Customer Reviews

Onkyo DS-A2 Remote Interactive (RI) iPod Dock

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Stereo system integration is a big part of my iPod usage, and I have two different stereos with which I use it. I have a small office stereo at work and a full home theater set-up at home. The two systems differ in that the office system does not have a video display but is close enough to where I sit that I can read the iPod display while the home system does have a video display but is too far from where I sit to read the iPod display.

I have used the Apple dock and remote for both, but Apple's offering has never really been satisfactory for either. The first problem with the Apple solution is that the remote has very limited functionality: it can change the volume, play, pause, and skip forward or backward by one song, and that's it. When I use it with my office stereo, even though I can see the menus on the iPod display, I can't access them: there is no way to navigate the menu system to change playlists, browse albums or artists: accessing these features requires physically going over to the iPod and working the controls manually. With the home stereo, the situation is even worse as I am too far away to see the built-in display, and although the dock has video out, Apple's dock limits its use to video (no display of menus or even information about a song currently playing). Since acquiring the Apple docks, I've hoped for a software upgrade to address these grave limitations, but none has been forthcoming and so I've been keeping my eyes open for alternatives.

The Onkyo dock looked good on paper, but I had not seen any real user reviews of it. Still, Onkyo is a reputable company so I decided to buy one, try it out, and if I liked it, buy a second one and then use it for both of my stereo systems. The attraction of the Onkyo dock was that it looked like it might work for both of my stereo systems, with a general-function remote and the ability to display menus and status information on either the iPod built-in display, or to an external television.

So how does it work? The short answer is pretty well, but with some crucial caveats, which I'll detail below:

* Volume control. There isn't any. The Onkyo remote looks like it has volume control, but those buttons only work if the dock is connected to an Onkyo amplifier. If you don't have an Onkyo amplifier, you're out of luck. At first this may seem like a dreadful limitation but in practice I didn't find it so for the reason that the designers had in mind: I have a stereo-volume control that I use for that feature, making a dock-only volume control unnecessary.

* Consistency issues. The Onkyo dock has two different display modes: the iPod-display mode and the video-output mode to a television. The behavior of these two modes has many inconsistencies, and neither really works the way you would want. Consequently, almost every comment about the user interface I make has to be prefaced by saying which mode it applies to.

* The first thing to understand about the consistency issues between modes is that in the video-out mode, the menu system is NOT what you see on the iPod's built-in display. It is instead a menu system generated by the dock itself based on information it gets from the iPod. What you will instantly notice about this is that it is remarkably ugly, like a 20-year old VCR. Get ready for white text against a black background and chunky letter shapes (no graphics). It does have some nice features like a screen-saver with a variable timer, the ability to do a marquee-style scroll of long song or album titles, and when it has to get a long menu from the iPod (like a menu of 10,000 songs), it puts up a "please wait" message to let you know what it's doing, but anyone expecting to see the iPod built-in display interface enlarged to the size of their television screen is in for a major shock.

* Long list navigation is handled very differently in the two display modes: in the video-output mode, there is are two page-up/page-down buttons that allow you to scroll blocks of items at a time, and another pair of buttons that allow you to decrease or increase the block size. This solution works ok, and although it isn't in any sense elegant, it lets you get the job done. In the iPod-display mode, however, the only way to navigate lists is up or down a single item at a time (one button press per item), making it unusable for navigating large lists. The buttons that handle page-up/page-down and block-size in the video-out mode have completely different (and MUCH less useful) functions in the iPod display mode: in that mode, the block-size buttons allow you to skip to the next or previous playlist from whatever playlist is currently playing, and the page-up/page-down buttons become next-album/previous-album buttons for whatever is currently playing. In the iPod-display mode, be prepared to use the controls on the front of the iPod whenever you need to navigate long lists.

* In the built-in display mode, you have access to almost all of the iPod's functions: you can go up and down the menu hierarchy at will. Games that require the click-wheel won't work, and, as mentioned above, long lists are unnavigable, but you can otherwise do pretty much anything you might want. The video-out display mode, on the other hand, is very, very restricted in what it can do. You can't access the iPod's top-level menu, which means you can't change any of the iPod's settings, and you can't access video at all in this mode; the Onkyo dock requires that to play a photo, tv-show, music video, or movie, you have to change modes to the iPod-display mode first, which frankly seems brain-damaged. I don't know if this is Apple's fault or Onkyo's, but it was still a very unwelcome surprise since my home-stereo is the one with the tv, but when I am using it I am too far from the iPod built-in display to see it. As a result of this, the video-out display mode is (ironically) only good for music content and useless for video content. Since I have almost no non-music content on my iPod, this wasn't much of a problem for me, but anyone who does is likely to be completely dissatisfied with this feature.

* The remote has some layout differences from the controls on the iPod itself. Lacking a click-wheel, it has extra buttons to replace the click-wheel. The page-up/page-down issues have already been touched on, but it should also be noted that the layout of the central play/pause/skip-forward/skip-backward/menu/select combo is different. Because there is no click-wheel, the list up/down buttons have been placed above and below the central button. This layout displaces the iPod "menu" button, which is moved to the top-left corner, and the iPod "play/pause" button, which moves to the central position, which on the iPod is occupied by the "select" button. This means that the "select" button is also displaced, and it is moved to the top-right position. The Onkyo remote layout is not illogical, but it does require some re-training of the finger memory: I found, for example, that I consistently tend to hit "play/pause" on the Onkyo remote when I meant to hit "select" because my fingers were trained on the iPod that "select" was the central control.

* Another video-related shortcoming of the Onkyo dock is that the only video output connection it provides is the obsolescent composite standard. The Apple dock, for all its shortcomings, also supports the more modern s-video standard, as do a number of third-party docks as well. Of course, given that the Onkyo dock's video-out display mode is incompatible with video content anyway, this is just another good reason not to buy the Onkyo dock if displaying iPod video content on your television is important to you.

* One other thing worth mentioning is that if you happen to have an Onkyo amp/pre-amp/control-center (which I don't) you get to play with an additional dock feature, which is its ability to integrate with Onkyo's propriety "RI" control interface that lets you control your entire system with a single remote. As much as I'd like to tell you how well it works, I really have no idea. I can tell you that if you use it, you'll need to use a toggle on the bottom of the dock to indicate which of your amp's inputs (TAPE, MD, CD-R, HDD) is being used by the iPod. If you aren't using "RI", this toggle does nothing.

So in sum, I can recommend this dock if you are aware of its shortcomings and find them acceptable. Probably the users least likely to be happy are those for whom showing iPod video content on their television is an important function. I can say that going from the Apple dock to the Onkyo dock is, for me, an across-the-board improvement, and after evaluating one dock, I went ahead and bought a second one so I could have one for each of my two stereo systems. Would I like a solution that doesn't have all the limitations of the Onkyo dock? Absolutely, but the Onkyo dock gets me 80% there and makes it much easier for me to wait for the happy day when my iPod in its dock is fully as functional as when it is in my hand.

Bowen Simmons has provided a complete and accurate review of this. I just wanted to add a couple of things. First my setup: I have an Onkyo SR-803 7.1 home theatre receiver and a 5th generation iPod. I'm very picky about sound quality. I encode my music in a high VBR, and I don't buy any tracks from iTunes. I use full-range Infinity speakers for my front sound stage and prefer CD-quality sound for stereo listening. So, I've avoided buying any ipod-to-stereo interface because I was concerned about audio quality.

That being said, I decided to try this out. What swayed me was having an on-screen menu to browse music on my TV. This is the "built-in" display that Simmons talks about. His review of this mode is accurate, although I believe the limitations he mentions about photos and videos not being on the built-in display are actually a limitation of the iPod software and not this (or any) dock. (I think the video-out solution on the iPod is still half-baked right now.) Perhaps software upgrades will fix this, but knowing Apple, we'll all have to give them more money for a future iPod version.

Onto sound quality. When I first plugged this in, I was disappointed. The sound was flat, and I had to turn the stereo up a lot to hear the music. Then I decided to wander into the SR-803's setup menus to see if there was something wrong. (The 803 is a great receiver, btw, despite having a text-based on-screen display that reminds me of 80's. See my review of the 804, the newer version.) Anyway, the 803 has a pre-amp adjustment that you can apply to each audio input. They call it "Intellisound" or something like that, but what it does is allow you to adjust for variations in line level inputs. I increased the ipod input up 3 dB, and the sound improved dramatically. So, you may want to check your receiver for this option.

I also tested the RI connection on the dock. It works great! The 803 has a great remote, with a joystick-like control in the middle. It provided much more intuitive control over the built-in menu than this dock's remote.

Finally, video output. Yes, composite output is old technology and the built-in menu is reminiscent of the 80's. But it does get you to your music without having to look at the little ipod screen. You can change the background color of the menu, which helps a little, but also resulted a lot of chroma noise on the letters. Photos looked fine, and I didn't try video. I'm not sure this dock is all that useful for video/photos, but for music, it does the job.

What would make this dock perfect?
* A digital audio connection from the iPod to the stereo. Apparently the 5th-generation iPods support a digital output through the dock connector. I haven't yet been able to find out what that means exactly, whether it's just a byte stream of the encoded file (MP3, AAC, etc) or some other digital audio standard. Regardless, I'd really prefer that my amp do the D-to-A processing.
* Better on-screen display. There are two solutions: either the iPod should just output its display, or the dock should try to mimic it. The Alpine IDA-X001 car stereo takes the second approach. It tries to mimic the menu structure, album art, marquee-style song titles, etc.
* S-Video or better video output.

Once I got this working, I love it. It's a great way to view photos from my photo iPod while listening to my favorite playlists. Turns your TV into an electronic picture frame, eliminating the need for printing out your digital photos, which never look as good on paper anyway. The glitch not mentioned in the instruction manual, which may not be a mystery to some peolple but stymied me for three days until I could get customer service on the line, is that you must go into settings in your iPod and turn the TV output on. Otherwise you get music but no pictures. How hard would it be to mention that in the manual? I use mine with an Onkyo RI-ready audio-video deck, on the Video 3 input, and it really is seamless. Also works with the Harmony universal remote.

I recently purchased the Onkyo DS-A2 as an iPod dock for my existing Onkyo HT-R940 Receiver that I got as part of the Onkyo HT-S990THX home-theater-in-a-box setup. The idea being that we could hook our iPods up to the dock and listen to them throughout the house without needing head phones.

The DS-A2 supports on-screen controlling of the iPod but that portion of the device wasn't of interest to me. With a 65 DLP TV I'd rather not spin it up just to listen to music, so I didn't do any test of the on-screen controls.

The DS-A2 arrived the other day from UPS. I promptly opened it, took the dock out, put it next to the HT-R940, hooked the DC power adapter up and then hooked the Audio L and Audio R cables up to the "CD" input on the back of the receiver (my other inputs are all taken up, so CD it was...). After hooking it up, I turned the receiver on and flipped over to the CD input, then grabbed my iPod Nano and shoved it in the dock.

The iPod powered up (had been off) and sat there, paused, waiting for me to do something. At this point I wasn't sure if I had to use the iPod to start playing a song with the normal controls, or if I could use the cool little control that came with the dock.

So I grabbed the remote and clicked Play and boom... music started playing. I skipped tracks, adjusted the volume and stopped all using the little tiny remote sitting on the couch and the iPod happily complied. I originally thought that all of the controls from the little remote were being processed by the iPod (for example volume) but as it turns out the remote is smart, and adjusts the volume on the receiver, skips tracks on the iPod, etc.

I was really surprised how Plug-and-Play this device is. I think if I were to use the on-screen controls I would be even more impressed. Overall an excellent dead-easy purchase for anyone with the HT-R940 receiver that wants to add an iPod dock to it.

First, let me say that the unit is functional and works well with my Onkyo 804 Receiver. That being said, the unit has some short comings that will probably be built into later docks. The needed improvements are first, the manual. The manual is straight forward but lacks the information needed to easily use you're Onkyo receiver remote to operate. The unit hooks up into the HDD jacks of the receiver (Video 3)and RI sensor input, no problem. What they fail to mention is that the receiver must be set to HDD at the Video 3 input of the receiver (Make sure the RI switch on the bottom of this unit is set at HDD). What is also not mentioned is that the remote for the receiver needs to be set at HDD in order to control the unit with the receivers remote. The 804 Receiver DOES point out all of this, but it is not referred to in just one section of the manual. I needed to consult three different sections. Okay, Okay I don't and never did like to read the full manual. You will need to. Why is this important?? The remote for the Dock base is small and SLOW. The remote for the receiver is way better and works great once you figure it out. So Far so good. I got it working like I expected it to do and I am Happy. The BIG thing ,however, is the lack of controlability. It does the basic functions but thats it. The screen saver shows what is playing on your monitor,but will only display for 10 minutes max. If you want to see whats playing after that you need to pick up the remote. It will not show Album artwork, video or photo tags etc. Not a big deal but for $100 ?????
I am content with the unit but not overly enthralled, hence the 3 Stars.

Considering there is no other way to run your iPod through your stereo remotely, this is a great product. The drawbacks are that you are unable to search by A-Z. Only single up/down, or page up/down, genre, playlist, etc. For the money, it is great and amazes friends. Considering I have over 700 CDs, it sure beats having a huge CD rack in the Media Room. I would recommend this item to anyone with an Onkyo sound system which has a port for the dock.

I have bought the ONKYO DS-A2X for my iPod Classic 80G.
The sound from iPod comes realy good BUT
you are NOT able to see Photos or Videos if you have a
new iPod Classic 80G/160G. Have not found something in the manual that this is not working. After looking up the ONKYO site they have listed the iPod Classic under the Audio only category.
It's shame that the Instruction is not clear on this point.
Having now a device that is not usable makes me a little angry - so be warned if you have an iPod Classic.

[...]

Pros: Styling, Ease of Setup, onscreen Display, Onkyo Receiver interactivity, adjustable dock size (depth to accommodate different Ipods), remote capability, dock charges ipod

Cons: RCA Jacks only (what year is it??), onscreen Graphics match the outdated jacks (Atari Style Font), screensaver is merely a blank screen (at least you can pick a solid color ooooooooh), remote sensitivity

If the remote wasn't so handy I would take it back and get a nice RCA to headphone jack split cable

I purchased this for use with my 60G iPod on my Onkyo Receiver TX-SR804. I like being able to use the receiver's remote using the DS-A2's included "R1" cable. However, the recievers remote does not have the same functionality as the included iPod remote, so I used the receiver's remote "learn" the command. If your remote can't learn, you will have to use the iPod remote. The DS-A2 has on-screen viewing so I don't have to get up to select a new playlist, song, etc. However, this is not true if you want to watch video or play a slide show. You must turn off the OSD (On Screen Display) and then use the scrollwheel to make your selection. Additionally, the video output is the standard componsite video. I would have preferred a better quality output, similar to the apple version, that uses "S" video. Perhaps Onkyo's next version will do this. This is a better system than the apple version primarily for the playlist OSD selection. I would have given the unit 5 stars if it had remote capability for video and slides.

I have this hooked up to my Onkyo 674 and works like a baby. The only painful part is you need the TV on to view your ipod screen to select songs etc. Once you have the songs playing the TV can be switched off. Onky reciever volume can be controlled using the dock remote.