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Gabe Lowe is a Data Storage Professional residing in Durham, NC. Upon first getting a taste of surround sound in the late 1980's, Gabriel was hooked. I started with a couple of my Dolby Atmos enabled discs to really get a feel for how well the Dolby-enabled speakers performed as compared with true in-ceiling units. The first disc was the Dolby Atmos demo disc – which includes several Dolby Atmos trailers.
The colors on the back of each speaker matches the color on the receiver’s rear panel and even the colors of the speaker cables, so you’d have to be very careless to hook up the speakers incorrectly. As you would imagine, the front channels receive the bulk of the work. Next I put in Roger Waters’ The Wall mixed in Dolby Atmos as well.
Klipsch Reference Cinema System 5.1.4 with Dolby ATMOS
The system consists of an A/V receiver, five satellite speakers, a powered subwoofer, color-coded and pre-cut speaker cables, and a subwoofer cable. The front left and right speakers have additional speakers on top of the cabinets that perform as Dolby Atmos height channels, bouncing sound off your ceiling. The speaker package includes a pair of Dolby-enabled front speaker units that are actually two separate speakers in one chassis. They have separate inputs for the height channel and front channel. Also included are a standard horizontally oriented center channel and two satellite-style surround speakers. The subwoofer looks okay, though the blue glowing LED would annoy me after a while had I not been able to place it out of view.
Delay is resolved so that everything arrives at your ears at the same time. The result is cohesive reproduction of object-based soundtracks. I had the opportunity to see this movie in the theater as well as review it as part of another, much-higher-end Dolby Atmos setup. Consequently, I knew this movie well and felt it would be a perfect test.
Onkyo HT-S7700 review: An easy-to-set-up home theater in a box with Dolby Atmos
The height channels also performed wonderfully, and unlike during my testing with the demo disc, I felt that they blended without calling attention to themselves. Power your speakers like never before with Onkyo’s unique Dynamic Audio Amplification system. Music lives and breathes thanks to accurate, noise-free signal processing and hi-current power that dynamically controls your speakers for authentic audio reproduction, filling you with emotion. Onkyo says it designed the HT-S7700 to be one of the easiest HTIB systems to set up, and they deliver on that promise.
Proper tuning of the parameters is always required to fully enjoy this mode, but once done, it isn’t bad at all. The trouble I find with listening to stereo recordings with Dolby Surround enabled is that sometimes the result is a part of the music shifting somewhat unnaturally in location. It isn’t blatant, but enough to make me prefer not to listen to music in Dolby Surround. That all being said, with the system set to stereo , I was also very impressed with the sonic quality of the speakers included with this system.
Home Theater in a Box Systems Have Certainly Improved Over Time, and THE ONKYO HT-S7800 is Certainly a Shining Example.
Each solidly crafted speaker in this 5.1.2 package reproduces next-generation sound as its creators intended. Midrange frequencies, on the other hand, came across a bit dark and muddy. Comparing the Onkyo to Orb Audio’s Complete Home Theater, the Orb setup sounded much more open and nuanced. The guitar at the opening of U2’s “Song for Someone” from Songs of Innocence lacked a natural, full-bodied presence on the Onkyo system, and I missed the delicate sense of fingers striking the guitar strings. Comparatively speaking, through the Orb Audio setup I had a much better sense of the guitar’s body and its individual strings being pucked and strummed.
This is not the actual cinematic film, rather, a mixture of concert performance, cinematic scenes, and on-stage performance. The height channels in this case are used to expand the live music sound stage, and it comes through very well. I put on the title track which begins with the on-stage performance and cuts into one such cinematic scene, all while keeping the music track intact from the performance. In addition to Chromecast built-in and AirPlay, you can stream virtually any audio from smartphone, tablet, or laptop to your home theater via Wi-Fi® or Bluetooth. Available internet radio and music subscription services include Spotify, Deezer and many more.
This is where color-coding is such a nice touch – it is easy to ensure you have the proper connections for each speaker with just a quick look. The included guide gives a nice visual and textual description of speaker placement. The front Dolby-enabled speakers should be about ear height for best imaging performance.
The HT-R695 includes both wired and wireless connections, and is very easy to configure. As I have the luxury of a network drop in my cabinet, I opted for the wired connection. I found that a firmware update was waiting for me the first time I fired the receiver up, which completed in about 30 minutes. Aside from internet-based firmware updates, the network functionality also allows for control via the Onkyo Remote smartphone app, and network streaming audio services such as Spotify. As I have discussed at length in previous Onkyo receiver reviews, the Onkyo remote control app is fantastic.
On the surface, the HT-S7700 packs in a ton of features where it counts. Set this up in an hour, used the included mic for calibration, was blown away by what I had been missing. I'm sure you could spend thousands and get something even better, but for the price the Onkyo system is great. Our magazine, which began with the publication of the SECRETS Primer, is available exclusively on-line and offers to our readers an extensive information resource about home theater and high-end audio. SECRETS of Home Theater and High Fidelity was launched in 1994 as the first major publication offering serious audio/video journalism on the Internet.
Onkyo’s receiver offers strong home-networking features, thanks to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ethernet connectivity. The free Onkyo Mobile App allows you to control the entire system from your phone or tablet, and you can stream audio directly from your networked mobile device, computer, or media server. The receiver also supports popular streaming-audio services such as Spotify, Pandora, SiriusXM Internet Radio, Slacker, Aupeo, and TuneIn. This system can decode a variety of audio codecs, including FLAC, ALAC, DSD, and MP3. Backed by 70 years of experience building high-grade audio components, the HT-S7800 amplifies accurate, noise-free signal processing with high-current power for dynamic speaker control. Onkyo's dynamic audio amplification delivers massive power at 170 W/Ch (6 Ohms, 1 kHz, 0.9% THD, 1 Channel Driven)/ 100 W/Ch (8 Ohms, 20 Hz20 kHz, 0.08% THD, 2 Channels Driven).