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This has to be one of the easiest reviews we’ve written of late because to describe all the features, all we need do is say: it has everything. And then some. Further, it just took out the Sound+Image 2010 Awards for AV Receiver of the Year Over $4000. So no shyness, we reckon this is the best available at the price. Why do we gush so?
Equipment
Want a home theatre receiver with extensive support for other zones? The Only TX-NR5007 will do that nicely, thank you very much. You have a projector, so you want a receiver that supports two HDMI displays (one for the projector, and one for an LCD TV for everyday viewing)? No worries here. This receiver can feed two HDMI devices at the same time. You can also set one or the other as the controlling connection when it comes to managing output resolution and so on.
Of course this unit can convert analogue video to HDMI, and scale it up and deinterlace it, as it can with HDMI video being fed to its eight(!) HDMI inputs. To make sure that this is done properly, it uses HQV Reon-VX processing.
For automatic deinterlacing, HQV currently provides the best performance we’ve seen, and that’s the case with this receiver as well. You can also choose a ‘Film’ mode which imposes a strong but not fool-proof film bias to the deinterlacing. The unit includes ISF Day and Night settings if you want to get in a calibrator to set up your system.
The only disappointment on the video front: the attractive graphic set-up menu is output at 576p, rather than overlaying the current video, so your display device may have to switch resolutions.
The ‘NR’ in the unit’s name stands for ‘Network Receiver’, so with its built-in Ethernet port you get access to the audio content of your computer (including FLAC and WMA Lossless) and internet radio. The unit can also upgrade its firmware over the internet.
It decodes everything, and offers a full implementation of Dolby Pro Logic IIz, so that you can have a full nine-channel system running, including centre rear speakers and front height ones. Once all the DSP work (three Aureus DSP chips from TI) and the decompression of the incoming audio are achieved, the unit uses 32-bit Burr Brown DACS to deliver audiophile quality analogue sound to its nine amplifiers.
Performance
Automatic set-up — plus a whole bunch of audio processes — come from Audyssey. The auto set-up insists on you running through the whole thing three times to provide for a range of room positions, so it can be slower than some systems. The exceptional versatility of this receiver means that set-up can be a bit complicated, but the tradeoff is that you get lots of global settings for the receiver as a whole, and then individual tweaking capability for each input.
But one simple change that would offer a marked improvement to the installation would be for Onkyo to abandon its default ‘All Channel Stereo’ sound mode for two channel sources. This sound mode is useful only for parties. Either Stereo or Dolby Pro Logic IIx would be a better default.
Where normally we’d quote a simple figure to specify the power output for this receiver, unfortunately, the way Onkyo specifies this makes it hard to extract a figure we consider both useful and plausible. The figure it gives — 145W per channel into eight ohms from 20 to 20,000 hertz at no more than 0.05% THD — is apparently for the ‘North American’ model. For ‘Others’ the claim is ‘9ch x 220W at 6 ohms, 1 kHz, 1 ch driven (IEC)’. The American model is significantly different to ours, with different switching arrangements and a different transformer.
But, in the end, who cares? Regardless of measurements, this is a true powerhouse. It’s just quite how much of a powerhouse that is uncertain.
In practice, it happily drove several different sets of speakers — efficient or otherwise, either normal or low in impedance — confidentally to thunderous levels, with a complete lack of stress.
So what more, really, can you ask for?
How about a universal remote? As reviewers, we don’t often use universal remotes — we change kit so often that changiong the codes wouldn’t be worth the effort. So we just use whichever remote happens to work.
But the Onkyo TX-NR5007 receiver has an interestingly different way of programming the remote. It doesn’t require you to enter a four or five digit code from a list at the back of the manual, although you can do that if you want. Nor does it require you to zap all the codes from an existing remote, although you can do that too if you want. Instead, you work through the receiver’s set-up menu. You type in the first three letters of the brand of, say, your TV. It presents a list. You choose, say, ‘Samsung’. It tells you to point the remote at the receiver and press ‘Enter’. You do that. The receiver uses IR to dump the control code for the device into the remote control. You try the controls with the remote. If it doesn’t work, you select the option on the receiver’s menu and it tries again with the next code for that brand.
As it happened, the right code for the Samsung TV we were using was about the fifth in the list, so it might have been more efficient to use the printed list. Still, this is a cool bonus on a superb overall product.
Onkyo TX-NR5007 AV receiver
Price: $5999
Warranty: Two years
Good:
Award-winning performance
All formats including 9-channel Pro-Logic IIz
Tweakable auto-set-up
Bad:
That tweakable auto set-up takes time
Set-up menu fixed at 576p
Rated power: 9 channels, see text
Inputs: 4 x optical digital audio (1 on front), 3 x coaxial digital audio, 8 x analogue stereo audio (1 on front), 1 x 7.1 channel analogue audio, 1 x phono, 5 x composite video (1 on front), 4 x S-Video, 3 x component video, 8 x HDMI (1 on front), 1 x Onkyo Universal Port, 2 x USB (1 on front), 1 x Ethernet, 1 x calibration microphone
Outputs: 2 x analogue stereo audio, 1 x 9.2 channel analogue audio pre-out, 2 x composite video, 2 x S-Video, 1 x component video, 2 x HDMI, 1 x 6.5mm headphone (front panel)
Zone: Composite video, stereo audio & 12 volt trigger for Zone 2; Stereo
audio & 12V trigger for Zone 3, highly configurable speakers
Other: IR In/Out, 1 x RS-232C, Onkyo R1 Remote Control
Dimensions (whd): 435 x 199 xx 464mm
Weight: 25kg
MYM: Amber Technology
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