Are you sitting down? Amazing story follows ...

The other day I contacted "Approved Audio Service, Inc.," an authorized Onkyo warranty repair shop, about 1.5 hour drive away. Larry asked "so what's the problem?". I told him, and he goes ... "oh, I know what that is - and oh, yeah I have the parts, bring it in - it'll take about an hour."     

Took off at noon amd returned at about 4:30PM - now listening to the silky strings of Beethoven's 2nd on Blu-ray. Appears to be all fixed.

Watching Larry was poetry in motion. His shop was like a 747 cockpit. Instruments, screens, tools, wires, etc. in a huge semi-circle, with my sick puppy in the middle.

Now I will definitely buy that 2-year warranty extension, because I know I can get a quality repair if needed. A small insurance to pay for my $1400 investment.

And yes, the whole thing was covered. I spent only my time and some gas to drive there. They unloaded the unit from my car, unboxed it, fixed it, then re-boxed and reloaded into my car. Bim-bam-boom!

Anybody in this neck of the woods with any kind of electronics to fix - I would highly recommend these guys. 

Oh noooo .... stay tuned, but my baby is sick again. This time it is also a well-known problem. No audio. There is a redesigned HDMI board available. The problem is so pervasive that I have heard that Onkyo will even repair an off-warranty unit. But mine is thankfully still on warranty. It only shows up after a couple of years, I guess. Brought my son's TX-NR509 downstairs to substitute. Same silky sound as its big brother.

Quoting Parsec:

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Stealing from the kids!!!   

Go one step further and tell your son it's his one that is broken and he has to make the 1.5hr drive to get it fixed (then just swap them back when he gets back)

   

Sadly this repair will not be done in a day. Onkyo strictly controls the fix, probably because it is so expensive. So, once I drop off the unit, the problem will need to be validated before they ship the board out.

But don't worry, the kids are now in thier 30s and married, and only visit every few months. They don't cry so much any more. 

Quoting mediadogg:

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...11.3 channels ...

I lied. It is actually 9.3. 
Still sounds pretty awesome. Someday maybe I will add the back surounds.

Oh, thanks for asking. Now I get some feedback on what I did. 

OK, left + right Front (wide range speakers), fed through subwoofers. After room calibration, manually reset the cutoff HZ to "full range". Fronts are just above ear height, on either side of the screen, as you would expect. [Tally = 2.2]

Also have left + right Front High, set above and wider spaced than Fronts. Center is placed just below the screen. It is wide range speaker, identical to fronts. The amp is able to use the Highs to make voices appear to come from the middle of the screen - that's the claim anyway. [Tally = 5.2]

Then I put left + right Front Wide on side walls well ahead of sweet spot listening area. [Tally = 7.2]

Then I have left + right Surround on side walls, just forward of the corners (so that places them just behind the sweet spot). These are effectively Rear surrounds, except they are probably spaced too wide of the sweet spot. [Tally = 9.2]

Finally, the third SW is in a back corner, connected as SW1. After calibration, I tweak the setting a bit to blend with the front SWs, while sitting in the sweet spot. [Final tally = 9.3]

My placement is similar to one of the Onkyo diagrams, and I realize there are more options.

How does that setup strike you? (I call it 9.3, as I have 9 speakers + 3 SWs)

The amp claims to be able to drive Back surrounds as well, sacrificing the Zone outputs. If I do that, I will probably bring the Surrounds forward a bit, to be exactly on either side of the sweet spot. But things already sound pretty good. The room isn't all that big anyways.

My wife and I watched The Day After Tomorrow last night, and man - in the opening scene where the ice starts cracking - you are there in the middle of it. Almost scary.

Quoting Parsec:

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Thanks for the description mediadogg, it has given me some ideas.

Well, it's fun for me also, to have some kind of interaction. 

(Now that I got some validation from you, I went ahead and added some more annotation in case some others come along and want to understand and comment on our discussion.)

I'm about 60% along on my saving for a new 4K receiver. Looking hard at the 9.2 versions of Denon, Onkyo and Marantz. Any opinions welcomed. In another thread, I got some advice on a low-end Onkyo to use as a front-end to the audio section of my venerable TX-NR3008. I'm still considering that option. It's mainly the weight and space issue of having two monster devices. But the Onkyo audio section delivers stupendous sound.

My setup now is using good quality HDMI switches front-ending the Onkyo, my 4K LG TV and my 4K Epson projector. Workable, but complex and sometimes the HDMI handshaking gets screwed up.

Again, any ideas are welcomed, and anybody who wants a good deal on the Onkyo (and I also have an Epson 5020Ube), send me a PM.

Quoting specise_8472:

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...
I used to always get Marantz, but now they are just Denon as they were brought out. And they are just not the same now.

Thanks for those interesting points about the brands. And yes, I fully intend have Atmos support. In fact, even my old receiver supports enough channels for Atmos. I just tilt my Front-High speakers in such a way that the sound bounces off the top of the ceiling in front of the "sweet spot," and I jacked up the volume setting a couple of dB to compensate for the losses. So I am running essentially 7.2.2. (I actually have 4 sub woofers, but they are paired on each SW channel).

I agree about the 7.2.4 being preferred. Not sure I feel up to mounting two more speakers. If I can sell off some more old gear, I will go ahead and get a full 11.2 receiver (configurable to 7.2.4).

Here is idea I am thinking about:

Get this:

And use it as a front end (using HDMI out for audio) to my existing Onkyo audio section.