Need more power from ONKYO 905

[admin_exported]

Hi I have recently purchased an onkyo 905 reciever which is powering some B W xt series speakers the xt4 xtc xt2 pack with a pv1 sub. It sounds amazing and is great 90 percent of the time. On the odd occasion you wont to seriously blast a film out the spakers are capable of so much more than this amp can throw at them. What are my options is there a more powerfu reciever out there or do I need to add an extra amp into my package. Any thoughts.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Gawd, how loud do you want it? I run an 875 with PMC OB1s, and there's power to spare.

If you're running a 5.1 system you can switch the amp over to bridged operation for the front left and right speakers, whcih will give you lots more power.

See manual p24.

(Mind you, I do run a pair of Musical Fidelity 550K superchargers on the front left and right channels, but that's for sound quality reasons, not absolute level).

 

[Clare Newsome]

I'm also a tad gobsmacked- I run a 905 into Mordaunt Short Performance 6s (and, oddly enough, a PV1) with no problems.

Are you sure the receiver set-up ran properly? Could be that it's setting the speaker dB too low, which means you'll be apparantly having to turn the receiver's volume right up. It's worth re-running the set-up, or preferably checking it yourself with a sound pressure level meter (see our How To video here)

 

[Anonymous]

It is a large room and as I said majority of time no problem. Will look at bridging also on set up it has set speaker levels all around -3 db so assume can make more power increasing this.

 

[professorhat]

As another 905 owner, I'm more than gobsmacked - do you live in a stadium?!

 

[Anonymous]

LOL!! As another 905 owner, I'm flabbergasted also!

I have a big lounge also, and run my 905 out to some B&W 683 fronts, HTM61 centre, and DS3 rears, no sub-woofer (yet?), and basically I can't run it above -15db on a Dolby Digital movie without it bordering on being deafening, and hearable on my neighbours lawn on the opposite side of the road.

You must have a setting wrong... surely?

 

[Anonymous]

Actually, a huge difference I noticed was when I swapped out some temporary (knowingly inadequate) 'install' speaker cables, for the Chord Carnival Silverscreen I finally settled on. The amp and speakers suddenly jumped to life.

What cables are you using?

 

[Anonymous]

I am using Qed silver anniveerasry xt as reccomended in the shop.I have changed how it is set up and now run the sat hd to tv and the optical lead to the amp this has for the first time allowed the amp to decode in dolby digital which has made a big difference.Just that the speakers seem to want a lot more power.

My Panasonic Blue Ray BD 30 is causing issues though as it wont decode in Dolby Digital always comes up multichannel it is connected by the hdmi lead to the amp does this need to be connected by an optical lead as well or am I being dumb and have something turned off on the amp.

 

[Anonymous]

The QED cabling should be plenty good enough, so you're okay there.

Reading how you've got your Sky HD setup however, sounds a bit weird, and could have been the route of your problems. My suggestions:

[*]Connect your 905 to your TV from the HDMI main monitor output via a good HDMI lead (Chord 1.3 Silver Plus is a crowd pleaser)
[*]set your 905 upscale to 1080p
[*]Connect Sky HD video signal to 905 (i.e. not TV...) via a good HDMI lead
[*]set your Sky HD output resolution to Auto
[*]set your 905 CBL/SAT button to receive video signal from the correct HDMI input
[*]Sky HD audio signal to 905 via good optical cable (I use a QED Performance Optical)
[*]set your Shy HD optical output to Dolby Digital
[*]set your 905 to CBL/SAT button to receive audio signal from the right Optical input

Now each time you select the CBL/SAT button on your 905 remote, the TV will be getting the best quality picture, and your 905 the right audio, and it should blow you away.

As for your BD-30, I suggest you do the above but replace all the Sky HD suggestions for your BD-30.

This way your 905 will effectively act as a video 'hub', and you only have one set of cabling going into your TV. You'll also get the best upscaling.

Do it right, and you only need to press one button to switch to Sky HD and one button to switch to your BD-30, and all the necessary video and audio should switch with it.

Sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs here, but you sound like you had it connected up a bit weird and wacky!

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks I dont understand though why you need optical cables for the sound as thought HDMI was supposed to do both but I know wity the sky it only does dolby digital if I use the optical cable on it.

My new tv will not turn up for another 3 weeks due to the stand it is going on which means using a hd ready set is it still worth putting rthe up scaling to 1080p as tv only does 1080i or 720p

 

[Clare Newsome]

You only need the optical cable for the Sky box, which only outputs stereo via its HDMI connection. With your Blu-ray player, the HDMI cable will carry everything.

And if your TV will handle a 1080p feed fine, then feed it that from the Onkyo.

 

[Anonymous]

Is there any reason why I can not get the Panassoni BD30 to decode in dolby digital it always has the multichannel function on and can see a pcm logo on the amp I have it connected via hdmi to the amp and then to the tv. Even if the dvds say dolby digital on them it still sits in the multichannel mode. Maybe that is dolby digital

 

[Andrew Everard]

Is the player set to Bitstream output? See manual p23. If not, it's converting the audio to LPCM

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Andrew Everard:Is the player set to Bitstream output? See manual p23. If not, it's converting the audio to LPCM

I can feel a Eureka moment coming....

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you it was not set to bit stream. Suddenly the world is a better place and it sounds awesome. Feel like I have wasted the last 2 weeks so might watch every thing a gain.

thanks for the help.