Onkyo TX-SR706 7.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver (Black) Reviews

I purchased the silver version of this receiver. I use it with B&W 703s across the front, ASW855 sub-woof and DS7 rears along with a Windows 7 Media Centre and Panasonic HD TV.

It has excellent speaker binding posts - one reason I upgraded - and decent cables, quad to the front left/rights.

I found the receiver was tricky to set up, especially tying inputs and decoders. Eventually I got there after a few days tweaking and after reading the manual three times!

I also had problems extracting Doby TrueHD over the HDMI graphics connection: eventually upgrading to PowerDVD v9 Ultra to solve that problem.

Performance is astonishing. Speech is so natural and clear with no sibilants or boom. Bass is solid and effortless; the biwired fronts seemed to really make the 703s move. And using the double-bass option (both the front speakers and the sub-woof are driven together) can really shake the house.

Dynamic range from TrueHD is superb. Music CDs sound fantastic and BBC HD (Late Night with Jools Holland and the BBC Proms) make you feel you are right there in the audience. I feel really sorry for my neighbours!

It does show up the limitations of my rear speakers though...