Receivers

Well, I was not sure if you have to buy a receiver with THX certified if you have THX certified speakers as well.

Any of you know much about THX certification? Can you use a THX receiver with non THX speakers or the other way around?

I read somewhere if you have THX certified speakers that you need to purchase THX equiptment such as receiver, processor, dvd player, etc...

I believe you are expecting too much from the THX certification and name, which is supposed to make you believe that the electronics are somehow better for having the logo on the faceplate. Alot of it is media hype. It doesn't neccessarily mean that the amp sections in a A/V Receiver are more robust than anothers, or that ones speakers are better than those without the logo on them. As a sound field, it has been surpassed by Dolby digital and DTS. And they have been surpassed by Dolby digital-HD AND DTS- Master audio from Blu-ray. When you are watching a movie on a disc, you will find that most discs don't even have a THX audio track offered, as the newer ones outclass it.
I have a pioneer elite receiver with THX certification, though I never use that surround field. But if you do want to have it, check out the Pioneer Elite SC07 which is THX ULTRA certified and check out the price you can get if for on Videogon. I think you will be happy.

Short answer Mantaray is that you can mix and match to your hearts content. There is nothing that prevents it, and no reason not to.

THX is a performance standard, developed by Lucas Films to make sure that Return of the Jedi sounded the way the team at Skywalker Ranch (the Lucas recording studio) intended it to. Truth is it never really caught on with anybody in the consumer world but the manufacturers and the sales guys at the big box stores.

If you are concerned with compatibility, as long as you have the ability to decode THX you can play it back on any speakers. As Shiva points out, not much content is available anyway.

If you are setting up a home theater now, what you care about in the receiver is that it is HDMI 1.3 compliant, and has HDMI pass through. And that it can decode the Dolby Digital-HD AND DTS- Master audio formats that are being used on some BluRay tracks.

These are uncompressed tracks and they sound amazing.

Here is the salient part from Wikipedia:

The THX system is not a recording technology, and it does not specify a sound recording format: all sound formats, whether digital (Dolby Digital, SDDS) or analog (Dolby Stereo, Ultra-Stereo), can be "shown in THX." THX is mainly a quality assurance system. THX-certified theaters provide a high-quality, predictable playback environment to ensure that any film soundtrack mixed in THX will sound as near as possible to the intentions of the mixing engineer. THX also provides certified theaters with a special crossover circuit whose use is part of the standard. Certification of an auditorium entails specific acoustic and other technical requirements; architectural requirements include a floating floor, baffled and acoustically treated walls, no parallel walls (to reduce standing waves), a perforated screen (to allow center channel continuity), and NC30 rating for background noise.

I was looking at the Pioneer Elite SC-07 and the Onkyo TX-NR906. Anyone of you prefer one over the other?

The SC-07 seems to be a lot lighter than the TX-NR906. I wonder if the amp within the SC-07 is less quality built than the TX-NR906. Any of you either have one of these receivers or listen to them before?

that's a good question - as you know the weight is usually in the power supply, transformers and caps. would not give me a warm fuzzy feeling unless the Pio is using Class D amp technology.

I am very pleased with my Integra pre/pro which is the high end offering from Onkyo.

What will ultimately make a big difference in performance is the Audyssey MultiEQ function. Onkyo offers that in their new TX AVR series - Pioneer does not offer the Audyssey technology.

Now that I have it and have heard the difference Audyssey makes in my room - I would stretch, scheme and even wait to get it.

The only thing I would not do is buy an AVR that does not have it.