Onkyo files for bankruptcy

Been awhile since I bought any of their stuff but been a name which has always been around as long as I can remember.
 
Always been quite good stuff, had a 5.1 AV receiver in my sons room for years till he wanted more space.
 
I can see this happening to a lot of companies in that market. Someone said soundbars are taking over, and it seems to me there's some companies that make soundbars and amps, but a quick Google and I don't think onkyo do. You have to (and I hate the phrase), diversify your portfolio to survive.
 
Bouton Aide said:
How on earth has a company like this gone bankrupt.WTF!
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They got a great reputation when they were undercutting the competition with AV receivers. Onkyo consistently delivered more features for fewer £s/$s/€s. Then the chickens came home to roost. HDMI boards were failing. There were issues with the optical/coaxial inputs too and some other problems. A lot of this stemmed from the amps running very hot. This is a path that Denon have gone down with their amps; lots of Watts, lots of features, decent prices, but runs like a furnace. It's worrying.

Once the pattern starts to emerge of premature failures then within a couple of years lots of resellers started to back away from the brand. So too did many of the consumers caught out with expensive repair bills. To be fair, Onkyo did their best to minimise the costs, but when your bargain £450 all-singing-all-dancing AV receiver needs almost £200 worth of repairs, and you hear of plenty of folk in the same boat, then are you (a) going to happy and (b) will you trust the brand again?

Meanwhile, the rest of the market caught up.

Onkyo was one of the first mass-market brand to have an affordable mainstream AV receiver with fully-functional HDMI ports and onboard HD audio decoding. The TX-SR605 was ground-breaking when it hit the market around 2007. Other manufacturers either had no response at the time or their products weren't £500-£600 but £800-£1000. The subsequent releases over the next few years continued the class-leading status. If it was a new feature, then Onkyo seemed to have it first or at a price well below the competition. By the time the crap hit the fan with Onkyo reliability there were models from Denon, Yamaha, Pioneer and Sony all in the £450-£550 price range that became the new sweet spot for price/performance in AV receivers. Onkyo no longer held the price advantage. The damage was done. The cost of dealing with the repairs its effect on the brand's reputation was tough to climb back from.

The past 5 years or so have been hard on the AV receiver industry in general. Online reselling has driven a stake in to the heart of the retail trade. The hangover from the Sub-Prime crash hadn't yet gone away. The UK took a pounding with Brexit and the chaos it caused in supply chains. Bit Coin madness resulted in silicon shortages which we're still seeing now. Ownership of brands and distribution rights has been in turmoil as the cost of supporting brands versus the revenue and profits has gone sour. Meanwhile the consumer market uptake of physical media players for Blu-ray and UHD have been underwhelming. The shift to music streaming, multiroom music and then video streaming means there's less requirement for a disc player of any kind, and so sales of AV receivers have been declining whilst sound bars have been enjoying unprecedented growth.

Yamaha and Denon/Marantz both have good representation in the sound bar and multiroom music markets. Onkyo, Pioneer, Sony.... not so much.
 
A lot of the heat related problems wouldnt have been problems if Onkyo put a little more thought in to the cooling. My tx-sr805b is probably one of the last ones around that never had a problem with the hdmi or optical boards. I did have to repair the display that died, and the component input board and dsp board are both fried though :p I loved that av amp. I know it wasnt everybody's cup of tea, didnt sound warm enough or exciting enough for many, but it was spot on for me and pound for pound nothing ever matched the mix of sound quality and power at that pricepoint ever again. The sr806 was a huge stepback and the models never recovered from that whilst getting more and more expensive. I will get my 805 running again once i can repair that DSP board.
 
lucid said:
They got a great reputation when they were undercutting the competition with AV receivers. Onkyo consistently delivered more features for fewer £s/$s/€s. Then the chickens came home to roost. HDMI boards were failing. There were issues with the optical/coaxial inputs too and some other problems. A lot of this stemmed from the amps running very hot. This is a path that Denon have gone down with their amps; lots of Watts, lots of features, decent prices, but runs like a furnace. It's worrying.

Once the pattern starts to emerge of premature failures then within a couple of years lots of resellers started to back away from the brand. So too did many of the consumers caught out with expensive repair bills. To be fair, Onkyo did their best to minimise the costs, but when your bargain £450 all-singing-all-dancing AV receiver needs almost £200 worth of repairs, and you hear of plenty of folk in the same boat, then are you (a) going to happy and (b) will you trust the brand again?

Meanwhile, the rest of the market caught up.

Onkyo was one of the first mass-market brand to have an affordable mainstream AV receiver with fully-functional HDMI ports and onboard HD audio decoding. The TX-SR605 was ground-breaking when it hit the market around 2007. Other manufacturers either had no response at the time or their products weren't £500-£600 but £800-£1000. The subsequent releases over the next few years continued the class-leading status. If it was a new feature, then Onkyo seemed to have it first or at a price well below the competition. By the time the crap hit the fan with Onkyo reliability there were models from Denon, Yamaha, Pioneer and Sony all in the £450-£550 price range that became the new sweet spot for price/performance in AV receivers. Onkyo no longer held the price advantage. The damage was done. The cost of dealing with the repairs its effect on the brand's reputation was tough to climb back from.

The past 5 years or so have been hard on the AV receiver industry in general. Online reselling has driven a stake in to the heart of the retail trade. The hangover from the Sub-Prime crash hadn't yet gone away. The UK took a pounding with Brexit and the chaos it caused in supply chains. Bit Coin madness resulted in silicon shortages which we're still seeing now. Ownership of brands and distribution rights has been in turmoil as the cost of supporting brands versus the revenue and profits has gone sour. Meanwhile the consumer market uptake of physical media players for Blu-ray and UHD have been underwhelming. The shift to music streaming, multiroom music and then video streaming means there's less requirement for a disc player of any kind, and so sales of AV receivers have been declining whilst sound bars have been enjoying unprecedented growth.

Yamaha and Denon/Marantz both have good representation in the sound bar and multiroom music markets. Onkyo, Pioneer, Sony.... not so much.
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I have a denon amp and in normal mode it is a bit toasty, I've found setting the power saving options to auto makes a big difference. Normal listening levels it hardly gets warm. I'm not sure if the power saving just doesn't have the amplifier inside it running at full power.
 
lucid said:
They got a great reputation when they were undercutting the competition with AV receivers. Onkyo consistently delivered more features for fewer £s/$s/€s. Then the chickens came home to roost. HDMI boards were failing. There were issues with the optical/coaxial inputs too and some other problems. A lot of this stemmed from the amps running very hot. This is a path that Denon have gone down with their amps; lots of Watts, lots of features, decent prices, but runs like a furnace. It's worrying.

<SNIP>

Yamaha and Denon/Marantz both have good representation in the sound bar and multiroom music markets. Onkyo, Pioneer, Sony.... not so much.
Click to expand...

ah this makes sense! thanks for that. Such a shame.
 
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