I missed the reference to this when I first read through the announcement. This deserves a thread of its own. I just downloaded a copy (the server was slow - a lot of you must be doing the same right now).

I know what I'm reading this evening.

My biggest complaint (in fact my only complaint) as an 886 owner is the Onkyo Owner's Manual. As I've mentioned before the English is well-written - it's just that for such a complex piece of gear they do a horrible job of explaining its many features - if they even bother at all.

Even as I skim through it now, I see Outlaw's version as a huge improvement over Onkyo's - much more so that even their version of the SMS-1 manual is over Velodyne's. (And I loved Outlaw's version of that manual.)

While a deeper read is needed, so far it looks like Outlaw has completely demystified the 886!

Jeff Mackwood

I bought the 886 and was very happy to hear about this Outlaw guide!!! Can't wait to read it!

Took a few tries to be able to download the Outlaw Guide to PR-SC886.

Whoever wrote it did a fantastic job...

On Outlaw's product page (http://www.outlawaudio.com/products/886.html) upper right column, there's a link to the "Owner's Manual". Can anyone make that work? When I try I see an obviously malformed URL. If you can make that work, can you post the URL that worked for you?

I think the link is broken. Try this link instead.

That did it. Many thanks.

Hello gonk.
What do you think of 886 vs 990 re analog? I owned an 885 and was not impressed with 2ch or 5ch Dvd-audio music vs 990. What do you think. i tried a midlevel $600 Marantz receiver as a preamp and liked that a lot. Amp= 200w/ch x5
Many thanks. I admire your posts.
Joel

I haven't heard an 886, but like you I have spent some time with the 885. The differences between the two are minimal and appear mainly related to new features in the firmware, so I would expect the two Onkyos to sound very similar. Maybe I should try to write down my thoughts on the 885 one of these days - probably not a full review, but at least a little commentary...

I found that the 885 with Audyssey (in a relatively well-behaved acoustical space, albeit not really acoustically treated) was pretty comparable to the 990. Had I gone to the 885 in search of improved sound, that probably would have been a bit of a disappointment. Fortunately, I was just looking for a platform to use for BD player testing that could reasonably match my 990. I felt that the 885 did that, particularly for digital sources.

I came away feeling that Audyssey was not bad, but it didn't really excite me either. THX modes were similar - I used them for a couple months, then found myself shifting back to plain on PLIIx for many things.

I didn't really do a focused head-to-head comparison with multichannel music. I did get a surprise during beta testing of the BDP-83, which I mention in my BDP-83 review . I found that in some cases we preferred the sound of the BDP-83's analog output to the sound of digital output through the 885. That means that even though the BDP-83 has less sophisticated bass management, less flexible speaker delay adjustments, and no room correction software the analog section still sounded better than the 885. It was subtle, and we originally noticed it while switching back and forth on a CD of a pretty good live recording of a piano solo, but it was initially offered as an unsolicited observation from my wife while she was basically ignoring what I was doing at the time.

I'm gonna sound like a broken record here, but the 886 sounds exactly like any well-designed and functioning pre/pro should: quiet, distortion free, flat response. Both analogue and digital.

As Gonk says, there is plenty of difference between how the "processed" modes sound - as expected (but not, to my ear, in terms of those three basic parameters: noise, distortion, and frequency response.) The neat thing is that the 886 lets you sample them all!

I just bought a used Oppo 980H, which I'll be picking up in a couple of weeks and installing a week later, to replace a Denon 2200 that I've been using for SACD and DVD-A. I'm looking forward to the simplicity of running only an HDMI cable from it to the 886 - as well as running SACD's DSD directly to the 886.

Over on the AVS forum, there is a thread for Onkyo updates, including the 886. I posted a question if my firmware was current and I recieved no responses. So.....

Can someone please verify what the current FW versions are? Maybe someone can post a link to these as well.

I think the main FW is 1.4.

What are the three DSP versions?

What is the current HDMI version?