The "Official" Onkyo TX-SR608 Thread (No Price Talk) - Page 168

so if I want to add an external dac, cd-dac-analog inputs on the 608 avr-then use direct setting am i bypassing the onkyo's dac? thanks!

Looking for some guidance here. I bought this receiver refurbished from an authorized dealer last March and have been experiencing problems with it since I got it. Occasionally the video will go blank, and I have to cycle the power on and off to get video back. This happened with multiple HDMI cables. It happened when connected to my TV and now when connected to my projector.

If I'm watching a movie at high (~-5dB) volume, after a while (45 minutes or so) I get white artifacts showing up in the dark areas of the screen. If I try and switch to a different input to see if all inputs are affected, it somehow triggers the video-blanking problem and suddenly no inputs work. If I shut the unit off, HDMI passthrough works fine with no artifacts whatsoever. Once I turn the unit back on, the HDMI indicator on the display blinks, audio turns on for about two seconds, then audio cuts out and the screen remains blank.

If I let the unit sit for a while, everything seems to work again. This tells me it may be heat related. It sits in a cool basement on the top shelf of my equipment cabinet with its top surface completely exposed, so I believe it should be adequately cooled:



I saw this post about turning off "noise enhancement" (I'm assuming either noise reduction or edge enhancement), which I'll try once I can get video working again, but I'm afraid I'll have to send it in for repair, which is super lame that I have to cover shipping to Michigan so they can repair a faulty product that's under warranty (unless I'm mistaken).

Pop your head up there and make sure the fan is operational and unclogged.

Should I feel air blowing out of the grates?

The fan is on the top, near the front right, blowing up. It's a rather low speed large fan. You can feel the air movement, but only slightly. Just shine a light in there and you'll see it right away. It's 4-5 inches wide.

Yep, the fan is working. This time I got about 5 minutes of Transformers before the video blanked out on me.

Edit: And after a couple minutes, I was able to watch the last hour and a half at high volume with no artifacts or blanking...

Thanks.. Found the problem the other day.. In setting for tv i thought it would stay where i set it but don't. And i have to manual change from Pcm to dolby d depending on the file type..

Thanks ..

I'd love to hear from anyone who has a 46" or 50" Pana GT30 and an Onkyo TX SR608 and how they operate together with regard to ARC, CEC etc

I know this is an Onkyo TX SR608 owner's thread, and I have one brand new in the box awaiting my return to Australia from overseas deployment. I need a new tv to set up with my new AVR and am tossing up between two plasmas, Pana 50GT/VT30 or the Sammy 51D8000. I'm specifically after any known issues and/or advantages between these models which would make one a better match for the Onkyo. At the moment I'm leaning towards the Pana, but can't see the money value of the VT over the GT30.
I'd love to hear your advice/recommendations.
Regards

I thought plasma's were dead?

I'm in a particular situation for 5 months to where I can only connect fronts and a pair of surround speakers to my 608 and no room for my powered sub.

So my question is, Can I technically bi-amp a regular pair of non bi-amp front bookshelf speakers as my hi (aka front terminals) and another pair of small 8'' passive subwoofers to my low bi-amp terminals (aka surround back terminals) for the time being safely?

The 8'' subs are 4ohm each
The front bookshelf's are 8ohm each.

If so, is there an electronic crossover adjustable in the AVR for the bi-amp hi to low?

No.

Why exactly is that? I'm curious as to what is the difference exactly from two separate drivers, in two separate cabinets as opposed to actual bi-amp-able speakers themselves?

Does it basically come down to the ohm load? And is that why my idea will not work?

What if I even hooked up just one of those 8'' 4ohm subs?

The receiver has no provision to apply a crossover to divert the proper signal to the proper driver. That's the job of the crossover network of the speaker. Bi-amping does not bypass the speaker's crossover. You'd be feeding a full-range signal to both the smaller "regular" speakers and the subwoofer.

Furthermore, your subs are 4 ohm and bass frequencies soak up a lot of power. The 608 is not 4-ohm stable to begin with. The receiver would not be able to handle it.

Do you already have a pair of passive 8" subs? What kind of powered sub do you have? You could potentially take the amp off the powered sub and power one of your 8" subs with it. Or sell your powered sub and get a smaller powered sub.

Ah! That's interesting, I never knew it actually uses the speaker crossover even in bi-amp mode.

I have a couple JBL powered 10'' subs but I have no room to place either at the moment. So I figured since I had a couple passive subs I could maybe bi-amp them.

Thanks for the detailed response and helping me understand the issue.

A passive crossover, as found in a regular speaker, feeds the high pass and low pass filter networks with the same incoming signal. The incoming speaker wires literally split into two pairs of wires - one going to the HPF and one to the LPF.

Biamp speakers allow you to feed the high pass and low pass filters with separate signals.

Incidentally, this is also why bi-wiring is stupid. You're still feeding the HPF and LPF with the same shared signal.

See thats funny, I've always assumed thats how bi-amping worked, as I've only had one pair of speakers that were bi-amp-able but got rid of them before I had an AVR that supported it.

Are there any AVR's out there that offer a hybrid bi-amp capability to where no speaker crossover is needed, just an electronic one in the actual AVR?

That's the only type of setup that would really even make sense in terms of actual performance advantages right?

I just snagged a floor model of this unit on Ultra clearance. Besides the receiver all it came with is a remote (RC-764M). I'm not sure it's the one that actually came with this model (Crutchfield said it should be RC-765M). It wasn't connected to speakers or a TV so all I could check it that it turned on & worked the volume, and switched inputs with the remote (all that seemed OK though). The Blue shirts @ Sears had it stuffed inside of a TV cabinet. Even in standby mode it was VERY WARM (not hot but... hopefully I don't regret the purchase). The first day I saw it, stuffed in that cabinet, the unit was turned on, but I didn't check the temperature of it, I just snagged the model number so I could research it; but I should have. The blue shirt guy kept telling me the small circular hole at the bottom of the shelf in the back of the cabinet was "adequate airflow" It had less than 2 inches clearance on top.

I decided to add the 3 year extended warranty for $35 - normally I don't buy those from the stores because usually there they base it off the original price, IDK if they changed policy or he made a mistake, but they said I have almost a full year to cancel it if it isn't worth while - the one thing he mentioned is that items can be dropped off @ Sears and they will send it for repair. Since Onkyo doesn't pay for shipping if it does have issues that would pay for itself.

Unlike what the blue shirt said it would say, the receipt doesn't indicate it was a floor model or clearance'd out that I can tell (except for the low price) so I'm still unclear whether ONKYO would honor the (2) year warranty that it comes with already? I bought it with a Sony Signature Credit Card which offers a warranty doubling program (up to one additional year) - so it doesn't add any additional value but it might be helpful if there was a warranty problem).

The blue shirt said with that warranty plan, if the unit was un- repairable then they would replace at a level comparable to this model with the regular value of the receiver @ Sears $499. But that's not what it sounds like on paper... and considering this isn't a Networked model I'm a little worried that - that might mean they would send me with a more basic model...

I also thought about Square Trade it's $21 before a common weekly 30% off coupon so ~$15 for three years but they might simply cash out the value of the plan ($139.99), if it had an expensive repair.
Anyone have a good gut feeling about Sears warranty & how they handle these things?
The cheapest upfront option is to get nothing and hope if it had a problem that Onkyo would cover it minus the $25-35+ cost of shipping.
Otherwise Square Trade for ~$15 would cover the shipping to Onkyo.

hey guys! Its been a while since I've read this thread, but will now catch up on a few things. Anyways, rocking this receiver coming up on a year and absolutely love it!

However, I noticed the strangest thing the other day and don't know why it happened. See, I have my Xbox 360 plugged via HDMI into the 'PC' port (MSFT=PC) and my PS3 plugged into the 'Game' port via HDMI as well. Now, the other day, I'm playing my PS3 and I'm just glancing at the receiver and notice the input is set to 'Dock' Surely a ghost or other apparition didn't change the HDMI plugs and I don't even see an option for 'Dock' just 'Port' which I am not using. Powering down everything, unplugging it all and firing it back up still resulted in the 'Dock' Input. Even pressing 'Game' on the unit or remote control doesn't make 'Game' appear, just stays on 'Dock'

While this isn't the end of the world, I just want to make sure its not a sign the unit could be going bad..I also have a problem with the audio cutting out for a second across any audio source on an average of every 20-30 minutes, sometimes it'll even happen back-to-back. Really strange. I also notice that the picture flickers to a darker look then back to bright while watching BD movies thru my Sony player. Again, these things aren't that bad, but I think I have some kind of warranty left and just trying to see what I should doi..

I have run into some of your problems myself. To get rid of the Dock label while in Game mode, just press and hold the Game button on the receiver unit for a few seconds n it will return to norm. Believe the Dock mode is for RI-capable Onkyo components as described by manual pg25.

Audio cutting out for fixed time mentioned seems like some power management handling kicking in by receiver. I have no clue on this!

For the video flickering, the only way to eliminate n find the culprit would be to hook up the Sony BR player Directly to the Tv for the time being. Play some movies n observe if the fault lies with the player or receiver. Cheers

So I seem to be having an HDMI passthrough issue with my Cisco RNG150 cable box.

PS3 seems to pass through with the unit off, but for some reason, I cannot get the cable box to do the same.

What exactly does pass-through come down to? Does it matter what version HDMI cable you use, does the TV have to be on first before the cable box?

As far as I've tested. It seems to only pass through the last input I had enabled while the AVR was on. Anyone have any ideas?

ha! never thought to hold the button down..will try tonight, thanks for the input! Yeah, and the audio cutting out is strange, could be some power mgmt I guess, it happens mostly with my cable box, maybe the signal is dipping low, who knows..and I'll have to try hooking that BD player up to something else, but not too worried b/c I barely noticed it.

Hi there, not sure if this helps but try doing this. Switch ON your cable box then the receiver. Make sure the mode for receiver is at the HDMI input connected to cable box. You should be seeing video/audio on your TV now.
Then press Standby for receiver and report what happens, if all is good and passthru set up right you should be watching cable right away. Cant comment on the hdmi version, Try this first and we shall take it from there. Cheers

Yeah that does work correctly.

I just wish pass through would work without having to turn on the AVR at all, just automatically switch to whatever hdmi source is on, while the AVR is offline.

Guess it doesnt work this way.

Haa! Pardon me, I failed to read the last paragraph of your post. Yes it's true. Receiver only pass thru LAST input set before it was switched off. I know, not cool!
It's something like this. While unit is On and PS3 is On and unit is at Ps3 input. One cannot force the unit to automatically carry video/audio signal of cable box even if the PS3 player is switched off and the cable box switched On, right? One has to physically press cable input to carry signal!
In that case, the opposite is also true while in standby pass thru mode. Does that make sense? Cheers

Correct. I still do love the feature, I still use it, I just had to change my config.

I dont mind having the cable box HDMI straight to the TV and coax digital audio going to the AVR, it works fine.

Not necessarily. The receiver supports CEC over HDMI which allows for rudimentary control of components (if I'm not mistaken). Turning on my Blu-Ray player automatically switches the video source to BD/DVD even if I'm currently watching something on another input.

Laminar, that is completely correct. I had forgotten all abt the CEC control. Since I had disabled them, that feature might come in handy now that I have a BR player with Viera-Link.

Does anyone here have or know how to obtain the firmware update on the CD and attempted to update their 608 themselves?

I was reading the service manual for our AVR and it doesn't sound too complicated.

WHY do you NEED the update