TX-SR805 Setup and Configuration

System Setup

Setup of the TX-SR805 is fairly standard; anyone with previous receiver setup experience will find the Onkyo to be similar to most other products currently on the market. As with any receiver that does not come as a combo unit with the DVD player and in the same box as the speakers, a little planning is well advised. For novice use, one should take inventory of all system components and their required connections to plan a wiring layout; this will not only simplify first time setup, it will help keep the connection layout straight for the electronics setup of the receiver. Performing this step will also help slow the inevitable wire snarl that grows with each and every upgrade, a simple fact of life that is only alleviated by compromise in audio quality with those one box solutions.

User Manual

The user manual provided with the receiver is laid out in a logical order introducing the TX-SR805 and following the steps for setup from start to finish, advancing from basic operation to advanced features. Throughout, the user’s manual is well cross referenced and it provides many diagrams and illustrations at each step, even showing which button to press and with which finger.

After the amusing but perfunctory legal stuff, like do not use this receiver under water or stick your finger in the power outlet, and a description of the features, the manual then moves through all the bases. The chapters progress from layout of the front and back panels, layout of the remote, connections for various speakers and components, steps for first time setup, common functions including playing various sources and recording, the OSD menu structure, setup for advanced features, using zones 2/3, and controlling other components using the TX-SR805.

The manual closes with the typical but equally amusing trouble shooting section that tries to alleviate the need for panicky calls to customer support when the new receiver is not working only to have the techs find that the power cord was not plugged in. Some owners will benefit form this kind of help, others will not.

Rear Panel

The rear panel is relatively well laid out with connections grouped together by purpose. Digital connections are located around the periphery with HDMI at the top and digital audio to the left side of the panel. Component video in/out grouped in a separate bank, standard analog audio/video connections arrayed down the middle from left to right, followed by analog multi-channel in, out, and zone 2/3 out. The digital and analog radio connections are centered above the A/V connections. The binding posts for speaker termination are aligned across the bottom. The detachable power cord and a single switched outlet are at the opposite side from the digital audio connections. Each grouping of connectors is labeled and enclosed in a white box and outputs are differentiated from inputs by white hatching inside the boxes for easier viewing when one has to crane ones head around to the back of the unit after initial installation to make any subsequent wiring revisions.

The only hitch that occurred during physical setup was that the TX-SR805, unlike my reference Rotel, only had a single RCA subwoofer out connection. A slight annoyance, the remedy was to use a monaural RCA splitter. Output for dual subwoofers really should be a minimum on all receivers, and certainly on a receiver mindful enough of room acoustics that it incorporates active room correction like Audyssey.

Setup and Menus

Once the physical setup is complete, setup for the electronics is the next step. The users manual includes a section titled ‘Up and Running in a Few Easy Steps’ which suggests the automatic speaker setup and the onscreen display (OSD) running as the place to start for quickest path to usable operation.

To get the OSD running, the first step is to consider the video connection used for the main monitor: HDMI, component, S-video, or composite video, and set the output mode using the switch labeled HDMI OUT under the front flap. Repeatedly pressing this button will cycle through these alternates while the TX-SR805’s front LED display shows the current setting if the default does not match the current monitor connection. While it is possible to run through the setup using only the front display, getting the OSD going is really the best place to begin.

Next up is speaker setup, which runs as part of the Audyssey EQ calibration. This feature activates automatically when the included microphone is inserted into the jack under the front flap. Follow the instructions, locate the microphone at ear height in the primary seating location and the TX-SR805 will cycle through a series of chirps for each speaker in turn, clockwise around the connected array. The first pass serves as the setup point for all the levels, delays, and crossover points as well as the first point for the Audyssey room acoustics correction. When complete, the user will be prompted either to run another test or to proceed to the calculations. The Audyssey correction feature will accept up to eight test points in a room, at which point, the receiver will automatically begin calculations for the speaker setup and the correction filter.

If, for any larger home theaters, eight listening positions are not enough, a little planning of measurement points is the best advice to maximize benefits. Try to use no more than 5-6 points to define the perimeter and the remainder for interior points considering where best to place these points in the room relative to the particular seating arrangement.

Initially, I chose to setup the receiver manually using settings I was familiar with from my reference receiver. The intent was to avoid engaging the Audyssey EQ, which also runs the setup routine, so that I could become familiar with the sound of the receiver itself, before evaluating the quality of the onboard acoustics correction.

The setup menus, which are laid out logically and orderly in the user manual, are cross referenced with the various submenus and commands. I found it easy to go through the entire setup manually. The only setup hitch I found was with the crossover settings where I was unable to decrease the subwoofer low pass filter below the THX recommended 80Hz even though I could set all of the other high pass filters below this value.

Odd, so I checked the user’s manual to find that the LFE low pass filter only supports four settings: 80, 90, 100, and 120 Hz.

The high frequency channels support high pass settings of 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 120, 150, and 200Hz. Why Onkyo would not provide the same low pass and high pass filter settings is beyond me but they did.

As a note on LFE setup, I will take issue with certain wording used in Onkyo’s manuals, as well as other manufacturers, to describe how to set main speakers appropriately for use with the LFE channel. The manual uses the term ‘full band’ for speakers with a ‘good sized’ woofer that can play bass ‘adequately’ without defining what ‘full band’ is by frequency response. ‘Full band’ is also the terminology in the crossover setting menu that implies the high pass filter is turned off. In the past, the manual for the TX-SR-602 that I owned used the terms ‘large’ or ‘small’ to control the high pass filter and suggested dependence on woofer size, 6 ½” as suggested transition, again without consideration of frequency response of bass driver.

This is confusing to newcomers: main speakers should only be put on settings such as ‘full band’ or ‘large’ if they can go at least as deep as the system subwoofer, and preferably only with true full band speakers able to go down to 20 Hz and are capable of sustaining the high SPL levels required of an LFE channel. Even then, overall system dynamic range will generally benefit from shifting the LFE burden from the main receiver/power amplifiers to the dedicated amplifiers in the subwoofer.

Regardless of the choice to use automatic setup or manual, owners of any system with an automatic setup routine are advised to go into the setup menus and manually verify the speaker settings. While automatic setup algorithms have been steadily improving, they are notoriously error prone. Go in, look at the settings, and make sure they make sense, because even good programs make some interesting selections. Case in point with the review receiver, the crossover frequencies were set differently between the surround and surround back channels even though the speakers are identical and there were some wide disparities between level and distance settings for individual speakers. The complexities of bass frequencies and room interaction often make this difficult for automatic setup routines to get correct and the Onkyo users manual points out that THX recommends setting subwoofer levels and distances manually for this very reason.

One other piece of advice while manually checking settings is to make sure that the receiver is set for 8 ohm speaker impedance. The provision of this setting on a receiver is to make Underwriter’s Laboratories happy under certain specific test conditions, but it is nothing more than a choke on output power, irrespective of the actual speaker impedance. As always, make sure the receiver is well ventilated, and if necessary, use active cooling such as a small fan to vent at the heat sinks. I did find that this particular receiver runs hot, so some sort of acoustically controlled active cooling is recommended, especially if the unit is to be installed in a confined space or enclosed cabinet.

Throughout my time with the TX-SR805, the only operational glitch I encountered was related to HDMI. When entering setup, on the fly, during playback from an HDMI source the receiver would sometimes be unable to reestablish signal lock and resume playing. Correcting this required turning the TX-SR805 off and then on again.

With the amount of crippling DRM built into HDMI that will cutoff playback if the copy protection system is unhappy for any reason, including DRM software/firmware glitches, and the high probability of imperfectly written code, the relock issue is much more likely an inherent HDMI problem than it is an Onkyo quality problem.