RoughRider
Established Member
I can't be the first person with one of these but I can't find any other owners' thread. Thought I would share initial experience.
I think it sounds better than my old Yamaha AX-1, and that was a hell of an amplifier, that was a £2k machine over 10 years ago (albeit I paid £1k since it was already an old model when I bought it new). Which is a huge relief after dropping £2k on this new one. It's not quite as heavy but it's still very heavy. And big, it doesn't fit on the shelves of my not particularly awesome but nice and cheap £99 rack from Richer Sounds because it is too deep, so it sits on top. Where it felt quite toasty anyway so not such a bad thing, just aesthetically I will want to move it onto a shelf at some point.
I haven't finished full set-up or really played with it yet, did a basic 2 minute Audyssey that is all. And I can only really compare it to my old kit. I have from time to time demoed some pretty decent, similarly specced gear and I had never heard anything sufficiently 'better' to induce me to upgrade, I have to say this is coming out tops of what I have ever listened to, but I say that using my subjective and faulty memory of hearing different combinations of amps speakers and so on. So;
The opening screen of Battlefield 3 on the PS3 just sounds much clearer. I spent several hours of last weekend playing it with 2 friends at quite loud volume on my old gear. Last night I turned it up to reference on the Onkyo, that is louder than we had it, but it also sounded much clearer. If you know it, it's quite a dirty and bassy sound anyway. I am very hopeful that dialogue in noisy movies will be easier to hear, and so far I think it will from this small test.
I also listened to a bit of streamed music from my NAS and from Napster (High Flying Birds), the only real thing to report is that the listening modes (that I have never had before e.g. IIx) sound much less intrusive and more worthwhile having than "Church" "Disco" etc. the just seemed to make stereo fill out the room much more nicely. I actually think I will use them, all I had ever used other that "Direct" in the past was adding in a 6th rear. There are also so many combinations/permutations available though (DPLIIx Neo:THX Ultra S Game anyone??) I feel a bit lost trying to pick one. Sound quality was fine but I wasn't "listening" hard enough to give meaningful analysis I'm not super-audiophile anyway tbh.
What else? There is no hard copy manual only a disc. I couldn't guess how to drive a single rear speaker (I ran out of speaker wires to wire both, I had left a single 2 plug to 4 plug connector) so at one point I had leads from both surround back out terminals driving the same speaker - and I think this short circuited it, it switched off and said "check SP wire" when turned on So I undid that particular variation of trying to connect speakers to amp with not enough cables.
In the Audyssey setup I may have had a glitch, I'm not sure what happened but it couldn't find a left surround speaker, then I messed around with connections (specifically I moved my "single" rear speaker from surround back left to surround back right terminals, or the other way around I can't remember) anyway then it all worked. Distances seemed to be very accurate. Tuning begins by calibrating your sub to output 75dB, which mine did, exactl (at only 25% gain on the sub's amp), after calibration the sub level had been set +3dB, which I didn't quite understand, other than that the SPL measurement for the sub is slow/not very responsive and maybe it didn't wait long enough to get to a steady state. Time (on Saturday) will tell.
The video mode function is very easy to use (ISF Day, Night, Custom, Through etc.) because you can actually switch to keep your source image on screen as you cycle through them, so you really know what you are doing to your picture. In terms of actual calibration, don't know yet, but these modes made subtle differences e.g. movie was more muted I could already imagine films looking good (more 'real') on that setting.
The streaming functions are OK. I got into Napster although it failed to login a couple of times initially, the interface offers the most popular categories e.g. top 100's, genre, search, but not all of the options you get in the PC or squeezebox interfaces. Compared to squeezebox interface (especially the one in the iPhone app iPeng) it is clumsy and inflexible - squeezebox can build playlists mix-and-match between napster and my NAS for example. That said you would have a huge amount of fun if you are a Napster virgin, and you get a free trial period, and you can easily play your music from your PC on your stereo easily, so if you haven't had that ability before it will be a revelation. Once you have experienced running your own server/squeezebox or similar combo you wouldn't go back to this though. Setup onto the network was an absolute breeze, all I did was plug it in.
The iPhone remote control app is good too, I suspect (having played with Pio and Denon demo ones) it is actually the best of these three. You can choose you Napster songs right on your iPhone for example.
Overall I am very pleased with (a) the sound and (b) that I think finally some electronic interference to the source (be it Dolby PLxII Music, or Dynamic EQ, or even just the Audyssey) has finally got good enough that I may actually want to switch some of it on
I think it sounds better than my old Yamaha AX-1, and that was a hell of an amplifier, that was a £2k machine over 10 years ago (albeit I paid £1k since it was already an old model when I bought it new). Which is a huge relief after dropping £2k on this new one. It's not quite as heavy but it's still very heavy. And big, it doesn't fit on the shelves of my not particularly awesome but nice and cheap £99 rack from Richer Sounds because it is too deep, so it sits on top. Where it felt quite toasty anyway so not such a bad thing, just aesthetically I will want to move it onto a shelf at some point.
I haven't finished full set-up or really played with it yet, did a basic 2 minute Audyssey that is all. And I can only really compare it to my old kit. I have from time to time demoed some pretty decent, similarly specced gear and I had never heard anything sufficiently 'better' to induce me to upgrade, I have to say this is coming out tops of what I have ever listened to, but I say that using my subjective and faulty memory of hearing different combinations of amps speakers and so on. So;
The opening screen of Battlefield 3 on the PS3 just sounds much clearer. I spent several hours of last weekend playing it with 2 friends at quite loud volume on my old gear. Last night I turned it up to reference on the Onkyo, that is louder than we had it, but it also sounded much clearer. If you know it, it's quite a dirty and bassy sound anyway. I am very hopeful that dialogue in noisy movies will be easier to hear, and so far I think it will from this small test.
I also listened to a bit of streamed music from my NAS and from Napster (High Flying Birds), the only real thing to report is that the listening modes (that I have never had before e.g. IIx) sound much less intrusive and more worthwhile having than "Church" "Disco" etc. the just seemed to make stereo fill out the room much more nicely. I actually think I will use them, all I had ever used other that "Direct" in the past was adding in a 6th rear. There are also so many combinations/permutations available though (DPLIIx Neo:THX Ultra S Game anyone??) I feel a bit lost trying to pick one. Sound quality was fine but I wasn't "listening" hard enough to give meaningful analysis I'm not super-audiophile anyway tbh.
What else? There is no hard copy manual only a disc. I couldn't guess how to drive a single rear speaker (I ran out of speaker wires to wire both, I had left a single 2 plug to 4 plug connector) so at one point I had leads from both surround back out terminals driving the same speaker - and I think this short circuited it, it switched off and said "check SP wire" when turned on So I undid that particular variation of trying to connect speakers to amp with not enough cables.
In the Audyssey setup I may have had a glitch, I'm not sure what happened but it couldn't find a left surround speaker, then I messed around with connections (specifically I moved my "single" rear speaker from surround back left to surround back right terminals, or the other way around I can't remember) anyway then it all worked. Distances seemed to be very accurate. Tuning begins by calibrating your sub to output 75dB, which mine did, exactl (at only 25% gain on the sub's amp), after calibration the sub level had been set +3dB, which I didn't quite understand, other than that the SPL measurement for the sub is slow/not very responsive and maybe it didn't wait long enough to get to a steady state. Time (on Saturday) will tell.
The video mode function is very easy to use (ISF Day, Night, Custom, Through etc.) because you can actually switch to keep your source image on screen as you cycle through them, so you really know what you are doing to your picture. In terms of actual calibration, don't know yet, but these modes made subtle differences e.g. movie was more muted I could already imagine films looking good (more 'real') on that setting.
The streaming functions are OK. I got into Napster although it failed to login a couple of times initially, the interface offers the most popular categories e.g. top 100's, genre, search, but not all of the options you get in the PC or squeezebox interfaces. Compared to squeezebox interface (especially the one in the iPhone app iPeng) it is clumsy and inflexible - squeezebox can build playlists mix-and-match between napster and my NAS for example. That said you would have a huge amount of fun if you are a Napster virgin, and you get a free trial period, and you can easily play your music from your PC on your stereo easily, so if you haven't had that ability before it will be a revelation. Once you have experienced running your own server/squeezebox or similar combo you wouldn't go back to this though. Setup onto the network was an absolute breeze, all I did was plug it in.
The iPhone remote control app is good too, I suspect (having played with Pio and Denon demo ones) it is actually the best of these three. You can choose you Napster songs right on your iPhone for example.
Overall I am very pleased with (a) the sound and (b) that I think finally some electronic interference to the source (be it Dolby PLxII Music, or Dynamic EQ, or even just the Audyssey) has finally got good enough that I may actually want to switch some of it on
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