Classic Japanese Audio Brand Onkyo Files For Bankruptcy (nikkei.com) 70
Onkyo, one of the best-known Japanese manufacturers of home theater equipment, has "filed for bankruptcy at Osaka District Court on Friday, with total liabilities of around 3.1 billion yen ($24 million)," reports Nikkei Asia. The report is sparse on details but attributes the bankruptcy to a "market shift to streaming and smartphones."
In mid-2020, Onkyo USA Corporation ended a 45-year run as Onkyo's exclusive sales, marketing and distribution division for the Americas, according to Audioholics.
Onkyo has appeared in a few stories on Slashdot over the years. Our personal favorite was a story in 2003 about a new use of embedded Linux in Onkyo's home music server.
In mid-2020, Onkyo USA Corporation ended a 45-year run as Onkyo's exclusive sales, marketing and distribution division for the Americas, according to Audioholics.
Onkyo has appeared in a few stories on Slashdot over the years. Our personal favorite was a story in 2003 about a new use of embedded Linux in Onkyo's home music server.
Little reason to exist (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much any decent receiver is great these days, kind of like computers. Add to that almost nobody even having a stereo stack any more and it's easy to see why someone who's not a market leader would have real troubles — it's all sound bars now. I have had a Sony receiver for over a decade now and it still does everything I need a receiver to do — because the last big feature added that people need today was DTS, and that was absolute ages ago. Is it as good as an Onkyo? In my living room it is. It's all hard paneled and there's lots of noise from the neighborhood.
Re:Little reason to exist (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd add that Onkyo made their claim (in the US at least) to fame as value brand, competing with likes of Denon, Sony and whatnot.
It seemed they made a push for the prestige market which failed miserably, and the value market now pretty much dominated by Chinese brands I've never heard of.
Unless you can stand out with either bragging rights or slave labor prices, the market is pretty crowded (nevermind computer audio has gotten quite good) for a dwindling market.
Give it a decade and the name will be resurrected to sell cheap crap. They probably deserved better, but it's the same problem as the VW Phaeton- no body is going to spend megabux for Onkyo no matter how good it is.
Should have stayed as a value brand.
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They probably deserved better, but it's the same problem as the VW Phaeton- no body is going to spend megabux for Onkyo no matter how good it is.
The Phaeton was one of the dumbest things VAG ever did. It is practically an Audi A8, it is essentially the same car. Yet it is not the same platform. It was completely bananas that they made the Phaeton any way other than by rebadging an A8. There was just no way at all that it would be practical.
Onkyo used to have a pretty good name in the USA, especially as Sony's good name waned. (I for one got my receiver at the flea market and repaired it. It was a really pathetic failure, a bad solder joint to one of
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Give it a decade and the name will be resurrected to sell cheap crap.
They were already basically a subsidiary of Foxconn.
Re:Little reason to exist (Score:5, Insightful)
So here's the thing. Onkyo's consumer audio division (and by extension Pioneer) was nearly bought by the parent company of Denon in 2019. I can't find any details on why/if that fell through. Seems like an important thing to be able to find out but I'm guessing the sale didn't complete. However, they might go after the fire sale pricing now.
It's the only brand I considered the last time around. They did not lock the most important features (to me) behind a paywall of a premium model. I didn't really want to pay big money.
It seems like I usually aim to buy things that are solidly midrange and there are not many brands that shine in that range. I just want something that isn't junk and isn't going to need replaced too soon
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Onkyo still needs properly formulated sentences.
You won't get that @ Slashdot
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I'd add that Onkyo made their claim (in the US at least) to fame as value brand, competing with likes of Denon, Sony and whatnot.
I agree. I have an Onkyo receiver I built into an old Grundig stereo cabinet when I refurbished it. The Onkyo is a nice receiver for a reasonable price. Going up market is hard for a brand that is already perceived as mid-market; which is why such brands often create a new brand for the high end. Even so, it's not easy as MB showed when it tried to reintroduce Maybach.
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Even so, it's not easy as MB showed when it tried to reintroduce Maybach.
They did reintroduce Maybach. What they discovered was that specific brand is only useful for selling the very most upscale vehicles. Meanwhile, AMG inhabits the space in between. As it turns out, what most people think when they hear expensive car is fast and powerful, not peak luxury. Which just shows that most people are dumb.
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People don't think of Maybach that often when they think of peak luxury either. They think of Rolls Royce or Bentley. Then they find out that Maybach use Rolls Royce or Mercedes engines anyway, at which point they still don't care
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Maybachs are minor revisions of existing Mercedes models, and thus cost little to implement. Mercedes spent plenty on buying and promoting the brand (a popular figure mentioned is a billion dollars) but they also reportedly make a profit selling them. Mercedes threatened to shutter the brand in 2011 but then brought it back for 2014, the 2023 Maybach is being advertised and sold worldwide right now, and they are reportedly selling like hotcakes to the current generation of Chinese oligarchs. It's pretty har
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Saw my first Maybach in years last week. Not my cup of tea by a long shot, but it was something different at least.
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Even so, it's not easy as MB showed when it tried to reintroduce Maybach.
They did reintroduce Maybach. What they discovered was that specific brand is only useful for selling the very most upscale vehicles. Meanwhile, AMG inhabits the space in between. As it turns out, what most people think when they hear expensive car is fast and powerful, not peak luxury. Which just shows that most people are dumb.
Good points. Maybach is kinda stuck in an odd spot, IMHO. They seem to position it as an upscale S class focused on luxury, and seemed to have tacked on the AMG name for good measure without the performance; a move they have done along the line to the point that AMG is often just a sticker on the side. I wonder if MB will eventually spin off Maybach into a seperate line to try to give it more panache.
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Re:Little reason to exist (Score:5, Interesting)
My last 2 receivers were Onkyo, I had to upgrade my previous receiver, not for DTS, but so it could handle and switch 4k sources. I guess the next transition would be to 8k, and the newer receivers are switching that now.
FWIW the main thing I need a receiver for is cable management and to select between sources. Nintendo, roku, steam/PC, dvd player, gamecube, etc.
I could hook them all up to the TV, but the TV is wall mounted, with a single HDMI cable running inside a conduit in the wall from from the receiver up to the TV; and all the input devices are gathered around the receiver. Nice and neat, and all controlled by a harmony remote.
But its an 'obsolete' setup. Harmony is discontinued. And the mainstream right now is moving away from receivers, its all sound bars, and wireless satellite speakers, which is honestly fine for my living room and needs for audio -- but there's nothing really stepping in to handle the cable management, and programmable input switching capabilities of the receiver + harmony.
I'm not really looking forward to feeding a pile of long HDMI cables running up to the TV and then one more running back down to a soundbar. Plus RCA/ Composite/etc when pull out the old GameCube or PS1 or something, but i think that's how it will need to be unless I want to spend big chasing a niche way of running it that's dying out. Nothing has stepped in to fill the gaps.
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Yeah, that makes sense. Most consumers can't distinguish 4k from 8k though and apparently most people in the world have 4k now. I am still trucking along at 1080p. The 52" AQUOS we bought at Costco around a decade ago is still doing the job.
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You continue to say stupid shit. The difference between 4k and 8k is obvious when close enough. I use 48" 4k as a screen. I'd switch to a 55" 8k in a heartbeat if they were still sold in the US.
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Ha! The emperor's new clothes.
In reality, we can rarely tell good 720P from 1080P in a moving image. (still photos are different)
I remember back in the day going from VHS to progressive-scan widescreen DVD made a huge difference, but we've long since had diminishing returns.
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In reality, we can rarely tell good 720P from 1080P in a moving image
You can't. I can, it's bleeding obvious. 720P makes me want to scratch my eyes out.
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You can't. I can, it's bleeding obvious. 720P makes me want to scratch my eyes out.
You must be watching free-to-air, cable or something stupid. Likely the bit-rate is too low, ie over-compressed. Try a Blu-ray with output set to 720P24.
Then, you clearly cannot trust your own brain, so invite your friends to comment on the TV picture quality, without mentioning the resolution.
See if anyone notices it is less than 1080P. Actually, it probably should be double-blind.
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P.S. I'm not saying you could not tell in a side-by-side comparison. But for practical purposes, with the same high bit-rate, people don't notice.
Re:Little reason to exist (Score:5, Interesting)
It can't help that the 4k transition was a disaster for all the major brands. Buggy chipsets kept everyone holding out for something that actually supports HDMI 2.1. Maybe this year it will happen? That certainly kept me from buying a receiver.
The additional stupid thing is the whole running video through the receiver bit. eARC should have put that to rest. If you need an HDMI 2.1 switcher, they're less than $50 on Amazon, and when a new standard comes out you just spend another $50 for a new one. Sadly, many TVs can't do bit-identical audio passthrough to eARC in all formats -- like LG TVs cannot do DTS, so DTS sources need to have video looped through the receiver.
Consumers don't have a chance with all this, so they just buy stereo sound bars or nothing at all.
Re: Little reason to exist (Score:2)
Samsung dropped DTS from TVs as well.
4k at 24 - 60 Hz works with HDMI 2.0 . The 2.0 rollout took a while but wasn't botched.
HDMI 2.1 is only required for 4k 120 or 8k support. Chipsets were indeed botched there.
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Is it really that terrible to have to have a spdif cable wrapped around your HDMI cable? Toslink out of my ancient Sharp AQUOS TV works fine, passes DTS and errythang.
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S/PDIF can't pass any of the modern formats, so that is no help. It does not have the required bandwidth.
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Toslink was originally 3.1 Mbps and is now up to 125 Mbps [wikipedia.org], DTS-HD MA is only 24.5 Mbps. The SPDIF protocol does not specify a maximum bandwidth or data rate. Bandwidth is not the reason why SPDIF over TOSlink cannot carry a modern audio signal, which is Dolby's copy protection. Even it was the problem and you were restricted to SPDIF's original bandwidth they could use other signaling protocols over TOSlink, for example ADAT is 12.288Mbps. There is more than enough bandwidth available to do DTS-HD MA over T
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What really did it for 4k was the fact that very few broadcasters bothered to support it, and that features like HDR are still in their infancy.
Broadcasters didn't want to upgrade all their equipment to 4k, especially with 8k on the horizon. As such there isn't much 4k content being broadcast. Some streaming services charge extra for it too, e.g. Netflix.
HDR is a mess right now. Competing standards, many TV claiming to support it but in reality not really. LCDs turned out to be crap at HDR, only really OLED
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It's funny, I have the completely opposite experience. 4k support is widespread, everything except some sports is available in 4k.
Cable and over-the-air TV does not do 4k, but only old people watch those.
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Buggy chipsets kept everyone holding out for something that actually supports HDMI 2.1. Maybe this year it will happen? That certainly kept me from buying a receiver.
and all current high-end receivers/preamps/pros that do have properly functioning hdmi 2.1 chipsets only include one hdmi 2.1 input. very annoying.
guess they expect us to use eARC... but then you have to rely on the TV's implementation of eARC, which is usually flawed and/or incomplete (e.g., my tv doesnt support DTS).
ill continue to wait to purchase.
Re: Little reason to exist (Score:2)
This is a very good point that I've of the articles listed made: consumers have changed away from needing such setup. For the most part, there's little need for high count cable management as consumers aren't holding on to that many devices. You see this TVs too, they're including fewer video ports as well. You have maybe a console or two with the hope you'll use the "Smart" features on the TV that they plan on abandoning support for once the warranty expires. The last two generations lacked the financial r
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FWIW the main thing I need a receiver for is cable management and to select between sources. Nintendo, roku, steam/PC, dvd player, gamecube, etc.
I could hook them all up to the TV, but the TV is wall mounted, with a single HDMI cable running inside a conduit in the wall from from the receiver up to the TV; and all the input devices are gathered around the receiver. Nice and neat, and all controlled by a harmony remote.
But its an 'obsolete' setup. Harmony is discontinued.
which is honestly fine for my living room and needs for audio -- but there's nothing really stepping in to handle the cable management, and programmable input switching capabilities of the receiver + harmony.
When it works which today is likely HDMI CEC makes controlling multiple devices from a single remote much easier than in the past. Some HDMI switchers on the market that support high number of inputs /w CEC for auto switching between sources same as what would be available if you plugged a bunch of sources into separate TV inputs.
And the mainstream right now is moving away from receivers, its all sound bars, and wireless satellite speakers
Receivers were never mainstream items to begin with. The difference in the market is mostly in soundbars appealing to those who would have otherwise just settled for TV speakers.
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HDMI CEC falls well short of what a harmony can do in terms of switching the setup from a 'cinema mode' to 'game mode'.
HDMI CEC at best maybe turns the device on, but if you want to tune it for the best sound, and video processing for the activity your fidding with the menu. Everyone just leaves it on the lowest common denominator... 'game mode' for the lowest input lag, because at least you can watch the godfather in game mode in stereo or simulated surround, but you can't play a playstation 1 platformer i
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FWIW the main thing I need a receiver for is cable management and to select between sources. Nintendo, roku, steam/PC, dvd player, gamecube, etc.
I think this kind of system was a victim of Smart TVs. Now that you mention it I had a setup like that in the past where a receiver was absolutely necessary to switch between everything. These days we only have one thing plugged into the TV, the Switch. The TV had Netflix, HBOMax, Disney+, Prime, Plex, and that basically covers 100% of our viewing experience, all embedded in the TV. The only other thing we use it for is Switch games.
That said I still have an AVR, but it's connected via a single HDMI eARC ca
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I currently have an aging Pioneer receiver and was planning to replace it in the next 6 months with an Onkyo. There goes that idea, shame.
Same as you. My receiver is in the lounge room and connected to the TV and used to manage audio sources for a number of devices; TV, Playstation, Set top box etc.
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Pretty much any decent receiver is great these days, kind of like computers.
This is utter nonsense. Receivers usually have piss poor DAC and amp performance. Tons of distortion. High noise floors. Low power. You don't have a clue what you're talking about.
https://www.audiosciencereview... [audiosciencereview.com] for instance.
https://www.audiosciencereview... [audiosciencereview.com]
You're a typical slashdot ignorant blathermouth.
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Add to that almost nobody even having a stereo stack any more and it's easy to see why someone who's not a market leader would have real troubles — it's all sound bars now.
I think you only know people whose wives / interior decorators chose their sound systems. Just like people who go to the shop and buy any old TV on sale of course most people have sound bars, but those are people who in the past were happy with the internal speakers on their system.
I see no less home theatre setups now than I did when standard Dolby 5.1 was still a thing. People who care about home cinema don't have soundbars. People who care about how electronics look in the living room do.
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I have had a Sony receiver for over a decade now and it still does everything I need a receiver to do — because the last big feature added that people need today was DTS, and that was absolute ages ago.
Your decades old Sony receiver handles 4K video signals? Which one is it because I would buy it today off eBay. I need a 4K receiver since I upgraded my TV and all much of my equipment to 4K.
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No, I use my TV to switch signals, and it sends the audio back to the receiver via toslink. I also don't have 4k. It's not that I don't want it, it's that my 1080p TV still works and I don't care. I've seen 4k and it's not like it's not impressive, it's just not impressive enough for me to pay for. I don't watch a lot of TV though. If I'm gonna get more pixels, it's gonna be on my PC (which is also still 1080p — but I don't want to buy more GPU, either...)
At this stage in my life I would rather just b
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No, I use my TV to switch signals, and it sends the audio back to the receiver via toslink. I also don't have 4k. It's not that I don't want it, it's that my 1080p TV still works and I don't care. I've seen 4k and it's not like it's not impressive, it's just not impressive enough for me to pay for. I don't watch a lot of TV though. If I'm gonna get more pixels, it's gonna be on my PC (which is also still 1080p — but I don't want to buy more GPU, either...)
Sounds like you don't want something but the rest of the public who want 4K probably need a new receiver if there old one does not support 4K.
At this stage in my life I would rather just buy HDMI switchboxes than have to consider replacing my amplifier so it can switch video signals. And then I could have a smaller receiver, since it wouldn't need as much space on the back panel. I could already of course, but I was still using my receiver to switch signals back when I got it, and the price was right.
Why would you need a HDMI switchbox if you already have a receiver . . . unless your receiver does not have HDMI either. So you are using component video then?
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Sounds like you don't want something but the rest of the public who want 4K probably need a new receiver if there old one does not support 4K.
Most of the public doesn't have a receiver, so no.
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It's hard to find relevant stats for free. The closest thing I found was that around 41% of people have surround. Not every receiver is surround, but then most people today are just listening to music on a portable device with headphones. And if they're a vinyl hipster then odds are good that they're using a dedicated amplifier. If they're using a receiver it's probably vintage. Lots of the people who have surround (or think they do) have a sound bar. Some of the sound bars have wireless rear speakers and s
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Except Onkyo's receiver division was sold to Voxx and Sharp, so receivers are already owned by them. Voxx owns such brands as Klipsch and many others. And Sharp is.. well, Sharp. So Onkyo as a receiver brand will continue to exist the time being.
The Onkyo that's going bankrupt is more the other parts - things like headphones and such. Probably the bits less well known because they're more inside Japan than anywhere else.
R.I.P. (Score:1)
They will be missed.
Just went from Onkyo to Yamaha (Score:4, Interesting)
I've just replaced my (rather cheap) ten-year-old Onkyo amplifier with a (still not really expensive) Yamaha amplifier, also a few years old, that came into my household; I wouldn't have made the change otherwise. But while I had always been happy with the Onkyo, I'm surprised by how much better the Yamaha now sounds, which came totally unexpected.
Still I guess Onkyo's good-value-for-money image was well deserved—and selling good value for money is probably what makes it hard for a manufacturer to survive in times of dwindling demand.
Onkyo died for me when they installed fans (Score:3)
Seriously, why pay money for all these fancy low-noise circuit components, only to ruin everything by putting in a noisy mechanical fan! How cheap can a company be to save money on a decently sized passive cooler - which is also not prone to fail after a few years?
Bought a Denon receiver back then, and it still works just fine - without generating fan noise.
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Seriously, why pay money for all these fancy low-noise circuit components, only to ruin everything by putting in a noisy mechanical fan!
You're clearly a nighttime TV watcher. The fans on a typical receiver are basically inaudible and completely inaudible if you listen to movies at THX reference levels. Speaking of which the question isn't fan or no fan, it's a question of receiver which can power speakers properly, or something that's too weak to drive anything at 85+20dB which several years ago was basically every receiver without fans.
These days with the advent of high power Class-D amplifiers that are actually worth a damn you can start
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You're clearly a nighttime TV watcher. The fans on a typical receiver are basically inaudible and completely inaudible if you listen to movies at THX reference levels. Speaking of which the question isn't fan or no fan, it's a question of receiver which can power speakers properly, or something that's too weak to drive anything at 85+20dB which several years ago was basically every receiver without fans.
These days with the advent of high power Class-D amplifiers that are actually worth a damn you can start to see equipment on the market which can provide "proper" volume without a fan. But 5+ years ago you had the choice of fan, a huge dedicated amp stack and the receiver relegated to the job of an AV Processor only, or a crappy system.
The concept of fans in AV receivers is quite strange. I've never in my life seen a receiver with a fan in it. "Noise" in terms of sound that a fan makes by spinning isn't the issue.
Most receivers are direct energy (Class AB) with big honking internal heat sinks and chassis designed to passively dissipate heat. They've been designed this way for literally decades. There are a few on the market with Class D amps but this is very much an outlier. The only reason to put a fan in a receiver is being a cheap
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As it is, Class-D amps (which are the only amplifier types build into receivers nowadays) operate pretty cool, but if you push them hard, they will heat up. You have two choices: a large heat sink, or a cheap fan. A fan can easily do the work of a heat sink 5 times the weight, if the air is routed correctly across all blades. So if you want to advertise your unit as a higher wattage unit, but cut costs, you can slap a small (inaudible mostly) fan on the plate.
What the OP is talking about (my guess, becau
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As it is, Class-D amps (which are the only amplifier types build into receivers nowadays) operate pretty cool
plenty of modern receivers still use class AB, including denon (using them an example to show you dont need to go to a high-end brand to get class AB).
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I've never in my life seen a receiver with a fan in it.
I've seen plenty, but then I had a taste for higher end gear, not crappy receivers promising 400watts only during full moon and only with 1ch driven for 230ms. Hell my ancient Kenwood from back in the Dolby Prologic days had a fan too.
The only reason to put a fan in a receiver is being a cheap ass to reduce BOM.
I don't think you understand how thermal dissipation works, especially in Class AB systems. There are limits to how well you can heatsink something in a small area. Combine that with the fact that most systems I saw with fans were actually high end rather than cheap arse and i
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I've seen plenty, but then I had a taste for higher end gear, not crappy receivers promising 400watts only during full moon and only with 1ch driven for 230ms. Hell my ancient Kenwood from back in the Dolby Prologic days had a fan too.
The vast majority of AV receivers do not have fans in them. This goes doubly so for high end models.
I don't think you understand how thermal dissipation works, especially in Class AB systems.
Hot air rises and cool air is drawn in from little holes in the chassis.
There are limits to how well you can heatsink something in a small area.
AV receivers are big and stout.
Combine that with the fact that most systems I saw with fans were actually high end rather than cheap arse and it becomes quite clear you know little about what you are writing.
Right back at ya.
Onkyo is just the latest (Score:5, Funny)
Uncertainty has hit the Japanese electronics industry.
In the past week, Origami Holdings has folded, Sumo has gone belly up and Bonsai Industries announced plans to cut some of its branches.
Last week it was announced that Karaoke Group is up for sale and will likely go for a song while shares in Kamikaze Electronics were suspended after they nosedived.
Samurai is soldiering on following sharp cutbacks, Ninja Group is reported to have taken a hit, but it remains in the black.
Furthermore 500 staff at Karate got the chop and analysts report there is something fishy going on at Sushi Industries where it’s feared staff may get a raw deal.
Re: Onkyo is just the latest (Score:2)
Re:Onkyo is just the latest (Score:4, Funny)
Mod parent +1 informative.
WOW. Didn't realize so many companies were effected. Thanks for the info.
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Thanks for the correction. I always seem to fuck that up.
That's a shame (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a Onkyo receiver 5.1 system. It's worked great for me and at one point in the past, Onkyo even contacted me that there was a recall on the unit and paid for everything to get it fixed. It had something to do with the ethernet control board. I don't have my system connected to the Internet at all, but I still got it fixed.
I didn't even know it was an issue so I was quite happy it was resolved with such ease. That kind of experience would lead me to likely buy another product from them or at least give it added weight. Apparently that won't be an option anymore.
Soundbars are nice and we have one. I still prefer my surround sound setup in a different room though.
They Deserve It (Score:1)
I later upgraded to a TX-SV727, which had a notably cheaper feel, and proved this character by
End of an Era in Many ways. (Score:2)
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Oh man. I had TWO 606s..
Both failed due to bad HDMI boards. My later Onkyo later failed...due to bad HDMI boards. They lost my business years ago with so many bad/defective units in a row. My experience getting them repaired was the opposite.
Sadness (Score:2)
This makes me sad. I like my Onkyo receiver, and the main reason I like it is that it does all the things well and has a great multiplicity of different types of input. I am not only interested in switching only HDMI inputs with maybe one token analogue audio; I want composite input, optical audio input, and so on. I'm honestly less interested in supporting 42 different audio streaming clients (most of which will be out of date in a year or two, making them non-functional) than I am in supporting a variety
New Gen X not buying A/V receives (Score:1)
I've got a pile of dead Onkyos (Score:2)
Their quality in the last 20 years tanked. When you spend $400 for a box that will be dead in a year from bad capacitors; your brand suffers.