Marantz

Typically the latter; especially when you're talking about commodity items such as receivers. I couldn't care less how many people sell the AVR we spec into our jobs; we don't itemize proposals and we sell ourselves and services/expertise, not parts.

Since I had a repair shop for almost 30 years, I have a better understanding of product failures than some. Every manufacturer goes through a phase where their products fail. The brands that you are hot on today as being bulletproof have had their issues in the past. It is almost never a design problem on their part, it is usually a failure of a part supplied by someone else (Example: capacitors on 2005-2008 Samsung televisions) that did not meet advertised spec or an assembly that had failure rates that were totally unexpected (HDMI boards). The manufacturer however will always take the heat.

I have been with Integra since the beginning. I have had a small quantity of HDMI failures, all taken care of responsibly. I have not had a 50% nor a 100% failure rate that some quote, therefore I will stick with this protected line which you will not find on the Internet. It's not for everyone, but it works for me.

BTW, Onkyo is available everywhere for less than our cost, so why one would consider it as an equivalent line or a steady supplier is beyond me.

Well thank you for that information - it was interesting.

Not sure how it answers the question but never mind.

Happy New Year!

Yup. Weve been an ONKYO dealer over 25 years... Liking Yamaha a lot these days!

When I first posted issues with Onkyo HDMI a few years ago. Interesting to see that it was not just me. Really weird how such a large company that did not go into business yesterday has such poor quality control

Its sad... How totally whored - out ONKYO is! Frys sells it at near cost as a loss leader.

Yamaha is looking and sounding better and better.

Sony ES

Hkw are they working out for you?
What's the lowdown...?

I've tried to explain before, the mfr takes the heat but is often not to blame for out of tolerance parts or assemblies purchased from other companies.

At times you might chalk it up to bad design or quality control, but I can't tell you how many repairs we did for various mfrs where the transistors in the power supply did not meet spec or capacitors supplied by Sanyo leaked and caused issues. Laser optic assemblies by Sony died like flies. The list is incredibly long, and I wouldn't have faulted the mfr, but since their name is on it, they have to take the heat.

Usually the mfr makes a running change if the issue shows up during current production. Service centers get a service bulletin indicating this part needs to be upgraded to such and such to improve reliability. When the failure does not show up for 2,3,4 years, then a service bulletin helps but you have years of production before the failures manifested themselves and some damage control has to be employed.

I write this as a former service center owner, and although I don't fault you for dropping a brand that kicked your tail, there is likely much more to the story than "lousy quality control".