Onkyo HT-S580 Home theater audio system
woofer weak, surround sound sloppy
I specifically compared it to panasonic HT 930. I br/ought both systems home and compared them. I must admit the comparision is not even handed - onkyo is 650 watts and panasonic is 1000 watts. To slightly compensate, On Onkyo - i put monster cables. <br />I was disappointed by Onkyo HTS580 system because of the following reasons <br /> <br />1. the coding for surround sound seems to be different in the two systems - and in fact way better in panasonic. <br /> - Specific examples: In matrix 2, in the second scene, in Neos dream, when Trinity jumps off the building firing at agent smith, In panasonic you can hear the trajectory of bullet change as Agen Smith Jumps! Thats awesonme <br /> <br /> - When I played specific DVD movies where I know different voices were supposed to come from left rear speaker followed by right rear speaker - u can clearly hear the transition in Panasonic. Whereas in Onkyo you cant make that out at all.  <br />I mean both rear speakers say the words in case of onkyo. <br /> <br />This was the biggest dissapointment for me. I triple checked the settings on onkyo, none of the modes could do the surround sound job perfectly. If I did not have panasonic to compare, I prolly would have felt the clarity of teh sound was good and might have given the reviews like the rest u see here. Please compare the matrix part urself and let me know if my settings on onkyo were wrong. I played with the settings for hours to get a satisfactory result from onkyo - put the rears and subwoofer at max - tried different modes - Neo music, surround etc  <br /> <br />2. the bass in case of panasonic is 230 Watts and that of Onkyo i believe is 150 watt but its passive.  <br />With Panasonic u feel like u are in a theatre because of teh Bass! I did not understand the importance of bass until I played panasonic. I am not into rap music much - and I thought Bass was meant only for that kind of music. But boy was I wrong. <br />I think a powered Bass could have compared with Panasonics and would have done the job. So maybe if i compared with Onkyo HTS680 , 780 maybe sub woofer will be comparable. <br /> <br /> <br />The reason why I liked Onkyo was it had digital inputs and plus the flexibility as opposed to in panasonic - I am pretty much stuck with using panasonic speakers and receiver/DVD player.  <br />But still I went for panasonic just on the basis of the first two points. Also my wife loved the way it looked! <br /> <br /> <br />PS: the reason I compared these two - At that under $500 range - panasonic system was prolly the best for HTB. Onkyo felt better than yamaha - sound wise, and I got a sony DVD player to play on onkyo. <br />