ONKYO PR-SC5507 9.2 Audio/Video Controller

An excellent condition pre/pro that comes with every imaginable connection in the world, even a MM phono stage.  Unit is in excellent condition and is like new.   I am listing at 8/10 not for flaws but it has seen regular use for the last couple of years.  Has the best OEM remote I’ve used. 

From TechRadar who gave it 5/5 stars:

Connectivity is luxurious. There are seven HDMI v1.3 inputs, plus three component video inputs (which will steal from your HDMI selection options) and six legacy composite/S-video inputs. Digital audio inputs consist of three optical and three coaxial. Conveniently, there are two HDMI outputs, allowing you to feed both a monitor and projector.  Video processing is par for the up-market course. The processor will upscale all sources to 1080p over HDMI, courtesy of an HQV Reon-VX chip, and take analogue to 1080i where possible. Plus there’s ISF video calibration, to optimise each video source on a per input basis, before sending the video signal to a display.

Root around under the front fascia flap and you’ll find a USB port for portable media players and flash drives, another HDMI and AV grouped input, and an unusual addition to the back of this box is Onkyo’s new Universal Port. This is a daisy-chain interface that allows various modules to be cabled into the system with a single interconnect (no additional power supply required).

Onkyo offers a DAB+ tuner (£130) and iPod dock (£150) although I didn’t have these for testing. The unit also has an onboard FM tuner. Frankly, the latter is of zero interest to me, I never use them in AVRs (and I suspect I’m not alone).

A 12V trigger is used to tether the power amp to the processor. For further component control, two additional triggers are available if you need them. Beneath the hood are Burr-Brown 192kHz/32bit DACs on all channels and audio decoding is predictably comprehensive, with all flavours of DTS and Dolby supported.

There’s also the Audyssey DSX processing suite onboard, for a front wide/front high speaker configuration, along with Dolby Pro-Logic IIz height processing. HCC’s Richard Stevenson is a convert to front wide (which gives a forward-facing spread of five channels), but I’m more of a traditionalist. My preferred setup is classic 7.1. This system lets you adopt/experiment with both.

In keeping with the PR-SC5507’s pure design ethic, there are separate power supplies for audio and video processing. While the processor lacks any implementation of the kind of next-gen HDMI reclocking we’ve seen from rival brands, it does sport low-jitter PLL (Phase Locked Loop) circuitry and high-quality silicon in the form of a trio of Texas Instruments Aureus 32bit chips assigned to handle DSP processing.

I would imagine that custom installers will appreciate the PR-SC5507’s multizone capabilities, although they’re largely lost on your humble reviewer (my idea of multiroom audio is to turn up the volume). Zone Two can have stereo audio, with video and subwoofer feeds. Zone Three can run stereo audio with a sub. RoomEQ Once installed, I immediately ran the Audyssey MultEQ room balancer. This is one of the better auto room balancing systems available, and it did a reasonably good job in my listening room.

However, there are times when you might want to listen to particular sources without Audyssey balance, but with your own preferred setup. In this case, one might expect to be able to save your settings to a bank of memories, which isn’t the case here. If you toggle Audyssey off, you then have to manually reset all of the speaker balances.