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| Brand: Onkyo
Category: CE
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Color: Black
Media: Electronics
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 13.3 x 8.4 x 3.2
MPN: DSA2
Model: DSA2
UPC: 751398007248
EAN: 0751398007248
ASIN: B000IDGEPO
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| Customer Reviews:
 It's A-ight June 7, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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Cons: RCA Jacks only (what year is it??), onscreen Graphics match the outdated jacks (Atari Style Font), screensaver is merely a blank screen (at least you can pick a solid color ooooooooh), remote sensitivity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
 Onkyo iPod Dock June 1, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It works great with with my Hi-Fi at home!!! Just what I was looking for...
Plug and Play Experience May 30, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
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 653 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.
A few additional thoughts to add to Simmon's review May 16, 2007
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
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.
IT WORKS VERY WELL !!! May 12, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It works very well with Onkyo HT-S894 and IPod Video 80g.
Thanks Amazon.
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