The “Break it Down” Blog

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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.