As a lot of us know, Onkyo has had many HDMI issues over the better part of this decade. And until recently, this has been no secret to anyone but Onkyo themselves. I had been bitten by the Onkyo bug way back in the late 1990's when I heard a full high-end system at a friends house her dad owned. Many years later I was in a position to start my own journey into home theater and I started off in 2010 with an Onkyo that I loved the sound of but it would not play nicely through HDMI with the Panasonic G25 Plasma I had recently purchased at the time, leading me to returning the Onkyo and purchasing a Denon AVR-591, which I was pretty happy with it turned out. Now it didn't sound quite as good as that cheap Onkyo but it did sound good and it worked exactly as it should. Cut to 8 years later and I've jumped from my plasma to buying a 55" B7 OLED, which of course has moved from the 1.4 HDMI spec and onto the 2.0 HDMI spec and I needed to now also upgrade my receiver to get the ARC and HDR and all the new jazz to work correctly. I had good luck with my Denon and thought I would just go with what I trust and I really didn't have any issue with the sound of the Denon either so I found a reasonably priced offering in the form of the 730h which was really close to what I had been listening to for the last 8 years or so. I would tell you all about it but... well it died in less than two weeks and I returned it and found the 930h for just about 50 more bucks and jumped on it. Everything worked and it seemed to sound okay but around this time I had decided on getting some new speakers and went from some old Polk Audio RTi12's to a set of Polk Audio LSIM 703 stand mounts as I had the old LSI9's a few years back and liked them a lot and couldn’t pass up the 703’s for the $500 per pair asking price. I have wanted to get back to the more “exotic” side of tweeters than domes and horns and this is one of the less expensive ways to that and I haven't regretted that decision except for the fact that better speakers and more revealing tweeters can show you how bad amps and certain sources can really get. And this was the beginning of my search for better sound.
At first I really thought it might be the speakers sounding a bit veiled and it steered me to look at getting the Emotiva T1's that I had been looking at for a quite some time. They are hell of proposition for the money they had been asking and then I saw that they had them on close out for $500 bucks... Then I saw that they had for $425 if you bought them factory renewed... 2 days later they were at my house and I had them hooked up to the Denon along with the C1 center channel also from Emotiva, I also had OWM3 from Polk for the front height Atmos speakers and Polk TSi300’s for the surrounds and fleshing out the low end duties are two Dayton Audio SUB-1500’s. I then happily moved the Polk's to the bedroom to hooked up to my very good—and one of the last bad ass products to come out of the dying breed that is Harman Kardon, my HK3490. It really is a beast of a two channel integrated amp. Two things happened that day that set in stone that i needed a new amp. One, the Emotivas sounded absolutely amazing and better than the Polk’s for sure..... Or so I thought because, Number 2, the Polk's on the 3490 opened up and sounded way better than they ever had on the Denon it really is very close between the LSIM703 and the Emotiva T1’s with the T1’s just edging out the the Polk’s due to the slightly more open sound of the T1’s…. Then, later that week after doing almost nothing but listening to the T1's I decided they need to be moved to the room to see what they would do on the ol' HK. This is when I realized that the Denon 930h has been the issue with my system and I had to face it, I hadn't been happy with the sound the entire time I've had it. Now it was time to bite the bullet and really see what what was out there for a reasonable deal. The only real requirement was price and pre-outs I looked at everything in the $800 range and under and anything with Atmos and HDMI 2.0 or better, what I finally settle on was the Onkyo TX-RZ830 due to the 9 channel amp section and the pre-outs I needed for later upgrades and also the fact that it wasn't too much of an older model as the RZ840 model was announced but not quite out yet. I ordered the RZ830 for 583 bucks after tax (I live in DFW so Amazon taxes on most things),it arrived in a couple of days and I set out hooking things up which was a breeze with the set up menus that are included with the receiver. Although really this is pretty much par for the course these days but that is kind of an area where Onkyo needed to catch up too, aside from the HDMI issues. The sound was incredible for the price and everything was working well, just as it should. After getting to the point where I thought the Onkyo was just going to work I hooked up the rear Atoms speakers in the for of some smaller Polk bookshelf speakers in the form of the RT15i, a very well behaved and great sounding speaker in its own right and bit much for the Atmos rears for some people but they worked perfect for me.
So after a couple of weeks bangin’ the sound out of my house and pissing off the neighbors all over again, some strange things started happening with the system. First I started to see a couple of familiar drop outs here and there, sometimes they seemed as though it may have just been my computer acting up but then it happened on my Xbox and then on my X-700. I also noticed that movies were just not as sharp as they had been so I decide to check the stats coming from the TV and the Onkyo and that’s when I noticed that the signal from the Onkyo was only 1080p at 60hz with Dolby Vision. It was like this with my computer, the X-700 and the Xbox. After a long while of messing around with it I could not get anything to work at 4k 60hz with HDR or Dolby Vision. Only when I would drop the HDR or drop the refresh rate to 24hz or 30hz would the Onkyo allow 4k. It also would only see my computer at 4:2:2 color space and nothing else. I have a pretty elaborate setup with a main PC and a Capture rig in the loop that both have to be on for the Gaming rig to work. Out of the Gaming rig’s GPU – a 2080 ti – is a super short HDMI that goes into a powered splitter that takes the signal to the Onkyo and also the input on the internal capture card of the Capture PC. The Capture PC has it’s own GPU – a 1080ti – and that HDMI goes to it’s own monitor. Now depending on which computer is turned on first is what HDMI the Onkyo sees. So sometimes you have to unplug one computer from the loop so it sees the other so you can get the audio set up correctly. I like the computer to see the main audio as going to the receiver from the 2080 ti in the gaming rig and not the Aver Media capture card as the out because the GPU has up to 192k/24bit audio in Dolby Atmos or 7.1 and the capture card does only 48k/24bit. Well, after a long time of messing with all the ways to connect to the Onkyo from all products I have, there was only one way to get everything to work and it still wasn’t correct. I had to use the TV as the switch and although I could get everything to work, the computer would only see the tv as two channel and it would not work properly with any kind of surround at all. So really, I couldn’t find a working combo and after all the different ways to hook it up and several master resets, I was just stumped as to why it was not seeing the output of any of the devices as it should. It was 3am at that point and I was ready to go to sleep so as I shut down the system ready to get some sleep and then see if I could get it working the nest day, but as I hit the power button on the Onkyo and sparks flew from the upper rear of the unit and everything went black.
My OLED didn’t have it’s normal red light on showing when it’s off yet my powers trips were lit, my computer was already off so I tried that and it turned on but the OLED would not respond to anything. I switched the power strip on then unhooked everything from the now stinking Onkyo and finally got the TV to turn back on. I not still really not sure if it was the HDMI board or what ever it was that fried, but it was reasonable to me to go with that with the way it was behaving with signals. Now you wouldn’t be wrong if you think I should have just ditched the whole Onkyo idea and moved onto my next much pricier choice with a Yamaha 9.2 channel Aventage but I really wasn’t wanting to pay for that for an older model. So I dug in after some more research I saw that the RZ840 was boasting an all new HDMI board, after finding pictures of them both that I could study side by side along with the fact the rear of each unit had different HDMI and Ethernet layouts, it was easy to determine that they were indeed not the same at all. And realizing that it had been two more weeks since I bought the RZ830 I had received another paycheck, so after starting the return on the 830, I ponied 180 more bucks and threw at my computer screen over to Amazon ordered the TX-RZ840.
Truth be told, I couldn’t be more satisfied with my decision, this thing is golden. The sound is open and concise with a transparency that I have yet to hear at this price point, and I have been at this for a long while hearing all kinds of ratty systems all the way to some simply amazing systems that I will never be able to afford. The RZ840 has a few options and features that the previous iteration lacks, mainly IMAX Enhanced (which may be the real reason for the new HDMI board),I have had the pleasure of hearing IMAX Enhanced from the IMAX Space Station documentary and let me tell you, it’s crazy good, the channel separation is insane and the clarity is on another level from Atmos. Although Atmos is wonderfully recreated on this receiver and as clean and clear as I have heard, it’s pinpoint in its accuracy as well. They say that the amp sections are a bit different from the RZ830 but I couldn’t really testify to that from looking at them, the RZ840 might just be a bit warmer or maybe a bit more full, not quite as tinny I guess. But my no means were either of them not transparent and once I got them dialed in I really could tell no difference. The 840, along with quite a few other Onkyo models, is THX Select Certified and with the way these beefy amps push the watts, it’s really not surprising. And I know that there is a bit more to it than that but I feel like this one isn’t just some sticker to sell more units., if THX even means anything these days. The IMAX will blow your face off though. As far as power goes, the 120 watts x2@8ohms .08 THD is a huge step up from the Denon 930h and it’s 90 watts x2 rating. Though the Emotivas are all three 4ohm speakers, so they are getting a bit more than that 120 watts. This things decimates the Denon in every category it has more impact, clarity, extension, plenty more overhead and right out of the box it sounds WAY better than I ever got the Denon to sound. Even heat dissipation is far better than Denon is a space heater and without a fan to pull that heat away they have been known to shut down. The Onkyo has a built in fan the only time yo know it’s on is when you here it’s relay click, you can’t hear the fan really at all, even when you get down next to it. It doesn’t come on very often but you only here that relay when it’s very quiet in the room and I’m one of those people that id okay with hearing the relay so that know my fan is doing something….
For this model they also added the AccuEQ Advance with it’s new 9 point calibration. It did do a noticeably better job than the previous 3 point calibration. I like Audessy on the Denon a bit better due to the way you can manipulate the curve through the app, but I really don’t use auto calibration except for the distance and delay. Both iterations of AccuEQ and Audessy do just fine I just think they are a bit aggressive. I prefer to use an app called AudioTool and calibrate my levels and EQ to the room with that, it has a solid spectrum analyzer and a noise generator with a decibel meter. The EQ is pretty decent on the 840 so I was able to dial it in very nicely. My room isn’t huge and I have Auralex foam in reflective places and my living room is attached to the kitchen so it I really don’t have a back wall anywhere close to my back. All my speakers except for the RT15i are the same as when I had the Denon 930h so it’s almost an A/B comparison. I can tell you this, where music is concerned the Denon just can’t really hold a candle to the extremely capable RZ840 and with movies brought into the equation the Denon simply can’t compete. The Onkyo is just so open and clear, it’s ultra dynamic in it’s response, I just haven’t been able to muddle the sound with any amount of craziness coming from any soundtrack I’ve thrown at it, the dialog is crystal clear and the all around build quality is pretty damn impeccable for well under 1k. I picked this up for a bit over 850 bucks, the Denon when I bought it was almost 7 after tax and shipping, Even with that price discrepancy I would just wait and save a bit more to get the Onkyo. 9 amplified channels and pre-outs for 11.2. THX options in the setup menu are pretty handy, the menu itself is crazy good and easy to use. The app is really good for sending our music to your system. There are just an insane amount of options on this receiver and it sound incredible.
I want to end with this… There a few things that bother me about the unit and really they are not show stoppers for me. The one big one is that it’s not really dual sub-woofers as far as the EQ concerned. It was disappointing when I found that out but at the same time you can at least EQ the sub-woofer channel independently from the rest of the speakers and each speaker individually as well. But you can’t just go into the quick menu to and turn up or down any speaker you want, only the front, center and sub. You could turn those down and that is essentially the same as turning the rears and Atmos up, but it will be like turning ALL of those up or down at once. If anything crops up overtime I’ll have get back on talk about that but as of now, I really don’t have any issues other than those.
When you get down to the nitty gritty, this unit works as intended and it seems they really have fixed the HDMI issues, it has no problems passing through HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision from the x700 Sony, the PC and the XBOX, not to mention the TV as well. And really, for me anyway, those HDMI problems show up very quickly. It does have a 3 year warranty on it so that’s a little piece of mind I guess. It sounds amazing, has good power and every new sound format other than Auro3D. IMAX Enhanced for well under 1k is good in my book and when I’m watching a movie the entire system just disappears and I don’t think about the sound, It’s just there. It’s really the first time that I am really satisfied with my system and it has really brought everything together in a way that makes me not wanting anything else and I actually feel like I’m done with my system. I just want to use it now, not tweak or add anything. It was the missing piece to my setup.
