frustrated - and i'm sure i am not alone - trying to decide between -

I have the Onkyo 905. I am ready to buy something better and use it as a spare. Unfortunately I don't see anything else I want. Maybe a Denon 4308 as I'd insist on HD radio. But I'd settle for less features if any company would just announce that they would support the product. That means info on updates, reasonably easy user loaded ones, and board swaps etc to fix hardware bugs. So far I don't see any. Virtually every other software based product I buy has better support from my car to my Qnap NAS server.


If I was buying today I might get a Denon not that it is better but at least I don't know yet what would bug me about it! I really like the Reon in the Onkyo, and if I did have the others instead I'd probably get an external video processor. So bottom line the Onkyo saves me a lot of money over any alternative!


Denon has flac support that I would like. Not familiar with Yamaha receivers but I have had good luck with other products of theirs.


Nobody has even close to what I really want yet, so I consider all products as interim devices. But I want things like preamp out and in connections for each channel.

Better internet radio support. More graphics on screen, but also bigger better front panel displays I can actually read from across the room, etc. I see 0 products out there.

My Yamaha RX-V2700 has only one known flaw, the HDMI chip can overheat. Happened to me twice.


It can't do bitsream. Half the Blu-ray players don't seem to be able to output bitstream. I have the XBox 360 HD DVD add on which can only output DD or DTS over optical in either case. If I do get a Blu-ray player, I may just hold out for player side decoding.


The adoption of DTS-HD Master audio as relatively common codec on Blu-ray discs pisses me off because it was an optional decoder. TrueHD was mandatory. If you have PCM or TrueHD soundtracks, all Blu-ray players handle that, and all HDMI 1.1 and up receivers with properly operating HDMI/MPCM handle it. But we are stuck with DTS-HD Master Audio.


But then you run into complaints about LFE issues. And some (most?) AVRs regardless of HDMI version can't apply processing such as DPLIIx to PCM. But bitstream is bleeding edge. I don't want to spend more money.


One option is to forget about lossless audio if it's that much of a pain and downcode to DD/DTS (1.5Mbs DTS in particular is supposed to be pretty transparent.)


Were I to buy today, I would get the 3800. Mostly because I am familiar with the 2700, and excepting buggy music streaming (which there's a supposed firmware fix for,) and a tempramental HDMI chip has worked very well for me.

Depends on the speakers you have.


Last month when I was auditioning Klipsch RF-83, I listened to them with Yamaha 3800, Onkyo 905 and Denon 3808.


With the Yamaha and Onkyo, the RF-83 sounded incredible - lots of detail and dynamic sound.


When I switched to the Denon, the RF-83s sounded like a different speaker.

Gone was the detailed and dynamic sound. It seemed as if someone had covered the speakers with a blanket. I also had the turn up the volume way up to get decent sound level. An mind you the RF-83s have 100 dB/watt efficiency.


Thus at least with high quality, high efficiency Klipsch speaker the Denon 3808 was not a good fit.


Both the Onkyo 905 and Yamaha 3800 sounded great to me.


The Yamaha is less expensive, however, it does not have Reon video processor.

If this is not important to you then it will work.

I have the Onkyo 905 and am quite pleased with it. It also has a bit more robust amp section than the Yamaha.