Onkyo TX-NR3030, yet another 11.2 channel Dolby Atmos receiver to consider

Although our favorite 11.2 solution is still Yamaha’s RX-A3050, there are still many other models to choose from on the market from all of your favorite companies that you’ve grown to appreciate over the years. One of those is Onkyo with their TX-NR3030 beast. An AVR that will send you scrambling to buy more speakers unless you already collect the best that money can buy. It supports the latest Dolby Atmos format that make use of speakers above your head called “height speakers” to better envelope the viewer with a true field of sound.

The TX-NR3030 offers 135 watts per channel at 8 Olms, which would power most speakers you find in the store, including the ones you have to do some special shopping for, like Paradigm and B&W. It is not as powerful as some of the Yamaha options wattage-wise, but like Mac vs PC, there many Onkyo owners out there that own the TX-NR3030 who say that the quality of the receiver is worth every cent.

It isn’t the newest of models as it launched back in June or 2014, but it stands it’s ground like most of the top-level receivers that have released over the last few years. This would explain why the price hasn’t budged much yet. Onkyo may be looking to launch something new and exciting this year to follow-up with this receiver and bring it into the next generation model, but for now, it is Onkyo’s beast and does live up to its name.

Supporting the Dolby Atmos format, you have plenty of options coming out of the back of the receiver to support all of your popular configurations, including up to 2 sets of height speakers in the ceiling. It supports full UHD 4K passthrough at 60 fps with HDMI 2.0, HDCP 2.2 compatibility and of course 4K upscaling for non-4K content.

This Onkyo features 7 two-channel 192 kHz/24-bit TI Burr-Brown DACs and two 32-bit DSP engines that handle high resolution audio processing with Three-Stage Inverted Darlington Circuitry amplification and discrete low-impedance output transistors delivering instantaneous power. Perfect for those who enjoy listening to lossless or better audio formats, like FLAC, DTS, SACD, DVD-A and so forth. We use a serious of music sources like these to test any receivers that come out way. One of our favorites as of late has been World’s Greatest Audiophile Vocal Recordings, which offers a selection of some of the best vocal mixes we have heard and proves to be perfect for testing out high end equipment with (especially true reference level speakers).

There is built-in WiFi and Bluetooth for getting media to the receiver with and enjoying a number of online streamable options such as Spotify, Pandora, SiriusXM Internet Radio, Slacker, AUPEO! and TuneIn.

Although a little pricey for being two years old, most Onkyo fans would find a lot of warmth in the quality this receiver has to offer. Although we haven’t spent the time to sit down in one of our labs with it, we have experienced a limited demo of it in the past and did like what we heard. The only thing we could find wrong with it, is the lack of support for DTS:X since it is just now starting to gain support with today’s models. So hopefully when Onkyo launches the new model, it will offer full support for this as well

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