Onkyo HT s3400 Owner's thread

[Cherian]

Cherian, i also own a HT-S3400 HTIB system and i do have the same question as you , what;s the best option to replace the Onkyo Speakers with ?
Recently i had a chance to read many reviews for Energy Take Classic Speakers , and they rated as the one of the Best Budget speakers ( CNET give them the review points as OUTSTANDING!!) i.m thinking to purchase them as a replacement for Onkyo Speakers.
Question is will this set up work ? what is your best suggestion???

Hi Anoop,

Just pulled the trigger on the Cambridge Audio S-30 as front replacements.

Have just connected them and right away there is a clear improvement in the stereo music output. Will take a few days for burn in and finding the right speaker placement, as the S-30 is back ported and needs sufficient space away from the walls (they cannot be wall mounted like the stock Onkyo fronts). Will report back on movie sound and music once these issues are sorted out.

BTW, these speakers are stunningly good for their price and size. Auditioned them with a couple of stereo setups along with experienced FMs Spiro and Darshan using a 3-way switcher against pricier BS like Tannoy F1 and a Quad, and they really did an outstanding job in the bang for the buck dept.

 

[devilwearsprada]

Bought the 3400 a month back. The Sound was great, almost equal to the demo set at the Onkyo Showroom. Just a few doubt guys.

1. Is there actually a need to change the speaker cable, and if there is , what cables should i go for? I saw cherian's post. But I do not know the basic difference in wires.
2. The Sound at low volume from surround speakers is much louder than the front and rear speakers. Any suggestions?
3. Please suggest settings for a 16X10 Room. I have a Panny 42" LCD/LG-BD550/Amkette Flash TV/Videcon D2H HD/Sony PS2

:signthankspin: .

 

[Rupam]

Get MX speaker wires. They will definately improve quality.

 

[Cherian]

1. Is there actually a need to change the speaker cable, and if there is , what cables should i go for? I saw cherian's post. But I do not know the basic difference in wires.
2. The Sound at low volume from surround speakers is much louder than the front and rear speakers. Any suggestions?
3. Please suggest settings for a 16X10 Room. I have a Panny 42" LCD/LG-BD550/Amkette Flash TV/Videcon D2H HD/Sony PS2

:signthankspin: .

There is no 'need' to change the cables, just that you may get better sound if you do. The wires I tried cost me just Rs 100 for the whole lot - fronts, centre and sub. Consider it a low cost experiment; if it doesn't work, you dont lose much.
To adjust the sound level of all your speakers, go to Setup> Speaker levels, and cycle through each speaker one-at-a-time while you are seated in your listening position. You will hear a static tone from each speaker, which you can increase or decrease till they are the same level.

 

[thinkrupak]

Hello audiophiles,

I am having Onkyo 3400 connected with AC Ryan Play on Mini 1 and Sony Bravia EK300. Connection between media player and AV receiver as below -

Play On > HDMI 1.3 > AV Receiver HDMI input (1 - BD/DVD)

Connection only says PCM. From the user manual of play on (as attached image), understood the Dolby, DTS or other high fidelity sound only would be available if I connect it with optical fibre.

Please help me to choose the best way out. I am not clear about Coax cable and Tsolink cable. I am providing screenshot of Play on and Onkyo 3400 connectors.

Please help how I can get 5.1 channel sound??

thank you

 

[prosenjit]

yes its okay.
first make sure your player bitstreaming or not...
even after bitstream onk 3400 shows pcm in some codecs like aac..
play dts or ac3(DD)..then you will fully enjoy this 3400hyeah:hyeah:.
and dont expect sound always coming out from rears in original 6 channel.its the recording.where there is a sound originally in rear channel only then you hear it.rest silent.

dont bother optical/coax....hdmi is enough alone.optical/coax will be used while connecting from a non hdmi device say a non hdmi dvd player...

 

[gautamjain13]

Hi,
I bought Onkyo-3400 about a month back. This is my first home theatre so I am pretty much new to this. I have connected a philips 3200 blu ray player to it via hdmi cable. I have also connected my Airtel HD set top box to it and finally the AVR is connected to Samsung 5600 TV. Now I have few queries:
1. What are the ideal settings while watching movie on DTH? (Believe me I have no idea so please answer accordingly)
2. When I use the STB option on my AVR, I am able to use audio and set up buttons of remote and adjust them accordingly but when I am warching a movie from my blu ray player these functions just don't work i.e. I am not able to change any audio settings. Why is that?
3. Should I watch movies on Allchannels in or Neo6 or something else?

Help would be much appreciated.

 

[gautamjain13]

Someone please respond

 

[system32]

Guys pls help me

I need to buy one HTIB, think that Onkyo S9400 is a suitable model for me. I need to buy this baby from US. The price is almost above Rs 80 K in some shops in India. I dont want to pay this much when i can have it from US for just $650 (approx Rs.32500). My question is, is this gonna work fine with a step down transformer in India? Anybody having any experience in this matter? Is it gonna affect any audio or video quality when its working on a step down, or as we know the Ac cycle issue. The step down can't convert the cycle from 50 to 60Hz. Any reviews on this subject would be highly appreciated.

Thanks

bk

 

[sreeharshavardhana]

Hi..

I need a suggestion that, if want to connect my laptop to the AVR which HDMI input I can use? Can I connect to GAME HDMI in to play movied and other videos from my laptop?

 

[baijuxavior]

^^ Use any HDMI port. The names are for reference only.

 

[prosenjit]

anyone.....no problem..thats just a hdmi selector switch..not neccesary to match names...

 

[sreeharshavardhana]

^^ Use any HDMI port. The names are for reference only.

anyone.....no problem..thats just a hdmi selector switch..not neccesary to match names...

Thanks Baiju and Prosenjit for your quick reply!

 

[andy78]

Guys for my Onkyo 3400 there is an USB port to which we can plug in Pen Drive or any other device with USB and play songs. I know we were able to do this earlier. But now when we plug in the Pen drive we are not able to play anything. Any suggestions!

 

[007india]

Check if any other pendrive or external drive is getting detected. If yes,
1) Change the source to something else like BD/DVD and then select USB directly from the unit (not from remote). If nothing happens,
2) check if the USB drive is detected in other systems. if they are detected, then format the USB and put a single mp3 file alone to see if its detected.

Generally, its not good to plug/unplug USB directly to port in the AVR, use a cable/hub which is always connected to AVR and connect the devices to it which will prevent the port from malfunction.

Guys for my Onkyo 3400 there is an USB port to which we can plug in Pen Drive or any other device with USB and play songs. I know we were able to do this earlier. But now when we plug in the Pen drive we are not able to play anything. Any suggestions!

 

[baijuxavior]

Check the format of the drive. May be you need to format in FAT32.

 

[andy78]

Check if any other pendrive or external drive is getting detected. If yes,
1) Change the source to something else like BD/DVD and then select USB directly from the unit (not from remote). If nothing happens,
2) check if the USB drive is detected in other systems. if they are detected, then format the USB and put a single mp3 file alone to see if its detected.

Generally, its not good to plug/unplug USB directly to port in the AVR, use a cable/hub which is always connected to AVR and connect the devices to it which will prevent the port from malfunction.

Thanks for your suggestions! Do you know of any good quality USB Extension cable? The one's available locally are not of good quality.

Check the format of the drive. May be you need to format in FAT32.

Thanks Baiju that worked

Not to happy with the audio quality coming through this AVR. Is this one basically for Videos.
What can I do to have good audio quality from this?

 

[007india]

Thanks for your suggestions! Do you know of any good quality USB Extension cable? The one's available locally are not of good quality.

Thanks Baiju that worked

Not to happy with the audio quality coming through this AVR. Is this one basically for Videos.
What can I do to have good audio quality from this?

1) USB cable digital, in my opinion, if there is any loss, then there will be no signal at all. So as long as you see the plastic insulation is good, its fine.

2) AVR can handle NTFS format. FAT32 will not help incase you have a larger capacity drive which will not accept FAT32 formats. Please check again.

3) For Audio quality, If you play MP3 make sure music enhancer or optimiser is enabled. I own ONKYO 609 and not your model, but should have the settings. I think the basic setup may not be properly done. Please brief about the speaker model and AVR sound settings.

For MP3, PL music is preferrable. Bass: 8db, Treble: 4db
For movie, audyssey or PLII movie or Dolby Tru master

May be you can PM me and can call me over phone and we can try to figure out the issue.

 

[baijuxavior]

Not all AVRs support NTFS. Atleast my Denon 1612 does not.

 

[007india]

Not all AVRs support NTFS. Atleast my Denon 1612 does not.

ok! that leaves you can have a single file of size <4GB as FAT32 to my knowledge will not support more than 4GB for a single file. You can have music files and movie files of <4GB. Better have a Good DVD player with USB input which supports NTFS partition and supporting multiple video formats.