techsamurai
Addicted to Fun and Learning
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- May 26, 2022
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I finally decided to give Dirac and new equipment a try. I bought a RZ50 last spring and I was too busy to set it up, then got another one and I'm finally setting it up.
The Onkyo is very easy to set up without Dirac and the On Screen Menus are amazing. My old Marantz is the SR8002 from 2008 and I also have a spare SR8001 from 2007.
The one thing the Onkyo has is cinematic impact - everything is like a movie theater and I'm saying that in a good but also a bad way. If I was new to home theater, I'd be happy with it because it's bombastic in even normal scenes.
I listened to a lot of stuff yesterday and I noticed that voices sound deeper (more echoy/boomy words my wife and daughter each used) making them less distinct. I've been watching a lot of Yellowstone the past week so I was very familiar with the voices through the Marantz. When I played it on the Onkyo, the first scene was a meeting with 2 women and 2 men (Costner) and the voices were very close together in pitch. The Marantz is ultra clear there even with lower streaming audio like DD - a woman's voice is very different than a man's voice.
In music, the Onkyo never grabbed me or my wife or my daughter. It seems to be doing things well and there's detail here and there but the overall presentation is almost robotic. In fact, both my wife and daughter told me to lower the volume while playing some of their favorite songs which is the clearest indication that it did NOT engage them and it wasn't that loud (-30db) The intro song to No Time To Die (with DTS, not Atmos) on the old Marantz left our jaws agape while I was really trying to like it with the Onkyo. The saxophone in Diana Krall's "Why Should I care?" didn't come to life. And it went on like that. Good but not great.
I'm going to set up Dirac next but can it possible fix the issues and get to the same level as the Marantz? I do have a UMIK1 and a microphone stand so I can take high level measurements.
The Onkyo is very easy to set up without Dirac and the On Screen Menus are amazing. My old Marantz is the SR8002 from 2008 and I also have a spare SR8001 from 2007.
The one thing the Onkyo has is cinematic impact - everything is like a movie theater and I'm saying that in a good but also a bad way. If I was new to home theater, I'd be happy with it because it's bombastic in even normal scenes.
I listened to a lot of stuff yesterday and I noticed that voices sound deeper (more echoy/boomy words my wife and daughter each used) making them less distinct. I've been watching a lot of Yellowstone the past week so I was very familiar with the voices through the Marantz. When I played it on the Onkyo, the first scene was a meeting with 2 women and 2 men (Costner) and the voices were very close together in pitch. The Marantz is ultra clear there even with lower streaming audio like DD - a woman's voice is very different than a man's voice.
In music, the Onkyo never grabbed me or my wife or my daughter. It seems to be doing things well and there's detail here and there but the overall presentation is almost robotic. In fact, both my wife and daughter told me to lower the volume while playing some of their favorite songs which is the clearest indication that it did NOT engage them and it wasn't that loud (-30db) The intro song to No Time To Die (with DTS, not Atmos) on the old Marantz left our jaws agape while I was really trying to like it with the Onkyo. The saxophone in Diana Krall's "Why Should I care?" didn't come to life. And it went on like that. Good but not great.
I'm going to set up Dirac next but can it possible fix the issues and get to the same level as the Marantz? I do have a UMIK1 and a microphone stand so I can take high level measurements.
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