Onkyo TX-SR805 review

Onkyo is on a roll. I first realized this some time ago when visiting their HQ in Japan, and discovered for myself the scale, breadth and imagination of the company.

Historically, the brand has struggled to find suitable distribution in the UK, and its products - while often innovative - have missed the commercial mark. But that's changed quite dramatically in 2007. Today, the brand's range of receivers are almost indecently well-endowed and come with price points that have sent their rivals scurrying back to their spreadsheets.

The latest model certain to send a wave of excitement around the AVR community is the TX-SR805. As with its stablemates, it has an enormous range of features, yet typically sells for an unprincely £800.

Indeed, I challenge you not to do a double-take when you digest its specification: the SR805 is a 7.1-channel THX Ultra2 receiver - not the lower-specified THX Select - and is generously rated at 130W per channel (our own Tech Labs measured it as 146W with five channels driven - a very good performance.)

THX is above all a post-processing standard, but the branding has important quality-related connotations, and with suitably-designed THX Ultra2-certified speakers, it has the capability of an unusually well-controlled overall character, even deep into bass territory.

Of course, there is nothing to preclude good behaviour with conventional (ie non-THX compliant) speakers, which is just as well given the paucity of THX speaker options on the market. Certainly this was the case during the test period, during which I used both a multichannel MartinLogan Fresco/Dynamo system, (see page 58), and Mordaunt-Short Performance main and centre speakers in combination with foreign rear surround speakers and subwoofer, all matched, using Audyssey MultEQ XT room correction, which brought unity and purpose to a system that could - perhaps should - have sounded a mess. It did so with the ambitious, wide-ranging recreation of an urban nightmare that is the 5.1-channel Dolby Digital soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in America.

Visceral

I think potential buyers might expect an exciting visceral performance from an AVR of this ilk. But I must admit that this is one of the few moderately-priced home cinema receivers that I have ever willingly tolerated with well-recorded music; the power and the subtlety of Anton Bruckner's symphonies on Super Audio CD, for example, played in stereo. Receivers like this won't normally stand the pressure.

This, in short, is an accomplished performer, one that goes loud and soft, that is detailed and subtle, and that can bring a touch of panache and power to proceedings when required without sounding brash or synthetic. Even when driven hard, the sound never sags, or shies away from what the recording demands.

Connectivity includes a bank of three HDMI inputs, and one output, conforming to the latest HDMI version 1.3a spec. This was introduced late 2006, and is capable of 1080p at 48bit colour depth (DeepColour).

This is the highest performance HDMI version in use, but its benefits over other versions are limited mainly to the interaction of Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio from Blu-ray and HD DVD players. It is currently standard practice to fit Dolby True HD inside your HD player and output it as Linear PCM. However, there are theoretical advantages to doing the decoding job externally, a situation that may be exacerbated by the rapidly falling price of HD players.

When it come to DTS Master Audio, the trend now is to only offer a bitstream output from compatible players. In virtually all cases outboard decoding will be done by AVRs like this Onkyo.