Onkyo TX-SR876 7.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver (Black)

The TX-SR876 has most of the features and performance of Onkyo's top of the line TX-NR906 minus the Internet features which I felt no need of since I own a Sony PS-3.  Besides, who wants to listen to low quality Internet radio over such high end gear?  I found setting up the unit and fine-tuning it to be much easier than the Denon receiver my sister bought about the same time.  I will admit that this could be because I've had Onkyo receivers since 1997, but the Denon setup routines are often described as arcane.

I purchased one of Onkyo's DV-SP506 Super Audio CD and DVD Audio/Video Players at about the same time and found them to be an ideal pair.  The DV-SP506 allows you to send all video and audio signals to the receiver over HDMI, even SACD and DVD-Audio.  Unlike most receivers, the TX-SR876 is able to decode the raw Direct Stream Digital (DSD) signal avoiding the cables and signal loss caused by the normal method of using 6 separate analog RCA audio cables.  It also has the advantage of allowing the receiver to control the speaker balance and equalization for DVD-Audio and SACD discs.   Both my DVD player (Onyko) and Blu-Ray player (PS-3) are set to not process audio and digital signals allowing the receiver to do all of the heavy lifting.  The results are stunning!

I used the Audyssey MultiEQ setup to "get me in the ball park" and then fine-tuned the speaker balance levels with a sound meter.  The Audyssey system on the TX-SR876 is sophisticated enough to allow you to keep the individual speaker equalizations while allowing you to determine your own front, center, and surround sub-woofer crossover points and balance levels.  My speakers have never sounded this good.

I have a collection of about 70 SACD and DVD-Audio discs which I am really enjoying with my new system, but I am finding that even my collection of regular CDs sound better than with my old 700 series Onkyo receiver.  I set the receiver to use what Onkyo calls Vector Linear Shaping on all PCM signals of 44 or 48 KHz such as regular CD and to leave higher sampling rates unmodified.  My older Onkyo receiver did not have internal bass management, so that is a welcome change on 2 channel sources as well.

At this point my Westinghouse 1080p monitor is the weakest component in my system, but even so I can see a big improvement in the picture regardless of the SD or HD video source.  Soon after I got the TX-SR876, and before I got the DV-SP506 DVD player  I tested several SD DVDs on my Playstation-3, first allowing it to do the upconversion and then allowing the receiver to do the upconversion.  Not only does the TX-SR876 do a better job on things like smoke and eliminating the jaggies in diagonal lines, but it seems to completely eliminate the judder I used to see in certain DVDs when the camera was panned across a scene.  The TX-SR876 has the ability to adjust video calibration to ISF standards on a per-input basis, but I don't have the expertise to do this myself, nor the inclination to pay someone else to do it for me considering the cost and the weak performance of my monitor.

After owning the TX-SR876 for almost a year the only negatives I can report are that the unit runs quite hot, which seems pretty normal for 140 W/ch receivers, especially Onkyos, and occasionally it seems that settings will change if you fail to use the GUI menu choice for locking the settings.