Joined
·
48 Posts
Hello everyone and thanks in advance for any help and suggestions you give. This forum always seems to come up in my searches so I thought I would join. I'll try to make a very long story very short. It's taken me about 3 yrs to put my system together. I'm just a lowly factory worker so my budget is limited and I really have to watch for sales. I've run into a few snags trying to put the final finishing touches on it. I'm running a 7.1 setup with an Onkyo TXNR-818. I use it for both music and home theater. The front sound stage is the RF7's with the RC64 Center which are all 200 watt RMS. The Onkyo seems to power the RF7's o.k. at 135 watts per ch. But I've read how they sound really awesome when they get some decent power to them. So as you can imagine I'm really wanting to amp up and was all setup to do so but I've run into some infuriating problems.
The first of which of course is Onkyo's BS we'll put the pre outs out there for the main sound stage just to tease you but we won't bother to put a trigger switch there for the amp. Then we'll put trigger switches for ZONE 2 and 3 just to infuriate you more. This is a huge problem to which I will never purchase another Onkyo product again because this is just to retarded to forgive. Oh if you want a trigger on zone one you have to buy one of our Integra's. No thanks, because you did this and it's so stupid I"ll get a different brand avr next time. I know there's work arounds and it's going to be a pain in the ass but I'll deal with it when I finally get an amp as I just bought the 818 recently and can't afford a more expensive avr right now. I've had it right out with Onkyo on why they would do something so stupid and they can't even give me a decent explanation cause they know it doesn't make any sense as well. Why would you put pre outs for zone one with no trigger switch?????? WOW!!!
Which now brings me to an amp choice. Again, I'm on a bit of a budget so I thought the Emotiva XPA-3 would be a good choice for the front sound stage. I called Emotiva and they flat out told me that because the Onkyo didn't have a trigger for zone one I could not use one of there amps. I don't believe this is true as I know other people of done things to make it work. So I was going to go ahead and order one anyway, even though there own techs had no suggestions. I've phoned there twice. Both times there sales guys were busy. I've left my number twice asking them to phone me back as I would like to order an amp and they have never called back. TWICE!! So now I'm convinced that if Emotiva's sales reps can't even be bothered to make a phone call to make a sale then all the posts I've seen about there poor customer service when it comes to warranty work must be true as well. Company's it seems these days have lost all concepts of customer service and how important it really is. So Onkyo and Emotiva will not get my business.
So what I'm really wondering now is. Is there any other amps out there that I can consider for around $1000? I would like one that sounds good for music as well because I listen to a lot of music. I was going to go with two outlaw mono blocks as I've heard they work really well and that outlaws customer service is very good. But I've read posts that say they didn't sound that great for music and that the Emotiva's sounded better.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Paul
Hello everyone and thanks in advance for any help and suggestions you give. This forum always seems to come up in my searches so I thought I would join. I'll try to make a very long story very short. It's taken me about 3 yrs to put my system together. I'm just a lowly factory worker so my budget is limited and I really have to watch for sales. I've run into a few snags trying to put the final finishing touches on it. I'm running a 7.1 setup with an Onkyo TXNR-818. I use it for both music and home theater. The front sound stage is the RF7's with the RC64 Center which are all 200 watt RMS. The Onkyo seems to power the RF7's o.k. at 135 watts per ch. But I've read how they sound really awesome when they get some decent power to them. So as you can imagine I'm really wanting to amp up and was all setup to do so but I've run into some infuriating problems.
The first of which of course is Onkyo's BS we'll put the pre outs out there for the main sound stage just to tease you but we won't bother to put a trigger switch there for the amp. Then we'll put trigger switches for ZONE 2 and 3 just to infuriate you more. This is a huge problem to which I will never purchase another Onkyo product again because this is just to retarded to forgive. Oh if you want a trigger on zone one you have to buy one of our Integra's. No thanks, because you did this and it's so stupid I"ll get a different brand avr next time. I know there's work arounds and it's going to be a pain in the ass but I'll deal with it when I finally get an amp as I just bought the 818 recently and can't afford a more expensive avr right now. I've had it right out with Onkyo on why they would do something so stupid and they can't even give me a decent explanation cause they know it doesn't make any sense as well. Why would you put pre outs for zone one with no trigger switch?????? WOW!!!
Which now brings me to an amp choice. Again, I'm on a bit of a budget so I thought the Emotiva XPA-3 would be a good choice for the front sound stage. I called Emotiva and they flat out told me that because the Onkyo didn't have a trigger for zone one I could not use one of there amps. I don't believe this is true as I know other people of done things to make it work. So I was going to go ahead and order one anyway, even though there own techs had no suggestions. I've phoned there twice. Both times there sales guys were busy. I've left my number twice asking them to phone me back as I would like to order an amp and they have never called back. TWICE!! So now I'm convinced that if Emotiva's sales reps can't even be bothered to make a phone call to make a sale then all the posts I've seen about there poor customer service when it comes to warranty work must be true as well. Company's it seems these days have lost all concepts of customer service and how important it really is. So Onkyo and Emotiva will not get my business.
So what I'm really wondering now is. Is there any other amps out there that I can consider for around $1000? I would like one that sounds good for music as well because I listen to a lot of music. I was going to go with two outlaw mono blocks as I've heard they work really well and that outlaws customer service is very good. But I've read posts that say they didn't sound that great for music and that the Emotiva's sounded better.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Paul