Onkyo 308 - great receiver - but a word of warning

[Juzzie Wuzzie]

"Upgraded" to an Onkyo 308 today - and it is fantastic and I like it's simplicity a lot more than then Onkyo 605 from which I upgraded. However, a word of warning - when using it with Sky HD it will not allow you to take the picture over HDMI and the sound over optical, meaning you lose out on Dolby Digital. Relatively annoying and hopefully fixed by Onkyo somehow with a firmware upgrade.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Manual pp29-30 suggests otherwise, but as already noted we are yet to receive review samples so unable to check this.

 

[d4v3pum4]

Surely after Sony and Yamaha made this mistake, no-one else would. If this wasn't the case with the **7 series receivers, I doubt it is the case now. Are you absolutely sure this is the case? Also to be considered an upgrade, I would have thought you would have had to go with the 608 model. I haven't compared them myself but the 308 is an entry level receiver, isn't it?

 

[Juzzie Wuzzie]

Andrew - hidden on page 17 in the last paragraph: "If signals are present at more than one input, the inputs will be selected automatically in the following order of priority: HDMI, digital, analog."

So need to switch off HDMI audio if possible from the Sky box, or have the Onkyo allow you to override the automatic selection?

DV4 - thus why an "upgrade" as opposed to an upgrade. I wanted speaker switching (rather than Zone 2 which isn't all that it is cracked up to be in that it only accepts analogue sources and all my sources are digital) and 3 HDMIs. I'm sure the 608 is a great piece of kit, but it greatly exceeds my needs at present.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Ah right - yes I saw that, but read the section I mentioned above as saying you could override this setting with a manual digital audio input selection.

 

[Juzzie Wuzzie]

Andrew - I try and get hold of another optical cable to isolate that it isn't a cable problem. However, "24" which according to Sky is DD (and came up as such on my Onkyo 605) did not do so into the Onkyo 308. I'll do some more trial and error ...

 

[Juzzie Wuzzie]

Not the cable.

Got directly in touch with Onkyo who got a very helpful technical guy called "Richard" to give me a call and suggest using the "manual override" that previous models used (holding down the Enter button until an "*" appeared next to the optical assignment). Didn't work, so back to square one. Might ask Richer Sounds to take the thing back and go for a Sony DH810 when they come out.

Slightly annoying still as Jack Bauer doesn't sound as good!

 

[quantumuk]

You can do it :-

The method has changed from the SRX07 and is 'buried' in the manual on Page 52 -54 (in the SR608 manual)

Solution :-

After assigning Optical to your HDMI input as normal under the Digital Input part of the Set-up menu
exit Set-up

Select your Satellite input (or whichever input you want to reassign)
Press 'Home' on the remote control
Select Audio followed by Audio Selector
Change to OPT

This can be done for each input individually

- I've tried it myself on the SR608 and it does work !

Andrew

www.quantumelectronics.co.uk

 

[Anonymous]

Andrew,

Thanks for this, I was struggling with this one at a customer's house last night who had just bought an SR608 from me. The manual seemed to be pretty clear cut that there was only the 'Automatic Priority' for incoming audio signals and I was beginning to think that Onkyo had made a major oversight regarding this.

Cheers,

Chris.

 

[Frank Harvey]

Welcome Crusty

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks David.

 

[Juzzie Wuzzie]

Still can't get it to work on a 308 ...

 

[Anonymous]

On the 308 it's slightly different. Pages 34 & 35 of your user manual expain it more clearly.

Basically you need to do the following:

1. Press the 'Receiver' button and then the 'Setup' button on the remote control and navigate to the 'Digital Audio' section of the main setup menu and assign whichever optical input you wish to use for audio for the chosen input name. (User manual pages 28-29)

2. You then come out of the setup menu and go to the input you are using for SkyHD.

3. Press the' Receiver' button and then the 'Audio' button on the remote control to acces the 'Audio Settings' menu. (User manual page 34)

4. Navigate to the 'Audio Selector' option and select 'Optical'. Press the 'Exit' button on the remote. (User manual page 35)

5. The amp is now setup to prioritise the optical input on that input name.

 

[Juzzie Wuzzie]

Champion! Now a perfect receiver!