Hey, I've been shopping around for stereo equip. lately and this is what I've come up with:
I'm picky when it comes to sound quality, I like a very full sound and I've found a lot of the home theatre receivers in this price range don't produce it. Namely Kenwood and Sony, Poineer too, didn't do well at this price range in a 5.1 channel receiver.
Then came Onkyo. At first I thought it was just too expensive, but I bought an Onkyo SR-500 and the comparable Sony (around $200, can't remember the model) and the Onkyo blows it away as far as sound quality. I tested the two side-by side, with one stereo channel (R or L) through each receiver and then each receiver output to a speaker. This was about as good of a test as you can get. Onkyo is by far the best I've tried.
So now I have an Onkyo stereo receiver (tx-8211) and the tx-sr500 in my room right now, doing the same test. They're about the same. So now I'm trying to decide if I want to go for the surround receiver for another $100 or take the stereo for $200. They're pretty equal in sound quality as far as I can tell. Hope this helps. If you have the funds, I'd def. reccomend purchasing more than one and testing them in your home (assuming you're buying from somewhere that you can return it to). But I've spent like a month now looking and Onkyo is the best quality for the slight increase in price. I'd def. reccomend it. Any questions, just ask.
scott
Posted on
If you truly don't want to exceed the $300.00 limit, I would suggest you look at the Pioneer 811