Value. Decent build quality. Simple control panel.

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Amazing amp. Driving Jensen 15" subs with low pass crossovers installed and some pioneer 12s that I used for mids and highs. It blew the tweeters and mids within a month. Put some auto mobile coaxials and polk silver coils for the tweeters. It sounded amazing. The amp had no trouble at all powering it. It also survived a fall from 4ft and didn't miss a beat.

Loose light fixtures. Cops always getting called. Neighbors stole it while I was at work.

Have owned this longer than I remember. Would always have fun blowing out a pair of thrift store speakers every couple of years. Finally bought a pair of Kenwood 888DL s off Craigslist and WOW. You have to adjust most the base to run the 15 inch woofers. So loud and clear for Little Feat tunez and Hendrix tunes. Can punish the neighborhood now. The tuner has always been worthless but who needs NPR at 80 decibels. The durability of this reciever should not be underestimated.

Tuner, wiring inputs

I owned the Tx 8511 for about four years and then the upgrade bug bit. I tried some "audiophile" integrated amps but the Onkyo came out the winner as far as overal good musical sound. I especially liked the Power boost button as it really added alot more bass. Untill I finally found a great integrated amp. I hung on to the Onkyo. It took nearly 4X the cost of the Onkyo to find better overall sound.
Never had any problems with the unit whatsoever.

I don't know what some of the other reviews mean by thin sounding or lack of bass, I don't agree. This is a fine reliable unit that just can't be beat for the money.

Value. Decent build quality. Simple control panel.

Speaker posts. Tuner is jsut so-so. Audio soundstage. Bass response. Very generic design. (Why is it that modern audio/video components are all black with a digital readout??? What ever happened to style????)

I searched high and low for a receiver for my garage. I didn't want to spend a lot of money, because I have been broken into before. Alas, fate would smile upon me. :) I saw an ad for a Kenwood power amp in the paper and when I got to the guys house he also had a Sony CD and the Onkyo receiver model # tx-8511. The receiver had a bad right channel cd input and bad right channel phono input on the back panel but other than that, everything worked. Since it is for my garage, it is no big deal. I just plug my cd into the tape input and voila! Hi-fi for the garage. From a sound perspective the bass is thin and muddy and the midrange is a bit muffled, but not bad. The speaker terminals are a joke and the tone controls don't seem to help the sound much either. Build quality is decent, with a nice big heat sink. For a garage application, however, I really can't complain. Considering the price I paid, I really, really, can't complain. If I get really motivated maybe I will find the problem with the cd and phono inputs and fix them. Or maybe not. For any of you out there that are looking for decent low priced audio equipment I strongly recommend private parties, garage sales, and thrift stores. You would be amazed at what you can find. You have to be patient, however. If you are like me and start collecting audio components in different states of repair, and you don't mind getting your hands a little dirty, you will be rewarded. I have vintage speakers (Altecs, Infinity, Klipsch), amps (Hafler, Nikko, Adcom), turntables (B&O, Pioneer, Marantz) and a whole slew of CD players, cassette decks and a pair of beautiful Pioneer reel to reels. And now a lovely Onkyo 8511 for the garage!

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Listed above.

High sound quality for the budget.

I wish Onkyo installed a subwoofer output for this reciever, it would make our lives so much easier don't have to run speakers wires through subwoofer and lost some of it sound quality.

When someone goes out there spent thousand of dollars for a high end reciever, but they didn't really realized a cheap onky tx 8511 put out the same sound quality as other expensive gears. I was making the same mistake, I spent roughly a thousand dollars on Denon reciever, when compared with the Onkyo..I couldn't tell the different. Sound quality are the same at all volume level, the only difference is one cost too much, and the other cost only a little.

Impedance of 4 or 8 ohm, heat sink disperses heat evenly, preamp overload protection, selective tone control (doesn't necessarily boost bass) to hear more musical detail at lower volume levels.

After adding an equalizer:

(5 / 5 ) BASS REACH (ability to go down to the low frequency extremes)
(5 / 5) BASS TIGHTNESS (tuneful, accurate bass not bloated or muddy)
(5 / 5) DYNAMICS (ability to play loudly and cleanly)
(5 / 5) SMOOTH RESPONSE (even frequency response so that all frequencies are presented evenly, it their proper perspective)
(5 / 5) TRANSPARENCY (ability to hear into the music. Separation of instruments, removal of "veils" from obscuring musical detail. Naturalness)

weak AM / FM tuner, poorly designed FM antenna connectors.

A few of the more expensive systems in today’s market produce a “listening fatigue” even at low audio levels. I would never tell my friends that, because they would probably be overly sensitive about it. Just because a system is expensive, doesn’t mean that all frequencies are presented evenly or in their proper perspective.

My first impression of the Onkyo TX-8511 was rather grim and I wanted my money back; it produced a tinny sound and the bass reproduction was rolled off, even with the bass at full level. The problem wasn’t room acoustics; a similar transparency was produced using a high quality pair of Koss headphones. The Onkyo TX-8511 needs an active equalizer, which is at least seven band and good quality. I initially used a less expensive five band EQ and it didn’t make very much difference. I found a middle grade Pioneer EQ and it made all the difference, the transparency and dynamics are phenomenal. The TX-8511 is designed with more emphasis on the Amp than the Pre-Amp. I am guessing that an Onkyo EQ would be better suited.

My system consists of the TX-8511, two Advent Legacy II speakers circa.1990 (which were designed with a bass-midrange driver and a passive crossover only to the tweeter) the Pioneer EQ, XITEL Hi-Fi PC USB link, Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Professional Audio Codec for encoding and decoding MP3s, and a Phillips DVD 724 video player. Nothing high-end really, but a very enjoyable listening experience.

Customer Service

Excellent.

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Mid range 1970's and 80's Marantz, Yamaha, and Harmon Kardon.

rock solid construction clean crisp power really makes your speakers open up.

doesnt have a subwoofer out.

onkyo build quality features seperate bass treble and balance control. a and b speaker selection with impedance of 4 or 8 ohm. very quiet and efficient

good sound at high volume levels.

NO bass response at all for the price and power output. weak tuner. cheesy speaker connectors. selective tone control doesn't work as well as a loudness control.

i had an rca sta 3900 bought at radio shack for 100.00 that was great until a lightning strike killed it. found out that model is no longer available so i went shopping. bought a sony strde 197 that was a joke. no monitor loop so i couldn't hook up my e.q. went out and bought this unit. even running it through my e.q. the bass response is very weak compared to my rca,unless you crank it up. i like having a full sound at volume levels where you can still have a conversation in the same room. i have noticed unless you pay upwards of 500.00 or more you can't get a full sound at low levels from most of these so-called high end receivers.

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rca sta 3900. sony strde 197

Decent workmanship. Fairly clean power. Many notches above bigger names in terms of quality. On a par with Denon, Yamaha and (today's) Marantz (maybe a notch below).

Cheezy speaker connectors. No proper binding posts. Output far less than advertized. Doesn't hold a candle to vintage (70's era) Marantz and Sansui gear (or even their own '70's/'80's gear).

I actually have this model's predeccessor the TX V940 that I bought new in '94 and paid $85 over list (I was new to the audio game and hadn't done my homework). One of the first things I noticed was the power rating of 100 watts from 40Hz-20kHz rms @ 8 ohms with 0.2 THD (70 watts 20-20 DIN on the Euro version). Now last I knew gear was supposed to be rated from 20 to 20 (Onkyo now does this figure). But I figured it wasn't too bad. It sounded ok to me. Something did seem a bit off though. I noticed that it didn't have much more in the way of internals than did my '81 Pioneer that I had retired. I figured technology had come a ways since '81 so I let it go. Fast forward to '97. I had just gotten an orphaned Marantz 2220B out of the shop ready to go. Now this 20 watter seemed to have as many (if not more) internals than the Onkyo. Upon running the difference was like night and day. The Maranz was warmer and seemed to have a kick to it, both of which the Onkyo lacked. Fast forward again to 2004. I decided it was time to get this puppy measured and find out what she really puts out. I took it over to my repair shop that happened to have the facilities for measuring output. To make a long story short we got 91 watts 1kHz rms @ 8 ohms with 0.9% THD. Now I figure when measuring at 1 kHz you can take off anywhere from 20% to 50% off that rating for a full 20-20 rating. So to be generous I figure just over 70 watts rms (it may even be less than that). That's a far cry from its 100 watt rating. Now the bigger names (Pioneer, Sony, JVC, Aiwa, Kenwood) with lesser quality workmanship (look at the innards of one of those brands... Not an encouraging sight to say the least) don't even get close to the 70 watts on their best day... You'd be lucky if they can hit 40 before blowing. Lesson learned? Read the fine print and be suspicious of anything rated at so many watts from 40-20 and up (and 1kHz as well) or anything rated at 6 ohms (you can automatically knock off 30 watts with that). Also note that some brands (JVC, Kenwood, Sony) DO measure from 20 to 20 but will ONLY put out advertized power under certain test conditions and that's only for a few seconds at best. Also don't be afraid to look in the grille vents to see what's in there. It's a good indicator of it may do real world.

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'81 Pioneer SX 3700 '76 Marantz 2220B