It is a notable clean, open, and often vivid-sounding design, one that sounds comfortable in its own skin, even when being driven hard, underlying that the real world power that the Onkyo can muster is more impressive than the raw numbers suggest.

That the Onkyo is not a full-fat THX Ultra2 receiver is probably a plus point in practice, as most users in the UK would gain little by trying to utilise Ultra electronics in a typical living room.

The Audyssey acoustic tuning algorithm means that the Onkyo can be effectively fine-tuned to match most speaker configurations.

Well integrated system

Driving my reference Mordaunt Short Performance speakers and a much-loved Mission subwoofer, none of which are THX-approved, the system seemed happy to sing and dance.

The fact that the subwoofer was only being asked to plug a relatively small window in the frequency response, and that it did so with tunefulness and discretion, was undoubtedly impressive, and the result was a system that was able to perform consistently with a single voice.

Ideally of course, the AVR should be matched with THX-certified enclosures, but most users are unlikely to have these to hand unless they are putting together a fully- integrated THX system from scratch.

Spring in its step

Image-steering is excellent with Dolby and DTS sources alike, as long as the system has been fine-tuned. This will take time to get right, and works best when the speakers are not too close to the preferred listening position.

There was a tangible sense of multichannel sparkle – a spring in its step – that worked with a wide range of films, though as often happens, the best sense of reality was with material that was neither too loud not too quiet: high-brow Euro nudefest Swimming Pool provided a great stomping ground that didn't put the system under too much pressure, though the Onkyo was good enough to get the adrenalin racing in high-octane films like Kill Bill, and to cope with the subtleties in such titles as Lord of the Rings.

Onkyo's cinephile bargain

Overall, the Onkyo TX-SR706 is a first-rate medium-power/mid-priced receiver that has been designed to make the most of a variety of source material, rather than simply maximising the numbers.

It has a well judged set of features, particularly the Audyssey room correction and THX Select2 post processing, which ensures that the output is reasonably kosher without the slugging of output dynamics and speed that can give home cinema bass output a bad name in some quarters.

The Onkyo TX-SR706 delivers most of the features and real world power that most of us reasonably require. Cinephiles looking for an affordable receiver with high-end aspirations are advised to form an orderly queue.