greenpsycho
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- Jun 22, 2018
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Hey all,
I recently picked up a Pioneer Elite VSX LX 505 and wanted to share some impressions and a half baked video review for you. I haven’t seen much media on these new Pioneer/Onkyo devices with Dirac, as they are pretty new and pretty hard to find. This unit will be making its way to Amir come 2022 for measurements, but until then, feel free to post any questions and I’ll try my best.
Below are some quick pros and cons for me personally. Obviously feature set will vary person to person, so you’ll have to determine this for yourself. Most of the “pro’s” are stuff I’ve found different from my XMC-1. I know I’ve taken for granted how quick switching inputs could/should be, and how CEC and eARC should just work (but often times, never did on my XMC-1)
Over the course of a weekend I pulled together some rando videos and TRIED (but failed) to make a congruent video showing off some of the stuff I thought was important. This video…is not good, and the quality is all over the place, but I’m trying to squeeze into these 15 minute intervals I have while wrangling a baby. Anyways, I hope maybe it will help at least someone. You don’t have to watch it, its cool.
Pros
-CEC is great. I can turn on the receiver and my TV all thru my nvidia Shield remote. Volume and power across the board just work. I can’t emphasize how important this is in a household where others just need something to work properly and can’t be fussing around with 3 different remotes
-video quality looked really different (and I didn’t have upscaling turned on). It seemed higher resolution/sharper a bit, but the colors just seemed wider and deeper. Same HDMI cables. I had the 4k hdmi upgrade board on the XMC-1, so it should be doing all the same color/resolution stuff, but the Pioneer looks so much better.
-can do almost everything with Dirac in the app and using the built in mic. Advanced users can use a calibrated mic and use Dirac 3 on a laptop for greater control.
-really good amount of hdmi 2.1 inputs (first 3 are full bandwidth for 8k60)
-firmware update thru app via network connection (didn’t brick, didn’t have to plug in a usb stick. Again, this SHOULD be the norm….but I had an XMC-1)
-Nice OSD
-If you do the Dirac using the included mic and the Pioneer app, you can do a 3 measurement “quick” adjustment (great for us busy dads). ALSO: in both the mobile app and the desktop Dirac software, you can choose which nodes you want to measure. Again, this should be standard, but in Dirac v2, you had to do the whole shebang and you couldn’t choose which nodes you wanted to measure in your preferred order.
Cons
-no USB type B input on back for digital input/dsd DoP (only plays usb storage devices)
-one coax/one optical
-analog video inputs for….reasons?
-absolute garbage speaker terminals
-music server will play DSD and hi bitrate but only thru a music server? Nothing seems addressable in Roon via LAN (aside from chromecast endpoint)
-has a phono input, but unclear documentation anywhere as to if its MM/MC, and no adjustability. Its buried in the specs at the end of the manual, but it seems to be an afterthought.
-The Dirac setup via the mobile app is finicky. It wanted me to up the gain on my subs during the volume calibration portion, but when it took measurements, it couldn’t proceed and asked me to turn them down again.
-Its not clear where MCACC ends and Dirac begins. I did an initial MCACC setup, which added delay and level adjustments to my speakers. But this seemed to have carried over and effected the Dirac calibration process. I ended up resetting it and proceeded with Dirac and it was fine
-No real separation of the dual sub outputs. In level adjustments and Dirac, it just appears as one, so even though I’m using both, its juts a 3.1 setup to the unit
-They seem to be really pushing the MCACC. Its labeled as the default room correction, and it seems to make you complete the MCACC calibration first before the Dirac (which seemingly caused some confusion on my unit). They also label Dirac for “advanced users” which seems misleading as Dirac is fairly simple to use and much much better than pretty much anything else out there
-The stock mic can be used for Dirac, but I have no doubt it’s a substandard mic and it got confused by low frequencies which causes me to have to redo the Dirac setup a bunch of times. The standalone process with Dirac on a laptop and UMIK worked flawlessly the very first time
Overall, I’m pretty impressed with the unit and just how seamlessly everything seems to work. As I mentioned, I was coming from an Emotiva XMC-1 and while I may still upgrade that unit to an XMC-2, I really just need something that is a bit more simple, a bit less “half baked” and integrates into my home theater. While the Emo unit may be a bit more “tuner friendly” (ie lots of stuff you can tweak/adjust/etc), the OSD was garbage, the switching was a frickin’ nightmare (super super slow), and frankly, the measurements for the Emotiva pre/pro units on this site just haven’t shown to be worth the upcharge over the venerable Denon’s (and hopefully this unit).
https://jp.pioneer-audiovisual.com/manual/vsxlx505elite/en.pdf
I recently picked up a Pioneer Elite VSX LX 505 and wanted to share some impressions and a half baked video review for you. I haven’t seen much media on these new Pioneer/Onkyo devices with Dirac, as they are pretty new and pretty hard to find. This unit will be making its way to Amir come 2022 for measurements, but until then, feel free to post any questions and I’ll try my best.
Below are some quick pros and cons for me personally. Obviously feature set will vary person to person, so you’ll have to determine this for yourself. Most of the “pro’s” are stuff I’ve found different from my XMC-1. I know I’ve taken for granted how quick switching inputs could/should be, and how CEC and eARC should just work (but often times, never did on my XMC-1)
Over the course of a weekend I pulled together some rando videos and TRIED (but failed) to make a congruent video showing off some of the stuff I thought was important. This video…is not good, and the quality is all over the place, but I’m trying to squeeze into these 15 minute intervals I have while wrangling a baby. Anyways, I hope maybe it will help at least someone. You don’t have to watch it, its cool.
Pros
-CEC is great. I can turn on the receiver and my TV all thru my nvidia Shield remote. Volume and power across the board just work. I can’t emphasize how important this is in a household where others just need something to work properly and can’t be fussing around with 3 different remotes
-video quality looked really different (and I didn’t have upscaling turned on). It seemed higher resolution/sharper a bit, but the colors just seemed wider and deeper. Same HDMI cables. I had the 4k hdmi upgrade board on the XMC-1, so it should be doing all the same color/resolution stuff, but the Pioneer looks so much better.
-can do almost everything with Dirac in the app and using the built in mic. Advanced users can use a calibrated mic and use Dirac 3 on a laptop for greater control.
-really good amount of hdmi 2.1 inputs (first 3 are full bandwidth for 8k60)
-firmware update thru app via network connection (didn’t brick, didn’t have to plug in a usb stick. Again, this SHOULD be the norm….but I had an XMC-1)
-Nice OSD
-If you do the Dirac using the included mic and the Pioneer app, you can do a 3 measurement “quick” adjustment (great for us busy dads). ALSO: in both the mobile app and the desktop Dirac software, you can choose which nodes you want to measure. Again, this should be standard, but in Dirac v2, you had to do the whole shebang and you couldn’t choose which nodes you wanted to measure in your preferred order.
Cons
-no USB type B input on back for digital input/dsd DoP (only plays usb storage devices)
-one coax/one optical
-analog video inputs for….reasons?
-absolute garbage speaker terminals
-music server will play DSD and hi bitrate but only thru a music server? Nothing seems addressable in Roon via LAN (aside from chromecast endpoint)
-has a phono input, but unclear documentation anywhere as to if its MM/MC, and no adjustability. Its buried in the specs at the end of the manual, but it seems to be an afterthought.
-The Dirac setup via the mobile app is finicky. It wanted me to up the gain on my subs during the volume calibration portion, but when it took measurements, it couldn’t proceed and asked me to turn them down again.
-Its not clear where MCACC ends and Dirac begins. I did an initial MCACC setup, which added delay and level adjustments to my speakers. But this seemed to have carried over and effected the Dirac calibration process. I ended up resetting it and proceeded with Dirac and it was fine
-No real separation of the dual sub outputs. In level adjustments and Dirac, it just appears as one, so even though I’m using both, its juts a 3.1 setup to the unit
-They seem to be really pushing the MCACC. Its labeled as the default room correction, and it seems to make you complete the MCACC calibration first before the Dirac (which seemingly caused some confusion on my unit). They also label Dirac for “advanced users” which seems misleading as Dirac is fairly simple to use and much much better than pretty much anything else out there
-The stock mic can be used for Dirac, but I have no doubt it’s a substandard mic and it got confused by low frequencies which causes me to have to redo the Dirac setup a bunch of times. The standalone process with Dirac on a laptop and UMIK worked flawlessly the very first time
Overall, I’m pretty impressed with the unit and just how seamlessly everything seems to work. As I mentioned, I was coming from an Emotiva XMC-1 and while I may still upgrade that unit to an XMC-2, I really just need something that is a bit more simple, a bit less “half baked” and integrates into my home theater. While the Emo unit may be a bit more “tuner friendly” (ie lots of stuff you can tweak/adjust/etc), the OSD was garbage, the switching was a frickin’ nightmare (super super slow), and frankly, the measurements for the Emotiva pre/pro units on this site just haven’t shown to be worth the upcharge over the venerable Denon’s (and hopefully this unit).
https://jp.pioneer-audiovisual.com/manual/vsxlx505elite/en.pdf