Hi all, I just bought a Onkyo 502 from eCost, which got many many good reviews on the net. But when I play music from CD, the sound quality is very unimpressive. The high part of human voice (I played Norah Jones "come away with me") sounds like "pierced" with vibration like noise. This happens when the sound intensity is high. I got it with low bassoon, too. And the highs of instruments, like violin, is not that bright, but feels flat. Not sure if this depiction make sense. Anyway, I wonder if anyone who owns a 502 ever had similar problem? Or just I got a lemon? I am considering exchange for another one. Besides, I am not sure if it has anything to do with that I use a not so good DVD player and my laptop to play the CDs.
edster922
Unregistered guest
Posted on
I had an Onkyo 601 and returned it for a Marantz 5400 for the same reason: weak musical performance. Onkyo's higher end models (701 and up) are supposed to be better, but the lower end ones are mainly good for HT which doesn't demand nearly as much finesse.
Cheap mass-market DVD players which provide better than average CD quality playback are Toshiba, Sony, and Pioneer---but I doubt they would make as huge of a difference as the receiver and in particular, the speakers. What speakers do you have?
Edster, thanks for your message! The DVD player is a Toshiba one. Less than one year old, but the disk tray already can not operate in and out correctly. Don't think it is a good one. That's why I tried with my laptop CD drive. But doesn't make much difference. The speakers are AR 2052 shelf ones. Not any high end, but I guess good enough for music. I also tried with earphones to exclude speaker factors. The fuzzy noise happened too. I saw reviews saying the Onkyo provide clear sound. That's only for movies? Sigh. Just saw eCost return policy. They don't even accept Onkyo products for return. Thanks anyway!