Receivers

Also take a look at Integra which is the upscale Onkyo brand - one other thought - I would look for a product that has the Audyssey MultiEQ function - IME it will do more for bringing your room together then matching the THX standard

Audyssey is a third party that basically uses the DSP as an EQ - they license various versions to OEMs (manufacturers)

Here is the page from their site listing all consumer HT receivers - maybe you can have it all!

http://www.audyssey.com/products/index.html

Short answer Mantaray is that you can mix and match to your hearts content. There is nothing that prevents it, and no reason not to.

THX is a performance standard, developed by Lucas Films to make sure that Return of the Jedi sounded the way the team at Skywalker Ranch (the Lucas recording studio) intended it to. Truth is it never really caught on with anybody in the consumer world but the manufacturers and the sales guys at the big box stores.

If you are concerned with compatibility, as long as you have the ability to decode THX you can play it back on any speakers. As Shiva points out, not much content is available anyway.

If you are setting up a home theater now, what you care about in the receiver is that it is HDMI 1.3 compliant, and has HDMI pass through. And that it can decode the Dolby Digital-HD AND DTS- Master audio formats that are being used on some BluRay tracks.

These are uncompressed tracks and they sound amazing.

Here is the salient part from Wikipedia:

The THX system is not a recording technology, and it does not specify a sound recording format: all sound formats, whether digital (Dolby Digital, SDDS) or analog (Dolby Stereo, Ultra-Stereo), can be "shown in THX." THX is mainly a quality assurance system. THX-certified theaters provide a high-quality, predictable playback environment to ensure that any film soundtrack mixed in THX will sound as near as possible to the intentions of the mixing engineer. THX also provides certified theaters with a special crossover circuit whose use is part of the standard. Certification of an auditorium entails specific acoustic and other technical requirements; architectural requirements include a floating floor, baffled and acoustically treated walls, no parallel walls (to reduce standing waves), a perforated screen (to allow center channel continuity), and NC30 rating for background noise.

that's a good question - as you know the weight is usually in the power supply, transformers and caps. would not give me a warm fuzzy feeling unless the Pio is using Class D amp technology.

I am very pleased with my Integra pre/pro which is the high end offering from Onkyo.

What will ultimately make a big difference in performance is the Audyssey MultiEQ function. Onkyo offers that in their new TX AVR series - Pioneer does not offer the Audyssey technology.

Now that I have it and have heard the difference Audyssey makes in my room - I would stretch, scheme and even wait to get it.

The only thing I would not do is buy an AVR that does not have it.

I had a B&K 305 I purchased used when I first started. It was a beautifully built tank - real made in the USA stuff. Power was there but it never made magic for me...

In the manual and with tech support it was clear that B&K is oriented toward the professional installer market. They did not seem to be set-up for consumers.

The seller told me he was selling because the thing was a PITA to use. I should have listened. The user interface (GUI) is the worst (least intuitive, most confusing) I have ever seen in this type of product. Normally I would shrug it off but an AVR is exactly the kind of product that needs to be easy to use so you can take advantage of all the capabilities.

One day it didn't make music anymore. Customer Service was not particularly helpful. Nor would they provide a quote - I don't find this unreasonable - or even an estimate - but you have to think twice about shipping 65#s cross country... to pay a minimum bench fee to get an estimate.

If I had loved the unit I might have gone for it. But the real issue was that the upgrade path was limited and would still be two generations back. Naturally the unit would never have HDMI, be able to decode the new codecs etc. It was clear that I had reached a dead end and I decided that there was no point in spending any more.

I actually got a few hundred bucks for it, guaranteed DOA, which says something very positive about their reputation.

I have not looked at their site to see if they have updated their offerings. But I have to think you can do better for the money.

Manta -

you've got to poke around a bit but this one is as good as any of them:

http://www.avsforum.com/

BTW the whole rating game is one of the reasons that a lot of us are doing separates - get a pre/pro with the features you want, and then get whatever amp floats your boat - anthem has a sweet one that comes up here on the Gon for $750 or so - and there is NuForce, Pass, Krell, Butler and on and on.

There is some additional cost in a set of ICs to connect the two, and an additional power cord but chances are very good that you will end up with superior sound.

I personally think that it will be at least 5 years before the current standards evolve enough that you will even begin to consider changing out the pre/pro.

The big factor is that the movie studios are very slow in releasing material that even takes advantage of the current technology. And a lot of it, like deep color, has not even been implemented. Classic chicken and the egg - the studios are waiting to see consumer demand, consumers are waiting for something they can buy...

Point being that the only reason to upgrade from todays standards will be because the content you want is only available in a new, demonstrably superior format. My bet is they are still selling DVDs in five years...

I am equally sure that you will be buried with a good amp...

Yep - it can get pretty deep here =) You'd think none of us had anything better to do LOL

IMHO If you're looking at separates, put the Integra 9.9 pre/pro at or near the top