Yamaha DVD-C750 or Onkyo DV-C802? Please help me choose.. (1 Viewer)

[Alex.D]

My apologies for the upcoming long post. I figure, by providing all the information I know, I'll seem like less of a newbie, and maybe get better advice

The short version:
I want a changer that can play as many formats as well as possible. Focus on audio, as my TV sucks (Panasonic CT-24SX11 with uncontrollable green tint on component input), and there's no chance of getting it upgraded until I graduate from grad school (6 months), get a decent paying job, and move out of my parents' house
So, choices:
Yamaha DVD-C750 - $263 shipped from a reputable retailer - etronics.com
Onkyo DV-C802 - $350 shipped (On special?) from JandR.com
Which would you choose, and why?

My current setup:
Harman Kardon AVR-320 receiver
Dahlquist QX4 fronts and surrounds
QX40C center
QX100S sub
Crappy Panasonic CT-24SX11 with a distinct green tint on component input and more overscan than I'd like) It would not do justice to a $500+ player (i.e. Denon 2910) plus the high-end crowd seems to dislike changers as a rule.


What I know so far:
I've taken the Toshiba 6915 out of the contention due to multiple issues.

So, I'm left with two models: Yamaha DVD-C750 and Onkyo DV-C802. The current lowest prices I've found were $263 for the Yamaha (From Etronics.com) and $350 for the Onkyo (from JandR.com)

I'd like to be able to get the best audio quality given current upstream components. I realize the video quality is limited by my crappy TV (which was picked because it was the biggest set I could fit in my furniture, even a 24" Sony was too wide), but I'm getting this more for multichannel audio experience than a visual extravaganza.

Onkyo advantages:
1 extra disc bay (6 instead of 5)
More solid construction / heft
"Video Circuit Off" button - For that extra undetectable boost in audio quality!
Aesthetics - The green LED dot-matrix display is retro-geek.
Better remote - FF/REW separate from track/chapter skip buttons
Direct disc access (instead of "next disc" button on Yamaha)


Onkyo disadvantages:
No DivX
Some shuffle issues reported (not all tracks get shuffled, many repeats before all tracks get played). This is irrelevant to me, I never use shuffle.

Onkyo wildcards:
Audio quality - is it better than Yamaha?
HDCD support
Bass management for DVD-A and SACD (Crossover point, slope)
Robustness of mp3 handling (320KBPS, VBR, ID3 support?)
PCM conversion of SACD material (Does it ever happen?)
DVD+R handling (not specified in manual, but reported to work)


Yamaha advantages:
DivX support
Official DVD+R support
On-screen navigation for data CDR's (DivX, MP3)
ID3 tag support (I'm currently working on tagging my MP3's!)
$87 cheaper
1/4" shallower (I barely have 16 inches of shelf depth to work with, 16 3/4" is pushing it)
Video quality (Irrelevant - my 24" Panasonic is the limiting factor)

Yamaha disadvantages:
Less CD slots
Worse remote
Fixed 120hz crossover point (but close enough for my Dahlquist QX4's?)

Yamaha wildcards:
Shuffle (not a big deal even if it's completely broken)
PCM conversion of SACD material (When doing bass management? Always?)

This SACD to PCM is pretty important to me on a philosophical level. Basically, if the format's main feature is nearly infinite temporal resolution, chopping it into relatively long "samples" makes the whole exercise pointless. If I'm going to take the time to listen to high-rez audio, I want to hear it in its purest form - with no lost resolution due to format changes or extra A/D conversion stages.



The longer version:
As a belated winter holidays present for myself, I can finally get a universal DVD changer. My parents are taking my old-ish JVC XV-SA70BK for one of their TV's, a unit I never really liked using (You know how you can close the CD tray and, while the player is collecting its wits, hit the next track button several times to begin playback several tracks/chapters ahead? The XV-SA70BK flat out refused to do it - I had to wait for it to load the CD and THEN hit the skip track button) Plus I get to replace both the above DVD player and my Denon DCM-360 (Alpha Processing made it sound REALLY nice with my old analog stereo receiver, but the lack of digital out means it's not meant to be hooked up to an HT receiver that forces A/D conversion on analog inputs) with a multidisc do-it-all unit.

I'm looking forward to being able to watch "regular" DVD's without the need to get my entire home theater involved in the operation. The JVC didn't have a separate L/R audio output, so I couldn't get sound on my TV - just on the receiver. With the ability to hook up my TV to audio out on the DVD, I can pop in and watch a Sports Night DVD without making a big production out of it and waking my parents up with the sub

 

[Rob Kramer]

Between the two, the Onkyo will have the better audio quality.



Credible people with [very] high-dollar systems have not been able to hear the "lost resolution" (if it even exists). Do you think that you will be able to hear it? What system do you have?

 

[Alex.D]

Well, the high-dollar systems most likely have FAR better A/D converters than my lowly AVR-320. Again, it's more a "philosophical" difference - I don't like feeding analog signal to a digital device. So, since home theater receivers will always do A/D for bass management purposes, etc, I prefer not to feed them analog if I can help it.

My LCD monitor is hooked up over DVI. I like the fact that I want to display a single dot at a precise location, I will get THE single dot at THE location I want, no blur, no blob roughly where I placed the dot - it's nice and exact.

Besides, if my DVD changer is my CD changer, and it has digital out, it's a moot point anyway

 

[PaulDA]

If you apply bass management AND speaker distance settings in almost any universal player, there WILL BE a DSD to PCM conversion. I do something far worse , I take a pure DSD signal into the MCH inputs of my receiver and RE-DIGITIZE the signal to apply bass management and speaker distance settings. I do this because speaker distance settings are unavailable with SACD in my player (as is likely with your two choices) and because I get a better, steeper slope that way. I have compared the pure DSD signal vs the receiver in two channel (my player doesn't do a DSD to PCM conversion for bass management), both devices set to SMALL mains and sub ON (I didn't want the speaker distance issue to muddy the comparison) and found the steeper slope of my receiver was slightly noticeable (and preferable to me) while the sonic quality was otherwise indistinguishable. A solo a cappella soprano was not distinguishable (to get even the bass management out of the way).

This doesn't mean you should not seek to avoid DSD to PCM conversion, if you are philosophically opposed to it. It does mean you'll have a hard time avoiding it at your price point unless you run all speakers LARGE in the player OR one of the players stays in the DSD domain for bass management--not impossible, but hard to verify, sometimes. Best bet, call Yamaha and Onkyo and ask them what happens to the DSD stream in bass management.

 

[JarrettJ]

just a thought...
check the price on a yammy 6770. it is exactly the same as a 750 but sold through their home theatre/specialty division. might be able to find it even cheaper.

 

[Philip_T]

I just picked up the Yamaha 750 over the weekend. Its not a bad little player for what it is. CD's sound good, SACD's sound pretty good, but I do find that the DVD-A playback is far inferior to my Denon 1600. No big deal for me, I'll just keep playing my DVD-A's through the Denon. One quirky little item is that it keeps defaulting the audio mode to Dolby PLII for cd's, but there is an audio button on the remote that will let you cycle through PLII, Stereo and MC. I wasn't able to audition the Onkyo though so I can't really compare the 2 other than I like the looks of the Onkyo a lot better.

 

[Alex.D]

If you don't mind me asking, where did you pick up the 750, and how much was it..? My Good Guys has it for $299.99, but it seems a bit cheaper online.

I just swung by Fry's Electronics (Giant warehouse-type store with everything from cabling to computers, to computer parts, to soldering irons, to audio gear and appliances) and they had the Onkyo 802 in stock. So, I'm auditioning it

 

[Philip_T]

]
I picked it up at Sound Track (Same thing as Ultimate Electronics) for $287.99
Let me know what you think of the Onkyo.

 

[Howard_You]

If you can get the Onkyo 802 for $350 it's a bargain. It's typically twice the cost of the Yamaha c750. The only negative I've read about the Onkyo is that video is very poor.

I've had the c750 for over a month now and am very impressed with the sound. CDs, SACDs and DVD-A all sound very good. I have all speakers set to large since the fixed 120Hz crossover is too high for my setup.

Besides the DPLII setting quirk it also resets the CD upsampling setting when you change disks. Unfortunately, there's no remote button to quickly set it. I also find disk changes verrry slow.

It also handles NTSC & PAL and can be made region free.

Yamaha has also announced a c950 version which will have HDMI output as well as Farjouda processing.

 

[Alex.D]

WWW.JANDR.COM
Or Search for CP-802B on WWW.AMAZON.COM and order through JANDR.

Lastly, some price-search engine (Such as shopping.com or pricegrabber) have picked up on the $350 shipped price.

Well, after one moderately sleepless night playing around with the CP802B, I have the following to report:
The build quality is FAR nicer than the C750 I played with briefly at Good Guys
The remote is a little better - still not "substantial," or as neat as the jog dial job on the Samsung upconverting players
Interesting side note for those using analog connection and downmixing to 2.0 to TV:
The player has two sets of analog outputs - the stereo and the 5.1 which fakes 7.1. The logical way of setting this up is this: Downmix 5.1 into 2.0 for the "stereo" jacks, and output the decoded 5.1 over the 5.1 jacks. Unfortunately, the separate "stereo" mirrors whatever the "front" jacks (Of the 5.1 group) output, so, if you have analog out set as 5.1 your 2.0 TV gets front and right effects (no rear info mixed in, and no dialog!)

So, I have it set as 2.0 analog out, using digital out for DD/DTS stuff. I don't know if I can still force 5.1 over analog for DVD-A / SACD stuff with the player set like this.

If I have to plumb the depths of the on-screen menu's just to change from listening to a DVD-A to watching a DVD on my TV, that's a dealbreaker. If you ALWAYS listen to DVD's using a pre/pro or a receiver, though, it's a non-issue.

EDIT
It's official:
* When playing 5.1 content, whether it's DVD-A or DD
* And TV hooked up over the extra set of left/right analog jacks
* And receiver 6-channel in on the 6-channel out jacks
* And DV-C802B set to multichannel out
Result:
"Extra" set of left/right analog jacks is not downmixed, just mirrors left and right effect.

* When receiver set to 2-channel
* And forced via DVD-A menu (Using Fleetwood Mac's Rumours DVD-A) to play the 6-channel version
* Only stereo is output, not 6-channel

This means that:
* When DV-CP802 is set to 5.1 out
* And playing a DVD with only a 5.1 audio track (without a separate 2.0 audio track - My test DVD was Ronin)
* Audio won't be downmixed to 2.0 on any outputs (So, no DVD on TV)

* But, when DV-CP802 is set to stereo out
* Multichannel DVD-A won't play in multichannel.

Sigh. Maybe I can pester Onkyo for a firmware upgrade - Either separate DVD and DVD-A audio output settings, or separate the stereo analog out from the 5.1 analog out, the way Yamaha does it.

 

[ChrisHeflen]

Where did you find this info? Do you have any links?

I have been wrestling over these two players for a long time and can't decide either. I like everything about the Onkyo except the video part. I was going to do the Yam, because video "should" be better and it was way cheaper, and I could get by with this for video until HDDVD or BlueRay. But if the Onkyo will have better audio and functions, maybe I should just live with that and still use it for audio after the new formats come out.
But maybe this new 950 will be the goods...

 

[Howard_You]

Chris,

The following blurb:


is from this link:

Yamaha c950 News

In my case the c750 was at the upper end of my budget (C$400) so, the C$1000 Onkyo CP802 wasn't even an option. I did recall reading somewhere about an Onkyo CP602 changer that was being released in Japan...however I can't find any information about it anymore.

I think if I was looking for player specifically for great audio, I'd drop down to a single-disk player --- there's a lot more to choose from there at the same price.

The build quality could be better (the tray seems really flimsy) but it's much better than the Pioneer 578a I had previously. My older Sony 670D changer had a much nicer build quality than both. The Sony ODS was much more sophisticated as well, odd for 6 year old technology.

 

[ChrisHeflen]

Thanks Howard.
Unfortunately I am intersted in a changer right now. I will see what else I can find on the new Yamaha.

 

[Howard_You]

Chris,

I hear you. I much prefer a changer, there's just not a lot of selection out there right now.

The only other thing I can tell you about the Yamaha c950 is that it uses the same remote as the c750. I know that because on the back of the remote is says c750/c950

 

[Alex.D]

Brought home a C750 today.

The menus are not quite as "slick" as the CP802, but functional. DiVX playback works as far back as DiVX 3 codec movies encoded in 1999-2000.. nice

MP3 playback a tad more robust.

And the "Downmix" 2.0 outputs ALWAYS downmix Dolby Digital content. So when I play a movie with only a 5.1 soundtrack, my TV (hooked up to the downmix connectors) gets the dialogue from the center channel, and my receiver gets analog 5.1 for DVD-A / SACD.

Also - Left and Right arrow keys act as FF/REW (the chapter/track skip buttons ALSO act as FF/REW if held down for two seconds)

All in all.. I'm impressed. Looks like a keeper.

 

[ChrisHeflen]

So Alex, between the two then, you are gonna keep the Yamaha over the Onkyo? Do you recall if the picture better on the Yamaha or Onkyo?
Everybody seems to "think" that the sound on the Onkyo is better even without hearing it I might add, (should be, it costs more),but is it?

 

[dany]

Very few DAD-A and SACD changers out there.

 

[dany]

802 has 10 bit/54 video dac and the c750 has a 12 bit/108 along with a 24 bit/192 audio dac.

 

[ChrisHeflen]

In case anyone other than me was interested, here is a tad more info on the new yamaha 950 player.

http://www.cinenow.com/us/article.php3/id,1693/

 

[Daniel-S]

Any one know if the Yamaha 950 is going to have the slimline chassis or a full sized chassis like the Onkyo?

Also, I guess I dont fully understand Alex's objection is as to hook up on the Onkyo. Why cant he just set one soruce on the receiver to the 2 ch, another source to 5 ch music, another source to DVD 5ch and DVD downmixed, etc? What am I missing?