What Hi Fi Sound and Vision
17 JUL 2007
Onkyo TX-SR875
This is everything we want from a grand’s-worth of receiver right now – Onkyo is bang on form
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Nearly all the news is good where the TX-SR875 is concerned. In fact, it’s brimming with positives, so let’s start with a negative. It’s a theme we reprise a lot with Onkyo lately – but as long as it turns out equipment that looks like this, we’ll keep saying it. The TX-SR875 seems to have been styled by committee, or by a precocious child with a setsquare.
But like Peter Beardsley, this Onkyo is as talented as it is homely. Even before it’s plugged in, it’s begun to impress. HDMI switching, comprehensive automatic set-up, video processing and upscaling, plus support for and decoding of Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD mean the Onkyo is in the vanguard of next-generation receivers.
It’s safe to say the TX-SR875 makes more of the Flags of Our Fathers soundtrack than any price rival. It creates an extraordinarily wide soundstage, giving the impression that your speakers are all ten feet further away than they actually are.
Deft and dextrous
The classic Onkyo signature of absolutely thunderous drive and attack is to the fore – the ’875’s dramatic dynamic potency is revealed during the naval bombardment in Chapter 4 – but it’s a more rounded performer than its predecessors. This Onkyo is a deft, dextrous device, just as capable of raising the hair on the back of your neck as it is cuffing you ‘round the ear. It steers effects promptly and precisely, isolates dialogue nicely and does it all with an unshowy authority.
An even greater surprise is the Onkyo’s facility with music. Once it would have stomped home well behind the likes of an Arcam, but the ‘875 delivers a natural, uncoloured stereo sound, well focused and well judged. True, the Arcam AVR280 (£1200) is better resolved, but the Onkyo is easy to consider as an amplifier for all your home entertainment needs. It’s a deeply impressive receiver.
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