My basement receiver (old sony) recently got fried in a lightning storm, and am considering the Onkyo sr600 and Yamaha htr-5560 as replacements. Since I have friends at Best buy and circuit city, i am limiting my options to these 2. i can get them both for a discount price (around 300$) speakers would be infinity rs5/cc3/rs3. any thoughts/opinions (especially by ppl who have done a direct comparison) would be appreciated. thanks in advance!
I just got the 5560 and I love it so far. Took literally about 10 minutes to set up and its quite easy to use and configure.
if the amp on the 5560 is the same as the one on the 5460 then the onkyo might be a better choice. I had bought the 5460 last yr and was not satisfied with the bass it generated. I returned it for the onkyo 696 (a little larger than the 595, but quite similar) and found the amp on that to be distictly superior. If however you are going for the yamaha 5280 (rx-v800)then that compares favorably with the onkyo. It seems like they watered down the amp. in the lower model yamahas. Also the remote on the Onkyo is vastly superior to anythin else that comes with the < $ 1000 receivers.
I just got the HTR-5550 Yamaha. If you do not need preouts, front aux connectors and B speakers this is $100 less than the HTE-5560 and is identical in all other specifications. I do not know anything about the onkyo. I can tell you that I set up my system using AVIA and there is no problem with the Bass management that I could find on this unit. Just so you know I have the JBL PB12 subwoofer, JBL N26 mains, JBL n-center. Of cource if you are using a subwoofer the amplifiers only need to deal with 80Hz anything lower its the subwoofer amp that deals with the bass below 80hz. For the HTR-5550/5560 there are a few items you should be aware of. First there is only one Bass adjustment called LFE level. There is no separeate DTS LFE and DD5.1 LFE adjustments only a single LFE that effects both. From my testing I am 99% sure they built in a DTS compensation for the LFE in DTS. The subwoofer level has to be adjusted with the volume control on the subwoofer. The FM receiver in this unit is excellent!! Negative: If you want to increase the LFE for more effect without affecting the bass mix for dialog you can not do it I feel this is a shortcomming of the design. They set the propper balance for the LFE to the redirected bass at 0bd and give you a 0db to -20db LFE setting so there is no way to accentuate the LFE if desired. I have no problem running at reference level but I find that I like -10db below reference for my movie listening. Also my room is 16x24 with a cathedral ceiling that goes to 14 feet and it handles this room like I said easily at reference level. I have watched two bass/lfe killers "men in Black" and "Titan AE" as an overall test of the system and they were just great. I also listened to some DVD music and this too sounds very true. All DSP modes are well balanced and work very well. The DD 6.1 matrix and DTS 6.1 matrix work great. The DPL II is very good. I really like the unit and the other great thing about the Yamaha is you can get it at Best Buy and easily return it if you do not like it. I suppose you can do the same at Tweeter as well (they carry onkyo and yamaha).
