panasonic xr57 vs onkyo 605

ok I know its not fair, the panny is $250 vs the Onkyo at $400. And to shake it up some Its kind of my review also, but I would like peoples input on any particulary reasons to keep the onkyo.


I have had the panny for 6-7 months, its worked fine, I like the low heat output, but I get clicking noises sometimes and felt like perhaps I was not getting all the LFE, do to reading other peoples problem with lfe on this amp. I did note then when I originally hooked up my HD-A3 I had to turn up the sub level on the amp. So I have had this nagging wonder if I should of got the onkyo instead.


my setup if you want more details
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=858393


So I went to the local CC and bought a 605 to compare.


First I relistened to the panny with 300, transformers, both in HD and a favorite CD. I listened to the same sections for all three tests.


I set the 605 up with the directions and used the audessey. I found the LFE a little to low with the audessey settings and I cranked up the sub volume some. It sounded very good, a little more full than the panny setup but I did not really feel like the Panny was lacking in the Bass department.


Then I reset up the panny and decided to adjust my settings a bit, I had the speakers set to small since I was a little worried about the in wall speakers, (silly I am sure they have crossovers built in.) So I changed them to large. I did notice a nice diffrence here it really filled in the middle and the LFE was very nice. I prefered this sound over the onkyo hands down. Now I imagine with more fiddling with the settings the onkyo may of equaled it but I did not feel like the panny was missing stuff any longer.


Since I don't personally feel the 605 SQ is any better is there any other considerations I should think of to keep it? Saving money is always nice.


My understanding is that my players will decode stuff and I will get the True HD and DTS HDMA sound via pcm as long as the player decodes it. I will be using an HD-A3 and a PS3 (I know I currently cannot get DTS HDMA with the ps3).


I don't care about video upconversion, my projector does that fine.


The 605 would require a HDMI switcher anyway since I need 3 hdmi inputs.


Is there anything I am missing here?