Onkyo TX-SV343 AV-receiver

Those, who don't like excessive technical bells and whistles, should pay attention to Onkyo TX-SV343. Several minutes of communication is enough to establish a contact with it even without the instruction. The remote control doesn't also differ by complexity, allowing you, in addition to the amplifier, to control two tape recorders, CD player, to turn over stations, stored in the tuner's memory, and to do setting of the Pro Logic decoder. Each device has its own button field - there is no need in special explanations. There is no Dolby 3-stereo mode in Onkyo TX-SV343, which gives the possibility to connect only three frontal loudspeakers. Simple spring-loaded connectors for acoustics are used in the construction, although screw terminals at least for frontal loudspeakers are put in devices for such money.

We press Test-Tone button on the remote control for tuning of Pro Logic. Running through the speakers noise signal appears; then we press Ch-Sel button, which connects either Central or rear channels. Only now you can change the coefficients of the selected channels. The set coefficient is displayed on the display board of the amplifier. Ready? However, the first listening of Onkyo TX-SV343 showed that the volume of back speakers should be added. Again we have to repeat the whole order. I wish these regulations could be made directly on live sound. Because with our quality of video cassettes there is no guarantee that you won't make the setting under the every program... It's a pity that simple setting turns into a long procedure, but the result will reward you for your pains. One of the test video fragments plays flying around the room fly, and here its location was guessed at any point, so taking the newspaper it was possible to hunt after it even with bandaged eyes. A quiet atmosphere of household and game scenes is well transferred, especially than the action takes place in front of you when sound effects, being beyond the screen, accurately add the missing part of the picture, and thus the sense of belonging to current events creates. Powerful sounds of space explosions or piercing tires' squeal of passing through car showed that 15 W per each back channel is still not enough, so it is better here to choose speaker systems with high sensitivity.

The possibilities of the amplifier in Onkyo TX-SV343 turned out to be even greater at playing simple stereo records than in Surround. Small lack of "juiciness" in low frequencies is compensated over and above by good spatial instruments' localization of symphonic orchestra, which is successfully added by the accurate tonal balance. Apparently, while the development of Onkyo TX-SV343 the main emphasis was made exactly on the amplification part (data of measurements confirm this indirectly). Turning on Hall mode a bit increases plangency of sound, at the same time noises increase and a slight smearing of the source position is observed.

The tuner of the TX-SV343 receiver doesn't "catch" some stations at autotuning. In all fairness I must say that this happens with station of low signal level. Most likely it speaks about difficult reception conditions; on the other hand, this makes the receiver be small tender to interference, for example from household appliances. By the way, the antenna's location is not critical and doesn't affect the quality of reception.

Onkyo TX-SV343 AV-receiver photo