The Sound

It’s no secret that SECRETS is impressed with the sound quality produced by Integra/Onkyo products. As we’ve said before, it’s mostly a matter of what DACs are used, and how they are implemented. The DTR 7.8 uses Burr-Brown’s top of the line 192kHz/24bit DACs in all channels, and as usual the Integra puts out neutral, uncolored music.

So, I spent most of my time listening to hi-rez music through the Oppo’s HDMI connection, allowing the player to output a raw bitstream to the Integra and letting the DTR 7.8 do all the heavy lifting of decoding and processing the signal.

The Beatles Love album (DVD-Audio) is a topic of vigorous debate among die-hard fans, due to its mash-ups of classic songs (as Giles Martin admitted in the liner notes, he felt like he was painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa). My 11 year-old daughter and I, both originalists, came down on the side of wishing the songs had been reproduced without the embellishments. Either way, this is the first hi-rez release of the Fab Four’s work, and hearing George Martin’s impeccable production spread over five channels with a fidelity never heard before is a beautiful thing. “I am the Walrus” is a mélange of keyboards, percussion, strings, vocals, and chanting (you can win a bar bet by asking what Beatles song contains the phrase “oompa, loompa, stick it up your jumper.”). The Integra’s ability to reproduce detail and imaging let me enjoy each piece of the composition.

Switching to movies, I popped in Transformers (HD DVD). Describing the plot is beside the point; the film is a smorgasbord of eye-candy (special effects and Meaghan Fox) with an amazing soundtrack. Although it’s “only” a Dolby Digital+ mix, the audio quality is one of the best I’ve ever heard, with the DTR 7.8 rendering a huge soundstage filled with sweeping pans and flying ‘bots.

As good as the Integra sounds by itself, folks with upgrade-itis will figure out that if they buy a separate multi-channel amplifier, and use the pre-outs of the DTR 7.8, presto! Where else are you going to find a $1,300 THX Ultra2 pre-pro (SSP)? Since I happened to have the Halcro MC 70 seven-channel amplifier sitting in the rack (review in progress), I hooked up the Integra to the Halcro’s unbalanced inputs (the Integra doesn’t have balanced XLR pre-outs) and ran the DTR 7.8 as a pre-pro.

Wow!

Pairing the Halcro with the Integra resulted in an entirely different level of detail and transparency. It was the classic “bringing out previously unknown details in a recordings” cliché come to life. I didn’t look at it as a knock against the Integra’s amp section; after all, one cannot really compare a mid-priced receiver’s amp against a $7,000 dedicated amplifier. To the contrary, it was a major compliment to the Integra’s pre-pro. The Halcro would have magnified any deficiencies in the pre-amp/processor; yet the sound quality from the Integra/Halcro combination was fantastic.