Onkyo TX-SR505 7.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver (Black)

Great receiver for the money. Easy setup and installation. Plenty of power with my Polk Audio system, as well as to the two external outdoor Yamahas I have running to my patio. The HD signal is great. I highly recommend this receiver.

Hooked up the speakers, HD cable box and HD tv only. Was working great for about 2 weeks. Then one night we lost picture. There was a pop from the receiver followed by smoke. Will be taking it in for warranty service but you can't help but wonder what else is going to happen when you start hooking up additional devices.

Review of Onkyo TX-SR505 A/V Receiver

This product performs quite well as stated by many other users. Aside from its cinematic attributes and features, I was very impressed with the performance of the tuner. I will dedicate much of this review to that aspect for a few reasons. First, my wife and I listen to radio very often in our daily lives. We listen to the radio during the day (aside from us working), and watch TV at night. Besides listening to FM broadcasts, I listen to AM programming as well. I am also a radio DX enthusiast. This unit replaced my two previous Onkyo receivers, and I thought it was time for an upgrade with another Onkyo product.

My entertainment wall is equipped with a 27-inch Sony NTSC TV, Samsung DVD / VCR recorder, Onkyo cassette deck, JVC direct drive turntable, Technics CD changer, and even other components that I occasionally use as secondary sources. My speakers are from various companies, and are they not the "best in the world." This receiver gets out the best from them.


RADIO SECTION

The New York City market and technical environment puts many demands on tuners. Both bands were highly sensitive and selective.


FM Section:

The front end has the ability to squash spurious signals quite well including the hash produced by the stations carrying HD broadcasting. Here in Brooklyn a receiver has to combat pirate broadcasters and must have the ability to pull in stations from our suburbs. The stations broadcast from the Empire State building have a tendency to push away the suburban stations. Many FM stations operate on class A local channels with no more than 6,000 watts of effective radiated power.

I tested the FM wire antenna that is supplied from Onkyo. It pulled in the local stations from the Empire State Building very competently. Some suburban stations came in without too much noise or hiss.

In our attic I use a Terk TV/FM bar antenna for the terrestrial reception. We have satellite TV service, but some TVs operate from the attic antenna.

My previous Onkyo, which this new unit is replacing, is not able to reject the spurious signals and hash too well, and I see the technology difference that Onkyo engineers are now able to design.


AM Section:

I was astonished with the performance of the AM section, especially from that of a typical A/V or stereo receiver. The tuned AM loop (as the company supplied AM loop antenna forms a tuned circuit with the front end of the tuner) does much justice. A drawback, however, is that the AM section is highly prone to noise. I suppose it is difficult to have your cake and eat it, too, I found the AM loop to be very picky, yet effective and receiving "hard to get" stations. You have to rotate the loop, which is normal. When testing the external antenna, I found it to overdrive the front end, which is not at all surprising on these units.

As an excellent example, in New York City we have WEPN 1050, a 50,000 watt directional powerhouse. At about 2:30 in the afternoon I was able to barely receive adjacent KWY 1060, another 50,000 watt directional powerhouse, located just about 100 miles from the New York Metro area. Technically, these stations cannot interfere with each other due to FCC mandates. Each station is highly directional, especially when you go into central New Jersey. When rotating the AM loop antenna to a specific position I was able to receive KYW. It was scratchy, but I was very impressed!

It is very important to footnote that it is very hard to get distant stations outside of New York City when you are located within the city. Some stations are directed to be so strong that others cannot penetrate into the market. With HD radio, this situation is even worse, as you hear the hash. This applies day or night.


Summary of Entire Tuner:

It would nice for Onkyo to proudly publish their FM tuner specifications like they always have. Customers with sharp technical skills will discern quality when selecting equipment.


CASSETTE DECK AND CD:

The cassette deck plays awesomely through this unit. CD's play precisely.



HOME THEATER ASPECTS

My family was quite impressed with Onkyo when watching some movies from the DVD and from our satellite sources. We still have an NTSC TV and we will upgrade to HDTV when our main TV decides to retire. Hence our satellite delivers in Dolby Prologic II format and of course our DVD delivers in Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS. The receiver delivers precise and brilliant theatrical results from its Dolby and DTS sources. The decoders show strong surround processing design. You can hear with razor sharpness from the program sources. Sometimes you cannot tell if the ringing of the phone is from the movie or your own.

The receiver provides many listening format options. I would appreciate if there were a few more inputs. However, for the money, this unit is a really good bang for the buck.



OVERALL REMARKS

We were a bit disappointed with the adjustments on the tone control. The selections were limited for high to low on the bass and treble.

This receiver is very easy to use. You do not have to refer to the manual to get up to speed on the more detailed functions.

As you may observe, I am a demanding customer, and Onkyo did not let me down. I give the Onkyo TX-SR505 at least 4.5 stars out of 5.0.

I searched all the local shops and internet and found this saved me about 15%. I have had it several weeks and really enjoy the sound quality. I do not think you could find a better product (or even one close to it) with the same features for the price.

This is a very good receiver. Lots of I/O, pumps out great sound. The auto setup is nice. It is a good thing auto setup works well though, because there is not a lot of adjustment you can make on your own. Very good product over all.