The Official Onkyo TX-SR705 Thread (FAQ in 1st Post) - Page 8

There are a few more crazy secret displays too... like on each of the firmware display pages, you can actually press the DISPLAY button again to cycle through "additional pages" of info to do with that firmware. The different firmwares have different numbers of extra pages of info. They are all codes/numbers that change when the receiver is locking onto audio signals and you can see them change when you change listening mode presets etc. I also cant figure out a way to make it stop displaying these, appart from turning the receiver OFF. Note - i cant take credit for this, as they are from a post made by "xxxxx" to do with the 805 model.

It also seems on the 805 model, the temperaure display screen also shows a Fan :L/M/H (low med high) to tell you what the internal fan/s are doing, however with our 705 it just seems to show the temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius, with no fan speed info. This may be because the 805 has a bigger display and can fit more info in... it'd be nice if there was a way for us to show fan info... perhaps by pressing DISPLAY while showing TEMP info... cant remember if i tried that (it seems obvious though, so i probably did)

when people say they get hum or hiss problems when they have "no input" do they mean when a device is connected but not outputting audio (like in a menu on cable box or something) or do they actually mean if say switching to AUX when nothing is plugged into the AUX inputs.

If its the latter i fail to see how this is an issue at all?! As woots said, who the hell changes to an unused input and then cranks the volume up to +6!

If its hum or buzz that is audible in quiet scenes or when at a menu etc, then i agree this would be annoying! Thankfully mine does not have any hiss or hum even with volume cranked to MAX and my ear pressed against the speakers. As i mentioned I have Equaliser turned OFF and all my sources use component video (through the AVR) and optical/digital coax audio connections. When i get home i will see if having Audyssey turned on causes any issues

Yes, I find that for listening to music (particularly mp3s which already sound more compressed and limited than normal CDs) i like to have Audyssey off as it is more phat/meaty/grunty (dont you just love my technical terms). Listening to movies i do like what Audyssey does but half the time i forget to turn it back on before watching a movie, and the GF doesnt like it when i mess around with the audio presets while we are watching hehe... So usually i just leave it off!

Thanks for the info. Last week I bought a Toshiba HD-A2 and just got the HDMI cables hooked up - HDMI to 705 passing through HDMI to TV. But I hadn't yet played a CD. You're right. Audio doesn't work properly unless HDMI Monitor=OFF or TV is on.

I wonder if there's any way to automate turning HDMI Monitor=OFF with a Harmony remote? Probably easier to leave TV on.

Is the bass muddy or just not loud enough for your tastes? I ran into that when I first EQ'd my subwoofer for flat response (before I had the 705). Took a while to get used to it, because there didn't seem to be as much bass with music. But then I started noticing that I still had the low end there, but I could make out individual notes much easier. Since running Audyssey, I'm not using my EQ because the results track so closely to what I had grown accustomed to having when EQ'd for flat in-room response. A lot of people don't care for flat response though, so maybe that's what it is.

If not, I'd be interested in seeing your room setup. There has to be some reason it's behaving that way. Seems like the usual complaint is that the center isn't loud enough, not the other way around.

I just noticed that 6ave.com on Amazon is offering 705 for $574.30 shipped and Amazon is offering for $584.73 shipped. WholesaleAV is offering for 574.39shipped. I am not sure how long these prices will last but is a kind of good sign for those who are planning to buy this receiver.

Jus thought this info might be useful for people looking to buy this receiver.

Thanks Scarecrow.
You were right about the BD10A Bitstream. The bitstream signal I was getting was regular DTS, not DTS HD. This is what I get for troubleshooting at 2 a.m. I will update my earlier posting accordingly.

I would also like to mention that my sub hum has largely disappeared. I'm not sure exacty what cured it, but I have re-EQ'd and made other adjustments since my original posting. Even so, my BD10A is still under warranty, so I may switch it out for the BMP-BD30 sometime this week. The BD30 will output both the Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio formats via bitstream, and it's cheaper. Any comments would be greatly appreciated here.

Can you explain why coax audio comes in to the 705 as PCM while HDMI audio comes in to the 705 as PCM MULTICH, given the same BD source? Each also has a completely different set of sound fields available. It was my understanding that there was no difference between an HDMI audio signal and a COAX audio signal as they were both digital signals.

Sure can!

optical and coax digital connections only have enough bandwidth to transfer 2.1 channels of uncompressed audio (however they do have the required bandwidth to send the compressed (ie undecoded) DD or DTS signal as they have been traditionally used for with regular DVD players etc since the advent of DD and DTS decoding AVRs).

HDMI has way more bandwidth and has enough necessary to send a full 7.1 channels in uncompressed format. Id like to know how much bandwidth an undecoded (but still lossless) bitstream of TrueHD or DTS-MA track takes up... the spec demands HDMI 1.3 to do this but i wonder if that is bandwidth/size related or not (ie im wondering if it is possible bandwidth wise, for these bitstreams to be transported by optical/coax, despite the fact that no device will ever support it)

That is useful, thanks.

Love my 705 but I have a question. My listening volume is usually between -10 and -5 from reference. Is this hurting the receiver at this volume? The 705 has never clipped or shut down and I will buy a fan this week just for piece of mind(no heat problems yet) but was considering an Emotiva LPA-1 amp if this volume is putting to much strain on the receiver. Any thoughts? At what volume are you 705 owners listing at?

I usually listen at between -15 and -9 depending on the movie. In my opinion, if the receiver will do it then it should not hurt it.

Bah, the adjustable voltage A/C adapter I had cut the end off to connect to my panaflo fan is too large to fit into the switched outlet on the 705... Which a/c adapter do you guys use? I thought the switchable voltage one would be cool so I could get the lowest noise but still cool. (plus it was free as I found it in a drawer) Any suggestions?

I have found that running the full 8 settings in Audyssey does improve the sound. The first time I ran Audyssey I used the 4 settings and it sounded pretty bad, then I went to 6 setting and there was a big jump in the sound quality. Then last week I decided to rerun Audyssey and went with the full 8 settings and I swear it sounds better. I have found that moving the angle of the speakers can greatly change the Audyssey sound and so can the microphone placements, so you may want to do some experimentation.

I have no idea if it would help with your hiss and its a good chance it would make no difference, but if you have long speaker wire runs over 50' I would use 14g. When I redid my setup I bought a spool of 14g from Monoprice and ran 14g to all my speakers.

Yes. Normal volume levels. Thanks.

I'm not sure I understand this. If the subs crossover is set at 80HZ, and the mains (even though their full size speakers - but they don't reproduce bass very well) are set at 150HZ it seems as something is missing at least on paper?

If the sub doesn't see anything from the LFE until its 80Hz or below and the mains drop off at 150Hz, what is happening to the missing frequency?

If I adjust the sub to 120HZ, and if I understand what was said above, no additonal informaiton will be sent to the sub. Also if I were to lower the frequency of the mains, what good would that do if they can't reproduce below 150Hz anyways? Or does Audyssey set it that way for some other reason and the mains can reproduce sound below 150Hz?

I am in low -30's most of the time, rarely high -20's. ran audessy and have kef 2005 speakers, dont know and cant imagine how people are running so loud at -9?? trying to understand only here, is it bcos the room is too big or does it depends on speakers also??

First, the crossover on your subwoofer's amp itself should be turned all the way up.

Second, there's a difference between redirected bass and LFE. The LFE channel is the .1 in 5.1/6.1/7.1, and is a seperate channel that only carries 1/10th of full bandwidth sound (20-120Hz, though many soundtracks have audio below 20Hz as well) for low frequency effects. When you change the LFE cutoff on the receiver, you're NOT changing the redirected bass from the other channels. That's what their crossover settings are for.

So if, in your example, you set LFE cutoff to 80Hz and the 7 speakers to 150Hz, you get the following:
1) The receiver begins to send bass from the 7 channels to the subwoofer at slightly over 150Hz, such that at 150Hz, the subwoofer and speaker is producing equal amounts of the bass.
2) The LFE channel is also sent to the subwoofer, but is brickwall filtered at 80Hz.

You're still getting everything from 80-150Hz from the other 7 channels being sent to the subwoofer. But the LFE channel in a 5.1/6.1/7.1 bitstream is being truncated at 80Hz. Because the LFE channel only carries up to 120Hz anyway, few mixes put anything in the 80-120Hz region of that channel anyway, so you're likely not losing much audio. Regardless, you can set LFE cutoff to whatever you want and it doesn't affect the redirected bass from the other channels at all.

Now, if you set the crossover on the subwoofer itself to 80Hz, yes you are truncating 80-150Hz from your other speakers. You should set your subwoofer's crossover all the way to its maximum to ensure that a) you aren't cutting off redirected bass from the other speakers, and b) you aren't inducing delay from the crossover circuitry that could alter phase/distance settings.

However, due to the hum issue, some have found that dialing the sub crossover (not the LFE cutoff on the receiver) down to just above where their speakers are crossed over to help reduce hum without cutting off any redirected bass. In other words, if you have all channels set to 80Hz on the receiver, you can get away with setting the crossover to 90-100Hz on your sub to reduce any humming above that. The only caveat is that you'll have to re-run Audyssey to detect its acoustic distance, since the crossover may alter the distance/delay setting.

Audyssey doesn't detect speaker capabilities very well, so look up the specs of your speakers and set the crossovers for them yourself after running Audyssey. If, however, your speakers are spec'd for 150Hz and that's what Audyssey comes up with, leave it. The default 80Hz LFE cutoff won't affect that at all.

(Wow, I hope I explained that well enough.)

The level it sets the channel trims to depends on room acoustics and speaker sensitivity (i.e. what dB level it can produce with 1 watt - should be listed in your speaker's specs). However, the relative scale strives to give us a standard by which -9dB in my room should equal the same in your room. If you haven't re-checked your channels with a SPL meter, however, Audyssey tends to set channel trims 2-3dB down from reference level, so -9dB would likely be -11 or -12 from reference.

The smaller the room, the easier it is for the receiver's amp to push that level (and the lower the channel trims will end up). If you moved the same system to a larger room and re-ran Audyssey, it would bump channel trims up to compensate for the larger space so that you'd reach the same level with the same relative setting in that room.

I thought that the 705 is rated at 100W minimum continuous power to 2 chanels with an 8 ohm load for every two speakers. IE: fronts get 100w per channel. Surrounds get 100w per channel, Surround Backs get 100w per channel. Center gets 100w.

I'm a little confused. Is it rated 100w per channel all channels driven or 2 channels driven? I guess one benefit of the SR805 is the modal amps.

I just realized that places like Gefen are selling 3x1 HDMI 1.3 switches for $300. I know you can some cheaper at places like monoprice, but not sure if they are certified HDMI 1.3. Anyway the point is it is amazing to think that in theory half the cost of this receiver goes to the HDMI switching, or the fact you are saving that much extra having the switching built in. Definitely a plus of these new receivers for me.

Circuit City had the 805 for $699 this morning. I used a 10% off coupon and ordered it for $629 plus tax. That's about what I paid for my 705, so I figured I should jump on the deal. I'm going to test the 805 against my 705 and return whichever one I don't like the best. Does anyone think there is any reason to keep the 705 over the 805 if they're both the same price? I know the 705 has a smaller and lighter footprint, but other than that is there any little thing that the 705 does better that I might miss with the 805?

I can only speak for myself but the hum/hiss is always there but when you pause a movie it stands out in stark relief from what should be dead silence. The worst offender is my HDA1 or HDA2 player as TrueHD seems to be mixed lower so you tend to turn up the volume more. I have cranked my Intellivolume up to +12db and this also helps avoid the issue somewhat.

This weekend I changed from the HDMI in to be optical on the HDA2 in and the hiss is quite a bit less. Of course I loose the TrueHD if I use the optical
I have to get to -5 before I can hear anything. The Audyssey/Equaliser fix didn't do anything to help.


-Craig

Where did you get the 10% coupon? I don't see it on the CC website.

Are you sure about that? I thought when you set the LPF to 80 Hz, it slowly tapered off to 120 Hz which is the upper limit of the LFE channel.

I would think a brickwall filter at 80 Hz would sound pretty harsh.