Time to downgrade Onkyo receivers to Junk status?

[Crackerballer]

But yet how many of you in this thread wait until the end of a model year and then some additional markdown to buy a receiver? Which leaves little margin for the company to be able to innovate and have faith in their consumer base that the buyers will purchase the products if they make them marginally nicer, and therefore marginally more expensive.

Bottom line is, vote with your dollar. If YOU think Onkyo is junk, don't buy it. If you do buy one and it turns out to be junk, tell us about it. But the in between of "I heard this" and "a friend of a friend told me that" is what can kill a reputable company and leave us with less offerings and one less competitor for those still in business.

Vote with your dollar folks.

 

[Jeff R.]

I have two so far no issues to report....I would have to say that the Onkyo in my mind is a budget receiver though....I will always buy a 1 year old model that has been factory refurbished. So the fact that I am buying a product at 30% of the original retail cost it is not of concern to me if it fails. If my 805 burns up tomorrow....no big deal I got 3-4 good years out of a $400 investment that was used for 4-6 hours every day of my life. I could not get that kind of enjoyment out of $400 pair of shoes. Especially if I wore them every day for 4 years they would be shot.

Just my thoughts.....if you want the best you have to spend the big bucks (generally speaking). Like others mentioned purchase the higher end....Marantz or something similar.

 

[Crackerballer]

I have two so far no issues to report....I would have to say that the Onkyo in my mind is a budget receiver though....I will always buy a 1 year old model that has been factory refurbished. So the fact that I am buying a product at 30% of the original retail cost it is not of concern to me if it fails. If my 805 burns up tomorrow....no big deal I got 3-4 good years out of a $400 investment that was used for 4-6 hours every day of my life. I could not get that kind of enjoyment out of $400 pair of shoes. Especially if I wore them every day for 4 years they would be shot.

Just my thoughts.....if you want the best you have to spend the big bucks (generally speaking). Like others mentioned purchase the higher end....Marantz or something similar.

Another great attitude to have. I bought my TX-NR708 refurb with a 2 year warranty for under $400. If it last 4 years, I paid $100 a year for something used roughly 2000 hours per year. It cost me $0.05 an hour to have my Onkyo, and that is severely underestimating the time I will be using it. If it only last two years, $0.10 an hour.

 

[lsiberian]

But the in between of "I heard this" and "a friend of a friend told me that" is what can kill a reputable company and leave us with less offerings and one less competitor for those still in business.

Vote with your dollar folks.

The failure rate appears to much higher for Onkyo's, but I suspect the volume of sales is much higher too. That said the concerns of heat in electronic still exist discussing the why's and hows leads to better products. I'm not interested in the dollar side of things, but the technical side.

 

[Crackerballer]

The failure rate appears to much higher for Onkyo's, but I suspect the volume of sales is much higher too. That said the concerns of heat in electronic still exist discussing the why's and hows leads to better products. I'm not interested in the dollar side of things, but the technical side.

Unfortunately sir, they will always go hand in hand once you get past the DIY world. I understand what you are saying, but the snowball effect of some minor internet slander can really damage a company and in the hand hurt the consumer just as much as the business.

 

[sholling]

But yet how many of you in this thread wait until the end of a model year and then some additional markdown to buy a receiver? Which leaves little margin for the company to be able to innovate and have faith in their consumer base that the buyers will purchase the products if they make them marginally nicer, and therefore marginally more expensive.

Bottom line is, vote with your dollar. If YOU think Onkyo is junk, don't buy it. If you do buy one and it turns out to be junk, tell us about it. But the in between of "I heard this" and "a friend of a friend told me that" is what can kill a reputable company and leave us with less offerings and one less competitor for those still in business.

Vote with your dollar folks.

This is exactly true. The internet echo chamber is alive with "I heard" and one "I heard" builds on another and pretty soon a reputable company that's been offering amazing bang for the buck is damaged for no documented reason. There have been a couple of models (806 and 170) that I've panned for the same reason - rumors but to tar an entire brand is like calling all doctors quacks because you heard that a friend's sister's husband's uncle's neighbor died during surgery. I'm brand agnostic so if someone has hard numbers to show one brand has a shockingly higher percentage of sales come back for repair I'd be interested - especially if broken down by model. I'm all about maximizing bang for my dollars and switched from 20 years of buying Pioneer products when I felt the value and performance wasn't there any more.

Second when you have gold plated budgets you can afford to pooh-pooh affordable electronics in favor of $1500 pre/pros and high buck powered speakers but for those with blue-collar budgets receivers and passive speakers offer great bang for the buck. I've been there and when you're laying out a week or two worth of pay for a receiver you want as many features and as much real world power as you can squeeze into your meager budget.

I do like the concept of powered speakers a lot, they just aren't an affordable option for most people. Especially those that can only afford to upgrade a piece at a time. Of course those forced to run coax along the baseboards to the surrounds might find WAF push-back hard to overcome.

 

[lsiberian]

I do like the concept of powered speakers a lot, they just aren't an affordable option for most people. Especially those that can only afford to upgrade a piece at a time. Of course those forced to run coax along the baseboards to the surrounds might find WAF push-back hard to overcome.

I disagree on the cost front. Powered speakers need not be expensive. I can buy dual channel active amp for 100 dollars. I'm certain a large retailer could get a lower price point. The cost of the amps can offset the cost of the passive crossover in many cases. Plus it makes speakers more efficient.

I'm not saying this exists in the market place, but the product is certainly viable. I suspect wireless integration would be much simpler in this case too.

 

[jonnythan]

The annoying thing about powered speakers is the power cord. Two cords for each speaker is mildly obnoxious, and having to find 5 or 7 plugs either limits your placement options severely or dooms you to running arbitrarily long power cords (over a distance, parallel to your interconnect).

It's great in theory but realistically sucks. There's a reason they're only really seen in pro audio.

 

[lsiberian]

Unfortunately sir, they will always go hand in hand once you get past the DIY world. I understand what you are saying, but the snowball effect of some minor internet slander can really damage a company and in the hand hurt the consumer just as much as the business.

Onkyo isn't getting damaged by anything other than their own design errors and poor customer service record. It's not slander to point out engineering flaws.

That said I'd still probably buy an Onkyo receiver if mine went out today because the bang for buck is tough to beat. But I'd also make sure it had plenty of ventilation. I'm a cheapskate right now. When I can afford it I'll go the pre-pro route with a fully active system.

 

[lsiberian]

The annoying thing about powered speakers is the power cord. Two cords for each speaker is mildly obnoxious, and having to find 5 or 7 plugs either limits your placement options severely or dooms you to running arbitrarily long power cords (over a distance, parallel to your interconnect).

It's great in theory but realistically sucks. There's a reason they're only really seen in pro audio.

A power cord is essentially the same thing as a speaker cable.

 

[jonnythan]

A power cord is essentially the same thing as a speaker cable.

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.

 

[lsiberian]

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.

Not if the signals were wireless.

 

[sholling]

The cost of the amps can offset the cost of the passive crossover in many cases. Plus it makes speakers more efficient.

This is part of what interests me with powered speakers. I really like the concept of having the crossover before individual amps and the efficiency that comes with doing that.

I'm not saying this exists in the market place, but the product is certainly viable. I suspect wireless integration would be much simpler in this case too.

Viable perhaps but it'll be a struggle to do it at at consumer prices. In a two or three way 7 speaker system you have 7 power supplies and 14-17 amplifier channels (versus 1 power supply and 7 channels) to pay for and you still need some form of crossover within each speaker to divide and yet blend the signal going to the amplifier channels. I'm not a speaker designer so perhaps I don't have the correct terminology but you're simply moving the crossovers in ahead of the amplifiers instead of after the amps. I'm not saying it's not doable just that to make it happen you have to get the economies of scale ramped up on all of the above plus radically bring down the cost of full featured pre/pros or else you're still left with consumers using $600+ receivers as pre/pros which are the critters that TLS Guy is trying to get us away from. I suspect there is a reason that most consumer focused powered speakers limit that function to built in subwoofers.

Bottom line it's a wonderful concept that just isn't practical for the average Joe looking to put together a $1500-2000 all inclusive 5.1 system, at least not yet.

 

[sholling]

Not if the signals were wireless.

Then you're getting into bandwidth, fidelity, and number of channel questions, and then if you have neighbors on the same channels . I can just hear hear it now - 4 NYC apt neighbors sharing the same channels for their surrounds. I get away with wireless for my subwoofer but it's one channel with minimal bandwidth requirements and I'm in a single family home. Of course it's all doable with enough channels and bandwidth/channel.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

The big question is, has anyone gotten great customer service from Onkyo when things go wrong?

 

[sholling]

The big question is, has anyone gotten great customer service from Onkyo when things go wrong?

For the most part they have exactly one answer available - take it/send it to a repair facility. That's all the further their training goes. But I'll say this they sent out replacement Audyssey mics after just a quick email, at least until Audyssey told them to stop. But then I've never had one actually break on me.

Actually the only receiver I've ever had to put in the shop was a used Sansui 9090 back about 1982, I'd given $50 for it and it cost me like $30-40 to get it fixed.

 

[PENG]

amps and the efficiency that comes with doing that.

Any such efficiency gain would be negligible overall.

 

[lsiberian]

This is part of what interests me with powered speakers. I really like the concept of having the crossover before individual amps and the efficiency that comes with doing that.


Viable perhaps but it'll be a struggle to do it at at consumer prices. In a two or three way 7 speaker system you have 7 power supplies and 14-17 amplifier channels (versus 1 power supply and 7 channels) to pay for and you still need some form of crossover within each speaker to divide and yet blend the signal going to the amplifier channels. I'm not a speaker designer so perhaps I don't have the correct terminology but you're simply moving the crossovers in ahead of the amplifiers instead of after the amps. I'm not saying it's not doable just that to make it happen you have to get the economies of scale ramped up on all of the above plus radically bring down the cost of full featured pre/pros or else you're still left with consumers using $600+ receivers as pre/pros which are the critters that TLS Guy is trying to get us away from. I suspect there is a reason that most consumer focused powered speakers limit that function to built in subwoofers.

Bottom line it's a wonderful concept that just isn't practical for the average Joe looking to put together a $1500-2000 all inclusive 5.1 system, at least not yet.

I can certainly put together an active Average Joe 5.1 system for 2K. The problem is the market is not wired this way.

 

[jonnythan]

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

 

[TLS Guy]

Any such efficiency gain would be negligible overall.

Not true. A passive crossover wastes at least half of the amp power and often a lot more. In a three way design passive losses can be huge.