Daniel Kumin of Sound & Vision played Janis Ian's "This Train Still Runs" through Onkyo's TX-RZ70 receiver at reference level and wrote, "What a pleasure to hear drums that sound like real drums!" Onkyo is best known for AV receivers, the single box that decodes a film's surround soundtrack, switches the video and powers every speaker in the room. Its big receivers are built like serious amplifiers, and Jamie Biesemans of Home Cinema Choice points to the large power supply behind the TX-RZ70's hefty weight. The top models also include Dirac Live room correction across the whole frequency range. Room correction puts a microphone at the listening seat, measures how the walls and corners color the sound, and adjusts each speaker to undo it. Biesemans notes that nearly all other receivers with Dirac limit it to the lower frequencies out of the box unless the owner pays more. Onkyo suits movie lovers who want one box to run a full surround system, and music listeners who want solid amplification for the money.

For a surround system, start with the TX-RZ50. It has the same full-bandwidth Dirac Live, and EISA named it the Best Buy AV receiver of 2023 for its "gutsy, immersive performance" and value. The TX-RZ70 steps up to 11 channels of amplification and a bigger power supply, and Kumin heard "no shortfall of power or punch, even at fully rocking levels" from it. If Dirac feels like a project, Biesemans suggests Onkyo's own AccuEQ calibration, which still gave him very good results, and the Onkyo Controller app can run Dirac from a phone. For music alone, the A-9110 is the way in. Thom Moon of SoundStage! Access called it "a screaming bargain" and recommends it for a moderately sized room or a home office, with speakers of about 88 dB sensitivity or more. Tell it your speakers' impedance during setup, a step Moon calls mandatory. The step up is the Icon A-50, which adds streaming, a phono stage and Dirac, and Stereophile's Tom Fine and his drummer friend Dave agreed it is "a great partner for KEF LS50 Metas."

Takeshi Godai grew up in his family's bicycle shop in Osaka, where a young Konosuke Matsushita served as an apprentice to Godai's father. Matsushita went on to build the company now known as Panasonic, and he later hired Godai, who rose to head its speaker factory. In 1946 Godai started his own company, Osaka Denki Onkyo, and on the eve of its 25th anniversary he shortened the name to Onkyo, Japanese for "sound harmony." The British site zStereo reports that its ED-100 loudspeaker of 1948 became a bestseller and that Onkyo was soon making 100,000 speakers a month. zStereo also reported that prospective Onkyo executives had to show they could play a musical instrument. The high-end Integra line arrived in 1969. Onkyo then helped bring surround sound into the living room, with what zStereo lists as the world's first Dolby Surround receiver, the TX-SV7M of 1987, and the first THX Certified receiver in 1993. Its engineers still work in Osaka, building receivers and, since 2025, the Icon Series of stereo components for audiophiles.