Scott Walburn

Onkyo 601 or Denon 1803

I am looking at purchasing one of these receivers. I can get the Onkyo for about 424 new and the Denon is 376. I have Klipsch speakers in my home theater. I will be using the receiver for music and home theater listening. If any one can give me an opinion to which receiver they prefer, Id appereciate it. I dont need lots of power, I just want crisp clear sound. My roomate had a older Onkyo receiver, and I loved the sound it output, but I heard great things about Denons also.

Tim W G

I'm trying to make the same decission. The 601 is at JandR for $399.88. That is hard to pass up. Goos luck,
Tim

Marco_Chicago

Just a heads up. The $399.99 price at JandR is for a refurbished unit. Ecost was selling the 601 (refurbished also) for $339.99, but is no longer in stock. I got the 501, refurbished, from ecost and it is perfect...AWESOME sound.

Tim W G

The 601 Refurb is 299.88 plus shipping @329.58 total. The 601 non-refurb is on sale for 399.88 w/free shipping.

BrianAe

I have the Onkyo 600 and chose it over the Denon 1803. I compared both units head to head. They are both great for the price. Sonically, I couldn't tell the difference and really question anyone who can. I chose the Onkyo for 2 reasons:

1) The remote was much much better. The Onkyo comes with a good usable universal remote. A year later, I am still happy with it.

2) At the time, the 600 was a little cheaper then the 1803.

JeffPhill

I bought the Denon 1804 from 6ave a few weeks ago for $350 new shipped, check with them to see if the deal is still going.

ShaanB

I just picked up denon avr1803 for $288(287.97) at good guys which seems to be on clearance.

Iver

You need to A/B the two receivers, or get the word from somebody who has.

I can't help you on the latter option, but will attest to another Denon receiver, the AVR-1602, being a fine product (driving a 4.0 speaker array at the moment). At the time of making my final decision, between the 1602 and the Onkyo TX-SR500, the 1602 got the nod because it sounded way better than the SR500, but there's no way to know if the quality of the SR500 would extend into the 601, which is from a later model year and higher up in the Onkyo line.

You would expect the 601 and 1803, both at similar prices and positions in their respective product lines, both from reputable manufacturers, to have similar audio circuit designs, if not identical sound quality. But the only way to really know is to listen to the 601 and 1803, preferably in an A/B comparison where you don't know which is playing when.

Another option is the Denon 2802 which has pre-outs and OSD and is manufactured in Japan. Its biggest drawback is that it lacks DD-ES discrete, though it has DTS-ES discrete and will matrix the back channel(s) of a DD-ES signal. If they dropped the 2802 down from its current clearance price of $500 (at 6ave) to around $350 it would be a nice deal, especially for people like me who are fans of Japan-made electronics. At the present pricing levels, you'd probably want to stay with the Denon 1803 (or the 601 if you narrow down to that model and get a good price on it).

If you can get the $288 deal on the 1803 which Shaan mentioned, you should jump on it.

Greg Thomas

There is no such thing as DD-ES discrete. There is DTS-ES discrete and DD-EX, which is a matrixed 6th channel. There is no "discrete" 6.1 channel Dolby Digital format at this time, only DTS.

HienD

Try to demo them first before making a decision. I know the sr500(1) can't compare with the sr600(1). The sr601 uses 192K/24bit dacs and wieghs in at 28Lbs. The sr501 uses 96/24bit dacs and wieghs only 19Lbs.