare apples to apples (what frequency range did they use, what was the distortion level, and so forth). In that price range, a lot of receivers are going to have very similar power ratings...but you sometimes need to look at the details because they don't all publish the same measurements in their marketing, so some receivers look like they have a lot more than the others.

Audioholics recently did a review of that Sony (which might be why you ended up here ), linked here. Just this morning, I posted a review of the Onkyo 626, linked here. Please just let me know if there's anything that I can try to answer for you on the Onkyo.

 

[avengineer]

It's interesting that the center speaker, which is responsible for more than 70% of the total energy in a soundtrack, requires more than twice the power to hit the same SPL as the L and R speakers.

But I wouldn't suggest picking an AVR based only on power output specs. All AVRs in a given price range have output power easily within a couple dB of each other. There are so many other features that actually make a difference, like quality room calibration to name one,