Japanese AV giant Onkyo has announced the release of the first models in its 2012 range, including some updates to our favourite home cinema receivers. We’re particularly keen to get our hands on the latest budget models, the TX-SR313 and TX-NR414.
The TX-SR313 5.1 surround sound receiver delivers 100W per channel of audio output power, has four HDMI inputs and one output, making it easy to connect multiple consoles, Blu-ray players and computers to your TV or projector. There are also give composite video inputs, three S/PDIF inputs, six analogue audio inputs and a headphone jake. A USB port at the front allows you to directly connect an iPod or media storage drive – the TX-SR313 has support for AAC, MP3, WMA and FLAC audio files. As well as the expected support for Dolby and DTS audio tracks, he SR313 also has a number audio processing and equaliser settings designed to make the most of gaming audio and digitally compressed music files.
If the TX-SR313 seems a little too modest for your needs, then the TX-NR414 might be a better alternative. It also outputs 5.1 audio, this time with a power of 130W per channel, and also supports a second output zone, so you can simultaneously send stereo audio to another room – perfect if you want to be able to keep track of what’s going on in the film you’re watching while you’re making a cup of tea in the kitchen.
Better yet, the NR414 has full network connectivity, which means that you can connect it to your router using and Ethernet cable or optional Wi-Fi dongle to provide full support for streaming audio files across your network, as well built-in clients for services such as Spotify and Last.fm. This is all in addition to the usual high-end home cinema support that you’d expect from an Onkyo AV receiver. It has six HDMI and six composite video inputs, one output of each type and several digital and analogue audio inputs.
We expect the new AV receivers to be as competitively priced as previous Onkyo products, many of which have won awards here, and will be reviewing the new range as soon as samples are available for testing.
