receiver vote?

[get_zwole]

Hey guys i have L/R/C cmt 340se's and an elemental designs a2-300 sub. Ill be watching all blu rays and music from my PS3 and ill have a oppo sacd and dvd a player soon. Im kicking it between these two these are best bang for buck in my pricerange that i can find. Which one would you choose and why. Thanks and if you would choose another please list it much appreciated. Im leaning towards the yammy because i can get it for 349 shipped. also which one has best SQ for the money thats the main thing im looking for.

[Mr.Lawrence]

Are you looking for specific features? What's your budget? Have you considered buying pre-owned?

If you purchase pre-owned you can probably get more receiver for the same $$$.

I like Denon, but I don't know that it is any better than Onkyo or Yahama.

[get_zwole]

i dont have a problem buying preowned i just dont wanna wait months for something to come up. I wanna stay under 500 bucks. Hdmi is a must and all hd surround is a must but my ps3 pretty much does all that. So i was just thinking 349 shipped for the yamaha with 2hdmi's and pretty much everything else i think i need would be a darn good buy.

[Maniac_Matt85]

I'd stick with the 663.

The 705 is plagued with problems. Lip Sync issues, overheating.

BTW with the 399 deal, you may be able to get Best Buy to match it. That's what I did.

[get_zwole]

online best buy is showing a 499 price i doubt there gonna match 150 bucks. who knows though. I think i may go with the 663 just because its cheaper and i dont have to worry about heat. Anybody have anything to say about which one has better SQ or auto eq out of them?

[Maniac_Matt85]

I was able to get BB to match JR.com, but YMMV. It is definitely worth a shot though, if you decide to go the Yamaha route.

SQ is a very subjective topic. I haven't personally compared the 663 to the 705 so I couldn't tell you.

For EQ. The 663 uses YPAO. I haven't had any problems with it yet.

The 705 uses Audessey EQ.

With either, you will still most likely need to manually tweak the speaker distances, volumes, and crossovers. The Auto set-up/EQ has a hard time getting those right.

[rogerm]

Hey guys i have L/R/C cmt 340se's and an elemental designs a2-300 sub. Ill be watching all blu rays and music from my PS3 and ill have a oppo sacd and dvd a player soon. Im kicking it between these two these are best bang for buck in my pricerange that i can find. Which one would you choose and why. Thanks and if you would choose another please list it much appreciated. Im leaning towards the yammy because i can get it for 349 shipped. also which one has best SQ for the money thats the main thing im looking for.

You might want to check out the AVR reviews in last months Playback mag. Six are reviewed, the Onkyo SR705 scored the highest overall. http://magazine.playbackmag.net/playback/200805web/

[get_zwole]

welp thanks for the votes and help guys. I just got a wild hair and ordered a onkyo 606 for 349 shipped. I know i didnt talk about it but it has everything i need plus 4 hdmi's unlike yamaha's 2 so i pulled the trigger on it. Hopefully it will be what i want thanks again for the help cant wait to get it.

[robruffo]

Unless you own one the very rare Blu-ray players that cannot output HD-audio formats via PCM (there are almost none of these, and no HD-DVD players with this problem), you do not need a receiver that can decode these formats itself, just a receiver that can produce sound from HDMI PCM information. Decoding is not an artistic/subjective process like digital to analog is, and there is only way of doing it. Much like decompressing a zip file, it always gives the same result - whether you use winzip or winrar.

Internal Hd-audio decoding is a useless feature.