Does the "600" Series Onkyos --Specifically the '605 -- Do TRUE HDMI Passthrough?

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Originally Posted by fireman325

Klipsch speakers are known to be "bright", and some people even consider them "harsh". This is because of the horn style tweeter. The brightness allows them to excel (in most peoples' opinions) for use as home theater speakers where movie watching or gaming is the primary use because they're very dynamic and "in your face". However, many people find the brightness to become very harsh and/or fatiguing for extended periods of music listening. Again it's all a matter of personal preference, and some people absolutely love Klipsch for music speakers, but I think most people who have Klipsch systems use them primarily for HT rather than music.

Other things to consider are what you're driving them with and how much power you're pushing. Some receivers have a more laid back type of sound and many people say that Marantz receivers in particular help "tame" the brightness somewhat and that a Marantz/Klipsch combination produces a very pleasing sound. Another thing to look at is the amount of power. Even though the Klipsch are among the more efficient speakers out there, I've still seen many posts stating that increasing the level of power (adding an amp for example) also helped to tame them. This could possibly be due to cleaner power from a 'smoother' running amplifier. I couldn't say for sure. The only receiver I've ever had is the Onkyo 605 I currently have. Either way, I can't comment on either of these possibilities from personal experience, but I've seen both posted enough times that I don't readily dismiss either one. I'm hoping to upgrade my receiver in a few months and the only two brands of receivers I'm really considering are Marantz and Pioneer Elite. I'm leaning mostly toward the Pio Elite due to availability and a couple of other extenuating circumstances.

Thank you very much for your honest opinions and input.

Unless something radical happens in HT in the next couple of years, I plan on holding onto my Onkyo 605 -- it has enough power for my listening room and has the onboard new codec decoding, and I suspect it would power whatever room it would move to when we get into a house...

You brought up Marantz, and I would like to say that I have not heard any of their receivers yet, but I have used their CD products, and have owned a couple of changers and a CD recorder from the brand; recently, I replaced an old Marantz CC-67 changer with their new CC4001, and the copy I received from Crutchfield has been troublesome from the day I put it in my rack. The changer doesn't remember the programmed memory sometimes when you program tracks on five discs, and it skips a disc whenever it feels like. For this reason, I've kind of put the brand on the back burner because I feel their quality has diminished a bit (Denon is the same company, BTW). Up until now, I have always felt Marantz to be the "affordable end of high end," but like other brands that go mass market too quickly, something has happened to their stuff. When my Marantz DR700 CD recorder recently died after many, many years of use (over 10), I was going to go with a Marantz Professional CD recorder to replace it (they no longer make consumer-grade CD recorders). Because of my experience with the new changer, I decided to go with a TASCAM professional recorder instead.

That said, in receivers, I have always just considered Onkyo and Denon (well, for "affordable" options, so to speak) because I had been hearing for years that these two brands are simply doing the "best" receivers out there.

But based on the fact that I plan on hooking up my next set of speakers (which will be tower floorstanders at least for the mains) to my Onkyo 605, what brand would you recommend? The unit puts out 90 watts a channel in two channel mode (driven), but we can estimate it will crank even in multichannel mode...