If you've been here for a while you'll know that I'm a pretty big proponent of the THX program in general.

Lately though, I think the program has jumped the shark a bit.

Friend of mine was looking at 7 channel receivers. I kept pointing him to Onkyo's offerings as they have in the past tended to use discreet circuits for each of their channels. Something else that a lot of other receiver manufacturers didn't do.

Woot.com had a Sony ES receiver rated at 130W that retails for something like $1200 on sale one day a few weeks ago for $700. Similarly spec'ed Onkyo (the 875 I believe) is at least $1000 street.

I said to him "the Sony looks like a nice piece, but they have a bad reputation for overstating specs". Sure enough I found a review that showed the Sony could only do about 70watts all channels driven.

So I puffed up my chest a bit and said "see...they overstated their specs...the Onkyo piece won't be like that since it's THX Ultra 2 certified and has to be 100Watt per channel minimum (assuming THX meant all channels driven)."

Well, I looked up a similar THX cert Onkyo receiver (I think it was the 805 or 905) on the same site and lo and behold it too was also way below the rated watts when tested all channels driven.

Turns out they had rated the receiver's watts with just two channels driven.

Seems to me that if the THX spec calls for 100 watts per channel to ALL channels, then they should require testing for ALL channels.

Of course one of the issues with THX is that they don't publish the spec, so it's a bit of a black box thing. They don't publish what a manufacturer has to do to get certified. Do they have to meet the spec with 1 unit? 10? 20? Every unit?

Anyhow, just seems like the certification has been watered down a bit at this point. I still think you are getting something for your money when the piece is certified, but what it is you are getting is a bit of a mystery at this point.

And if it says 100 watts x 7 channels, it damn well better do 100 watts x 7 channels all channels driven before clipping.