Software and General Surround Sound Processor Etiquette

Somewhat ironic is the "Pure Audio" button at far left on the front panel.  In past Onkyo products, it was a much touted feature (of sorts) which shut off all audio and video "processing", turned the front panel display off, and transformed the receiver into something of a classic all-analog preamp.  What is amusing here is that while Pure Audio still turns off the front display panel and cuts the video processing, any and all digital audio processing is still very much alive.  In other words, Pure Audio now encompasses the digital.  This is for me glorious testament to the fact that we are now in fully digital times.  "Pure" means 'Pure Digital Audio', and that is 21st century technospeak.

With that in mind, the software of products like this more than ever bear scrutiny.

First on our laundry list is video signal handling.  There was, of course, a time when, from our ivory towers, we would declare no video should ever be piped through a receiver, but romantic as the notion was, it's just not realistic anymore.

Onkyo has stepped up their game in this respect:  The 805 includes a Sage/Faroudja FL2300 video processing chip.

The FL2300 has been so well documented at this point, I won't rehash that here.

As a DVD de-interlacer, it's certainly a boon, but on the whole the feeling now is that it is past its prime, perhaps well so, and its implementation and use here is limited:  Though it will de-interlace and scale any input, it will do so only to 720p.

Ok, so if you happen to have one of the somewhat rare "true" 720 line devices (NOT one of the ubiquitous 768 line ones), you'd be in luck:  All your SD sources - we're talking DVD, VHS, non-HD cable or Satellite - can be output as 720p on HDMI, while your HD sources (Blu-Ray, HD Cable etc) will be passed through, allowing you to make a single HDMI connection to your display device.

If your display is natively anything other than exactly 720p though, you may be worse off as there would be a "double scaling" going on, once to 720p in the Onkyo, and again to the display device's native resolution inside itself.

I had occasion to try this all out on my brother's Panasonic 900 which happens to be a 1280x720 projector (so it is a native 720p video display).  The video source was through HDMI from an HTPC.  Interestingly, the Onkyo identified itself to the PC as a 1080i device. When we forced the PC to 1280x720, the Onkyo wouldn't pass it.  We had to find the famous "Hidden Menu" (Googled it) and change the HDMI output from Auto to 720.  What this setting is suppose to do is force scaling of HDMI sources to 720p instead of just passing whatever it actually is (480p, 1080i, etc) which is quirky because in "Auto" it should have passed 720p as such.

Ultimately, the video processor's use and utility will depend highly on the individual case.  I wouldn't put too much weight on it simply because without it, this is still a fantastic receiver, and frankly, there are problems with lots of sources dealing properly with receivers and displays.  It's worth noting here that for $600 more at retail, Onkyo has the virtually identical TX-SR875 which ups the video processor to the currently more respected HQV, complete with selectable output resolution.

The 805 carries on Onkyo's status as a leader in volume control features.  Not only has the overall granularity of all adjustments, including master volume level, been refined to the half-dB resolution, your control over level is as comprehensive as ever.  Power/On volume (Fixed or Last) and Max Volume (independent for each Zone, and separate headphone volume), choice of mute (-dB or cut): it's all here.

The front panel display is thankfully dimmable. At the press of a button you can cycle through three brightness levels, but I must protest the lowest setting still is not low enough.

The front panel itself is a frustrating mix of the useful and the useless.  Compared to Onkyo's previous models, it has been expanded to two lines of dot-matrix characters, and the dedicated (those incredibly small) volume level is back.  All status information though, such as input format, post-process application etc., is carried by miniscule icons which even at abnormally short distance are all but indiscernible (and yes I have 20-20 vision, thank you).  Their usefulness becomes a game of recognizing the position of the little blips (which is all they appear as at any normal usage distance).

Everything Dolby has on the table right now, right up to Dolby Digital+ and TrueHD, is supported by the 805, and the implementation is as complete as can be hoped for.  The Pro Logic IIx Music non-mandatory adjustments are available to the user, EX flags are recognized, but Surr.Encode flag in two-channel Dolby Digital is ignored.  Dynamic Range Control (DRC) is easily accessed by the press of a button on the remote, which is good, but we would really like to see an indication on the front panel that it is engaged.

Lock-on time is as good as I have ever measured.  At the start of a bitstream, the display will (briefly) show the difference in Dialnorm assertion with reference to the default -27. So for example, if you see "Dialnorm: +4 dB", that means the output of the decoder has been raised by 4 dB.

Everything DTS has on the table right now is also supported by the 805, right up to HD Master.  Traditional DTS is attenuated by 4 dB inside the processor per THX's requirements, equating it with Dolby Digital material encoded with the default Dialnorm value of -27 (for more information on Dialogue Normalization, please see our article Dialogue Normalization: Friend or Foe).  There is no dynamic range control facility though (and yes DTS has a DRC facility, despite their marketing department for years suggesting that it didn't and that that somehow that made the CODEC better).

The greatest audio "workload" we were able to put the Onkyo through was 5.1 channel DTS 24/96 (which due to its inefficiency is grossly hard on DSP).  The 805 had no trouble decoding it and still applied THX post processes and Audyssey MultEQ XT.  We would have liked to see it decode Dolby TrueHD etc but could only get our hands on a Sony BDP-S1 with its output limited to already-decoded PCM over HDMI (which the Onkyo handled famously by the way).

In terms of playback control, you can select for each input separately, a default playback mode for each of the various possible input formats. So for example, for a given input, you can have it default to "Stereo" on Analog/2 channel PCM material, "THX" on Dolby Digital 5.1, and "Pro Logic II" on 2 channel Dolby Digital.  Each input can be delayed ("lip-synch" delay) up to 250 ms in 5 ms increments.  This is excellent.

When configured for a 7.1 speaker array, you unfortunately cannot choose to send the surround channels of a 5.1 source to the back surrounds (or both sides and back surrounds).  The rational here I suppose is that with Pro Logic IIx and THX Ultra2 on the table, there must be a 5.1-to-7.1 synthesis the user would like.  Sheesh . . . .

We confirmed The 805 responsibly down-mixes 5.1 soundtracks to stereo for the sake of headphones, Zone2, or heaven forbid, if you find yourself with only two speakers for some reason.

THX's Re-Eq can be turned off independently of the THX Cinema/THX Surround EX mode, and accessing it is just the press of a button on the remote.  We still would like to pressure both manufacturers and THX to allow this to be a persistent choice.  Right now, it's mandated that it reset to "On" whenever input or power is cycled.  In our article Cinema Sound and EQ Curves, we explain why the use of THX's Re-Eq depends not on the media, but on the room's acoustics (meaning that using it or not should be a "Setup" choice).

Mono soundtracks are adequately handled by the 805, giving the user control of both which channels to matrix in (left, right, or both) as well as the output configuration (left/right, or center).  Academy Filter, one of those virtual no-cost things, is conspicuously missing.

Regrettably there is no option to digitize the 5.1 analog input and thus it cannot inherit the receiver's bass management and time alignment.  Even though the source may provide for these adequately, it will never benefit from the Audyssey system we'll cover in a moment.

The Magic Wand

The remote is typical Onkyo: on the large and heavy side but the resultant abundance of buttons does make its use fairly intuitive.  It is of course pre-programmed with codes for virtually every brand and piece of A/V equipment under the sun, including names I've never even heard of, but I had trouble with both my Sony TV and Panasonic DVD Player: one code set would enabled some buttons but not all, others would enabled the missing ones but then drop some which the first one covered.  It was bad enough that if I were to keep the 805 I would have to get something else and stow the included remote (which honestly, most people are apt to do these days regardless).

The Onkyo does give the TV its own dedicated volume and power buttons which is nice, and the "joystick" cursor control is one of my favorites with a very positive feel to it.  There could be more distinction in terms of button size and shape, but the main ones (Play, Pause, FF, RW, etc.) are obvious enough.

The buttons are backlit, and three macros can be defined.  Despite this last, use in a pitch black theater still requires an amount of memorization since many buttons do double duty and the second function label (source selection for example) is silk screened above the button where the backlight does no good.

Go to Part IV.

Terms and Conditions of Use