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| Brand: Onkyo
Category: CE
List Price: $999.00
Buy New: $682.23
You Save: $316.77 (32%)
New (4) from $650.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  146 reviews
Color: Black
Media: Electronics
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 16
Dimensions (in): 18.1 x 17.1 x 7.6
Warranty: 2 years warranty
MPN: TXSR805
Model: TXSR805
UPC: 051398007607
EAN: 0051398007607
Release Date: April 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 2 months
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| Customer Reviews:
 Sound so disappointing it went back April 2, 2008
22 out of 29 found this review helpful
This Onkyo looked like a great choice and a bargain, what with its THX Ultra certification, high power ratings, broad feature set, and nice appearance. However, I was so disappointed with the sound of this unit that soon after I listened to music on it, I logged in to Amazon to request a refund. I will explain further...
First the good news: this thing is built like a tank! 60 pounds of heft make it not for the weak of back to get into your rack. So I actually felt encouraged by that, figuring that an overbuilt amplifier is generally a good sign for good sound. This is also a pretty easy receiver to set up, with simple (possibly too simple) on-screen menus and straightforward controls.
So after connecting up the speakers and a few key components, we went through the microphone-based setup, and after a couple of false starts got through that fine. The settings it chose for speaker distances and such appeared to be spot on.
Then we popped in a DVD of Star Wars I. The sound seemed thin from the first notes of the opening fanfare. I also thought the rear levels seemed overly loud, but that is something easy to tweak. The sound during the movie was OK, but hard to judge since I hadn't watched that movie recently on my old system. Without dragging this out, I later popped in a dts 5.1 recording of Genesis Duke, a personal favorite I'd been listening to frequently of late, and my heart sank.
Like I'm sure most of you reading this, I LOVE music. I am not an audio snob, but having been a hi-fi enthusiast for more than 30 years (I'm still under 50 and still have good hearing btw) I think I have a very good ear for things like transparency, spatial recreation, frequency balance and spread. The system I'm replacing is a high end Sony ES 9000 set, with separate preamp and 5-channel amplifier, and my speaker system is a carefully set up Polk home theater system with a powerful matching subwoofer, in a large irregularly shaped room (good for sound actually.) That Sony pre-amp/amp replaced an older Sony ES 5-channel receiver, and to me the pre-amp/amp combo clearly set a new standard for my listening room. Overall, the Sony pair was a tough act to follow, but unfortunately the 6-year-old preamp started coughing up digital blood and then finally died! Time for something newer, I thought, with the latest features. The speaker system sounds fine with no EQ at all, so I tested the new Onkyo both with and without using its Audysee EQ settings.
I was willing to accept a possibly slight degradation in sound going back to a receiver, but to my surprise this Onkyo didn't even come close! The sound has a strangely artificial harshness to it, even though the highs seem well extended there was just something "off" about, for example, the crash of a symbol. And the denser the musical texture gets, the more the sound falls apart, getting cloudier and edgier. If you want a good test for these aspects of the more subtle but important elements of amp/preamp performance, get a good recording of dense vocal harmonies--I recommend track 11 from Alan Parson's stunning dts 5.1 recording of "On Air." A great amplifier will sound smooth, sweet and well-defined, with the voices distinct and natural sounding. An "average" system will sound a bit gritty, with the voices merging into a fuzzy smear. (If you're old enough to remember the sound of dust on a record needle, it's something like that but usually quite a bit more subtle.) If you pick the right test like this, it doesn't take a "golden ear" to hear the difference, the great system will suck you right in to the music and give you chills, and the so-so system will leave you cold and at a distance, maybe intellectually thinking, "well that sounded pretty good." No matter how I adjusted the controls (and a bit more on that later) on this Onkyo, I could not get it to sound even close to the musicality of the old Sony system, and it didn't take the most special recordings to hear the difference. I'm sure most people who don't have a higher end system to compare it to might never notice, and certainly dozens here have raved about how awesome they think this receiver is. It plays loud and reasonably clean, and the truth is that most movie soundtracks are much easier to bang out with volume alone than producing a great musical performance with no visuals.
I have no doubt my sample was performing up to its specifications, but specifications and musicality can be two entirely different things. I honestly have no idea how THX can put their seal of approval on this receiver, which now tells me that THX does not equal great sound.
Other negatives: the automatic setup does not set the subwoofer crossover frequency for you, so beware that it gets set by default at 80 Hz. For most systems people buy now, with small satellites plus a subwoofer, this is going to sound like crap, because small satellites usually start to fade off well above 80 Hz, and probably require something between 120 and 150 for the best sound. If you do buy this, make sure you look at that. Those crossover frequencies are in pretty rough increments on the Onkyo, not the 10-Hz steps you get with others. Setting mine to 120Hz did help the sound, but didn't solve my main issues of the overall sound being "synthetic" and almost lifeless. Believe me, I did everything I could to tweak the sound to try and get it into shape (who wants to send back a 60 pound beast?), but no joy.
Another surprising negative about this Onkyo is that it doesn't have any sound field effects available, unlike most similar systems. For example, most competitors offer simulation sound fields of concert halls, churches, movie theaters, etc., but the Onkyo only gives you native decoding modes, plus some surround simulators like Dolby PLII. I was also annoyed by the fact that when you're adjusting the sound, even something as simple as bass and treble, for each change it mutes the sound for a second and then comes back on--that gets old in a hurry! And if I'm going to pick nits, the volume knob is surrounded by what's supposed to be a ring of blue light when the power is on, nice idea, but it looks like they put just one LED at the top, so you get kind of a half lit ring instead; why did they even bother if they weren't going to do it right?
The final note to the story is a happy ending: I just replaced this Onkyo with a Yamaha VX3800. Admittedly, the Yamaha is about 50% more expensive. But the sound is superbly musical, in fact it's better than my Sony separates were, and I highly recommend it. Much richer feature set than even the highest Onkyo model, more powerful sounding than the Onkyo it replaced (and possibly even the Sony separates), and surprisingly it weighs more than 20 pounds less. Better engineering? Yamaha is also a musical instruments company, and the sound from their receiver shows that beautifully. I'm literally as thrilled with the Yamaha as I was disappointed by the Onkyo, and I plan to publish a review of it here on Amazon soon.
I wish you good listening, whatever you decide to get.
 Onkyo TX-SR805 Review September 29, 2007
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
I just got this thing set up and the sound is awe inspiring. I had to send my Denon 4806CI in for warranty repair and bought this so i could still watch movies on my Optoma HD70 Projector. I will not try and compare this to my 4806CI because it is an upper level reciever and this is a budget reciever for me. I thought i did my homework on this reciever before i bought it and i overlooked something i think is sort of critical and dont want others to make the same mistake. This reciever WILL NOT upconvert the resolution output to 1080P, it will only pass through the same resolution it is being fed by the video device you are using. IT WILL take an analog video signal (i.e. S-VIDEO, COMPONENT, ETC) and allow it to run through the HDMI MONITOR OUT jack to display its NATIVE resolution to your TV or projector. I hope this clears any confusion up before someone buys it for this reason. This reciever does put out an awesome sound even compared to my denon and is easy to setup. I would recommend this reciever to anyone wanting excellent sound and HDMI pass through ability while using analog etc.. signals. You do get what you pay for, it just wont upconvert the resolution. Hope this helps someone out.
 Best in class, best for price September 29, 2007
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
Looked at the competition and no one offered the combination of power per channel, THX cert., 1080P HDMI processing and # of diverse inputs, on screen set-up thru HDMI output, beautiful styling, and more. Also first to offer HDMI 1.3 so your ahead of the game. I am powering front and rear 4 ohm speakers (Magnaplanar MGMC1); though not massive speakers, it's a very heavy load for any receiver. You often have to go to multi-channel power amps to handle this load. The Onkyo TX-SR805S can be set - and is rated for - 4/6/8 ohm loads. Even Denon won't rate their products for 4 ohm any more! Front speaker output can be bridged or bi-amped by giving up some of the multi-room features.
The auto speaker set-up, "Audyssey MultiEQ XT", will sample up to 8 seating positions to obtain speaker output balance or you can configure speaker distance, gain, etc. manually. It did a great job but was a little off for a couple measurements due to the dipole radiation speaker design (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipole).
Sound quality really took a while to assess. The receiver was truly "unstrained" with center staging well balanced. I was a bit disappointed that the output required a setting around -20 DB to get the sound balanced I liked, as this was about the same setting for my prior receiver. Well, they're both rated nearly the same @ 8ohms but the clarity and musicality are worlds apart. Hi gain doesn't seem as loud when the output is clean and natural sounding. Output to the powered subwoofer(s) can be balanced for each input and for each type of signal processing. Speaker set-up also allows for L/R without a center and has features to adjust center-staging here as well. Speech in movie soundtracks, often difficult to perceive clearly due to recording and room acoustics, was actually clearer without my center speaker. An attribute of dipoles and the amplifier output.
Programming features for room customization are extensive and easy to sort thru with on-screen menus utilizing controls under the front panel or on the remote. You have a variety of audio inputs for each video input and can choose from a variety of video inputs for each external source. Best of all, after narrowing down my receiver choices, Amazon had a super sale and free shipping on the product even though it is relatively new to the market. Product link: http://www.us.onkyo.com/
 I would not buy this product again !!! January 7, 2008
16 out of 20 found this review helpful
The overheating problem with the SR805 is REAL. It fizzled, sparked and died during the Jacksonville-Pittsburgh playoff game Saturday night. What's worse... I called Onkyo and they said that I will have to take it to an authorized service center. I've only had the thing 10 days and they would not even consider swapping it out. That basically means my 10 day old receiver is now refurbished. Fortunately Electronics Express (seller through Amazon) is going to swap it out for me.
Also... I had great ventilation setup. I had a fan blowing across the back and top and had plenty of room on the sides and top.
Onkyo's service people don't even seem to care.
Love this receiver August 11, 2007
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
Replaced my Sony STR DA50ES, a great receiver for its time btw, with the 805. Bought it from Onecall on their Summer special. Absolutely amazing sound, great video switching, and the remote is trying to shove my Harmony 880 out the door (since I found out it's back-lit and learns everything!). I read the manual religiously and am continuing to find new stuff to try. The THX Ultra 2 is the real thing.
Man! It's really heavy!
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