I got what seems like a good deal on a factory refurbished TX-SR606 for my bedroom but I'm having an issue. I installed it in place of an old pioneer on Friday but ran into an issue running the Audyessy setup. It found all of my speakers but gave an error (that's all it said) on my center. I knew it was connected correctly but swapped the leads just to be sure and sure enough it returned "error" on the center the next time I ran Audyessy. I swapped the wires back and then broke out my tape measure and ratshack SPL meter and set everything up manually and it sounds fantastic - including the center. It's a huge improvement over my aging VSX-814 and I'm really-really-really jumping for joy happy with it otherwise.
Anyway I called Onkyo support about the Audyessy issue and although the gentleman that I spoke with was a really nice guy he didn't strike me as all that knowledgeable. Pretty much a troubleshooting flowchart reader. He swears that it has to be a defective microphone but that makes no sense to me. If the mic was bad it would return an error on all of the speakers. He also said that since it's less than 30 days old that Onkyo policy was not to get involved and that I should take it up with Accessories4less and see if they will ship me a new setup mic.
I'll give A4L a call tomorrow but I just wanted a second opinion before placing that call. If all else fails I can live without auto setup and I sure don't want to spend $25-30 on return shipping, but it's just disappointing.
Let's do a reality check - here is my setup. This is for a master bedroom LCD TV that is mounted high on the wall opposite my bed. The center is Boston CRC mounted directly above the TV at about 7'8" high with the mains (Boston CR65s) left and right at about 7' high and about 7' apart. The speakers are 12' from my pillow, which is where I placed the setup mic. Nothing too cosmic except for the height. Am I jumping to conclusions that it can't be the microphone? Is there anything in this flavor of Audyessy that I will be missing out on just setting it up with a tape and an SPL meter and ignoring Audyessy? Is there something that I could be missing that Audyessy is catching? The center appears to be working fine and all three front speakers are angled down at the listening space.
The receiver itself I love. It finally made for a truly happy marriage between the Bostons and my T250 sub and was rocking my bedroom
perfectly. The 606 like my TX-NR906 let's you set the crossover point separately for each pair of speakers. That allowed me to crossover my center and mains at 80hz and my smaller surrounds at 100hz. With this setup all I need is a hot blond girl friend with a taste for jazz and I'd never leave my bedroom.
