Cheap Onkyo HTS760 Dolby Digital EX/DTS-ES 6.1-Channel Home Theater System (Electronics) Price

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Customer Reviews of Onkyo HTS760 Dolby Digital EX/DTS-ES 6.1-Channel Home Theater System

Good Electronics - but speakers rot
My selection of the Onkyo HT-S760 was swayed by two factors. First, the generally good customer reviews and my recollection of Onkyo's reputation for quality component design. After a very easy setup session (the supplied speaker cables are not useful except for smalish rooms) I inserted a favorite, special effects filled, DVD expecting great things and then stunned disbelief!! I've heard better sound coming from my old "build your own crystal radio" set, especially poor at lower volume levels. Forget music CD's unless you're just looking for background noise while cooking dinner.

I had no real problems with the receiver's design or feature set other than the omission of at least one Digital (Optical) output, (they give you optical inputs only)

I was replacing a middling good audiophile (20 year veteran) quality system that had seen better days and figured the state of speaker design must have progressed leaps and bounds in that time but I've been sadly mistaken on this point. My recommendation is ratchet your expectation levels down a notch or two before installing this bad boy. Rank this with the $299 Home Theater units you can get at any local appliance store..

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Good system, but can be even better with a few tweaks
As others have said, this system is a great value. The receiver is excellent and the speakers aren't bad.

In this price range, most other companies give you a lower quality receiver with less flexibility. The Onkyo receiver has low distortion, plenty of power, and a large number of inputs (including component video) for greater flexibility when integrating with your other AV components. The receiver is good enough to keep even if you later decide to upgrade the speakers.

The speakers are good considering the price, but don't compare them with audiophile grade speakers. The speakers are much larger than those in most other home theater systems in this price range. Due to the physics inherent in sound reproduction, it's easier to make a good speaker in a reasonably large package than it is in a tiny package. These speakers aren't trading off sound quality and level just to make them small.

The center and two front speakers have bass ports in the rear, so they sound best when not placed against a wall. Also, the tweeters of the front speakers should be placed at ear level, which might require the use of speaker stands (generally true for any speaker system). When I raised or lowered my head signifiantly above or below the tweeters, I could easily notice a decrease in clarity. It's also good to have the speakers pointing at the listener, but this is less critical due to the vertical arrangement of the tweeter in between the two mid-ranges.

The three surround speakers has a forward facing bass port, so it's fine to set them against the wall. I just hang them on the wall using the mounting hole on the back of each speaker.

As another reviewer has mentioned, the speaker cables that come with the system are 24 gauge, which is rather thin. It's worth upgrading to better wires. No need to spend a lot on the cables though. 16 gauge copper wires from the local home center should do fine. I set up two speakers next to each other, one with the 24 gauge wires and the other with 12 gauge copper wire, and listened to the pink noise outputted by the receiver. The difference between them was easy to discern, with the thicker wire giving a stronger high end.

The subwoofer is fine for watching movies but can be somewhat boomy for listening to music. When reproducing explosions in movies, boominess isn't a bad thing, but when reproducing organ tones, the subwoofer has a tendency to boom on the low tones. I managed to reduce the boominess by filling the subwoofer with one pound of polyester fiberfill (available at the craft store). I opened up the subwoofer by removing the screws holding the bottom board and then removing the screws holding the speaker driver. Then I lifted out the driver and placed it to the side of the hole (being careful not to pull on the wires). Then I evenly stuffed the subwoofer with the fiberfill, being sure to keep the fiberfill away from the end of the port and from the heat sink on the amplifier. This helped to reduce the boominess without reducing the overall sound pressure level. The subwoofer still isn't able to reproduce the lowest organ tones (~20 Hz) but that's to be expected of any subwoofer not costing many times more.

I found that the bass sounded stronger and more even when I set the subwoofer crossover to 100 Hz instead of the default 80 Hz. I think the main speakers have trouble reproducing sounds much below 100 Hz, so it's better to send those to the subwoofer.

Overall, this is a great system, and even if you just set up the system out of the box (read the manual), it'll still be better than most others in this price range. But the system can be made even better with just a few tweaks.

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Wow
I have been into home theater since the days of HI-FI stereo, Beta VCR's. I graduated to Dolby Surround, and then Pro Logic. And at one point I probably had $3000 invested into my system. Then I got married and had kids, and traded the big stereo for a mini- system. I have also had the experience of working for a large local electronics retailer part time for the last few years when I needed a little extra cash.

So when I decided to upgrade my home theater system, I started reading. I wanted the most bang for the buck, and from everything I read, I felt that this system was the way to go. But we never carried it at the store where I worked. And do you know why? They felt that the product was way too good for only $500, and would limit their ability to sell, separate component systems, at much higher prices.

They never had a problem carrying and selling other HTIB's, because none of them could compare to a nice component system. Some sound ok for movies, but most fall short in the music department. So if you wanted a system good for movies and music, you bought separates.

Well, I went over to the local Circuit City, and bought one of these without even listening to it in the store. I also bought the Onkyo 6 disk DVD player (DV-CP701). Then I hopped over to the Shack and bought some 16ga. mega cable(way better value than monster cable), and a nice sub cable and digital coax cable, and headed for home.

Now, I don't know how Onkyo did it, but you could not assemble a component system for double or even triple the cost of this one, that sounds this good! I put in the pod race from Phantom Menace, and I was grinning from ear to ear the whole way through. I was amazed! After cranking up a few more of my favorite movie sound scenes, I threw in some Luther Vandros for my wife. I put the receiver in DTS Neo:6 music mode, and I felt like Luther was standing in my living room.

Now I'm not trying to say there is not better stuff out there, because there is. But if you want the best for the money there is no comparison. You just have to remember to take the time for proper setup, and I promise, you will be amazed. And to any of you negative reviewers out there who say the sound is not up to par, I don't know where you are coming from?