Let's think about the J-Test and what was found in measuring the Onkyo for a moment. HDMI cable: A decent looking 6' length capable of high speed HDMI (officially rated as HDMI 1.3 but fine with my HDMI 1.4 3D TV), brand named 'ION' that I purchased for something like $20 about 2 years back at a local computer/supplies store. All results were made with the Onkyo in 'Pure Audio' mode to defeat any audio DSP/bass management. Remember that in my previous post, plugging in the HDMI TV cable added significant noise to the analogue pass-through. Since I want to check the performance in a more 'naturalistic' fashion, I made sure the TV was connected and on as well as my Blu-ray player (Panasonic BMP-TD220). Win8 AMD A10 'Trinity' HTPC -> HDMI/TosLink/coaxial cable -> ONKYO TN-NR1009 front stereo 'pre-out' -> shielded RCA -> E-MU 0404USB -> shielded USB -> Win8 laptopĬM6631A device used for asynchronous USB -> coaxial / TosLink conversion duties. Much depends on the analogue circuitry around that DAC so the measured results are more useful than just looking at the components individually.Īs usual, for the sake of full disclosure and opportunity to repeat/verify, here is the setup for these measurements:

Of course, you cannot just look at this specification and judge the quality of a DAC. These DAC chips are often found in consumer AV receivers and are lower spec'ed than most stand-alone DACs like the TEAC UD-501's PCM1795 with >120dB SNR. Some natural questions arise - how well did the designers shield noise from getting in (especially in light of the high analogue noise measured previously)? Is the jitter through the use of HDMI 'bad' (compared to TosLink and coaxial S/PDIF)? How does it compare to other stereo DACs?īased on the Onkyo specs sheet, the TX-NR1009 uses the TI PCM1690 6-channel + PCM1789 2-channel DAC chips. Today, I want to demonstrate the quality if we were to just use this device as a DAC - a look at the digital portion. In the last installment, we looked at passing an analogue audio signal through the Onkyo and found that noise can be an issue.

Just how bad is he also 'the master of none'? But like the proverbial 'Jack', it's useful to also consider the second part of that saying. In the real world, cost and space are considerations and AV receivers become the 'Jack-of-all trades' central device that most of us have in the home theater setup. Running separate components like multichannel processors/preamps to monoblock amplifiers are generally considered the ideal, 'cost no object' approach to home theater.

Onkyo receiver hdmi problems