Hi all! Our local distributor carrying Onkyo closed. We've been using this brand for years and very happy with it. Our closest distributor caries Yamaha Adventage and to keep it simple for "just in time" jobs we're thinking of going with Yamaha. Anything we'd be disappointed with in regard to ease of setup and performance, any quirks? Much appreciated.
Happy Holidays all.

I'd say you'll even be happier with Yamaha. Excellent sound and easy integration with the top automation vendors. Also a nice start to a MusicCast system. It comes in the receiver so it's a nice chance to demo and sell extra zones after the fact. I had a few bad experiences with Onkyo receivers on projects I took over, so I never specified them on my own. I usually replaced them with Yamaha or Sony in the end.

Yamaha is a much nicer avr imho.

Bingo.
I've only had one problem with Yamaha: finding all the details in the manuals. Many subtle things are only explained in little notes after the main text of some category.

They also seem to want to save ink instead of make our lives easier: I've run across situations where I read the instructions on, say, Page 43, which refer me to Page 76 while I'm in the middle of doing the steps on Page 43. Writing a manual this way is irritating and unnecessary.

It's not a mater of saving ink, it's saving the cost to create and ship something that won't be read by the vast majority of people who buy or set up the equipment. Paper is heavy- a pdf weighs nothing.

Which manual has the page numbering problems? Care to post the model number?

It's like asking if moving from a Lada to a Mercedes would be a good choice.

You completely undermine your point here.
I'm not saying they have to print out a manual. I'm saying that the way they assemble it, crucial facts about how to make the thing work are peppered throughout the manual, and processes with several steps are presented with those steps on different pages.

As you said, a pdf weighs nothing -- so why do they insist on separating bits of information on different zero-weight pages?


There are no page-numbering problems. Instead, the arangement of the information is such that all the information needed to, for instance, set up the second zone, is not in one start-to-finish section.

In order to get the second zone set up properly, I had to call Yamaha.

No, sorry, but I'm not going to crack open my few notes on that system to suss out again what was so difficult.

You won’t regret Aventage.

We've been very happy with Yamaha over the years. In the rare case where there is an issue, they support the dealer. Stick with the Aventage series because they have more installer friendly features.

Over the last almost thirty years I've had two bad-out-of-the-box Yamaha receivers. IN A ROW! This was such a rare occurrence that our rep thought I must be doing something wrong. Then we never had another bad one.

Have been a devout D&M guy for a long time, and just had the honor of installing the flagship Marantz preamp on a project (made in Japan, gorgeous build quality). Made me proud, but that experience aside, have done a couple Aventage units and endured a nominal setup rookie experience. They seem bullet proof and sound quality was great (not tinny as I’d thought they were in the past). So, yeah- a little on the fence here...

Onkyo has the built for Sonos feature which can be nice to have in some cases. You can program the auto on feature to go to main room, zone 2, or both which can be nice. Also, at least in the past, they would allow you to select an HDMI video input, and then select an audio only source while keeping the video on screen, which is helpful for the customer that wants to watch video and listen to a different music source.

Yamaha's party mode is nice to have.

Yamaha does the whole 'audio input over the top of HDMI' too, has done for quite a long time.
The whole issue with Onkyo / Pioneer Corp + Integra is that they may not be around in a few years time. They are laying of 50% of their management and 30% of all staff globally. They haven't turned a profit in half a decade and are indicating that they're dropping consumer / home audio in favour of OEM car and 'branding opportunities'. Somewhat akin to Monster's approach.

Hmm good to know - I hadn't seen that. Even on the $500-$600 retail price models?

I'll say this about Yamaha, in ten years, I've only had to RMA one unit. It's my go to, because it's rock solid and IP control has never failed or been problematic.