Almost everything is made in China nowadays. Can you point to the source of the review that you read?
But I haver never seen a china made ONKYO unlke Denon which almost all new models are from china.
I've pasted here the review of the 3805:
Summary:
I've read a lot of positive reviews so when I had a chance to buy it for cheap as defective I didn't hesitate to shell out $100 - why not? I was thinking that the chance of repairing it was slim but all the problem was $0.01 thermal fuse within power transformer and just shorting it I got fully working 3805 five minutes later I opened the cover.
Well, let's see what inside. Many components especially power caps are pathetic! How do they think these tiny caps will be able to provide any current to drive 7X120W amps? I have Sony TA N77ES power amp and it has 4 (four) BIGGER caps in just pre-drive section, not to mention 6 monster caps which provide current for 2X120W output cascades.
Back to Denon - cheap and thin printed boards, caps are OK - ELNA, nickel plated cheap RCA sockets, all the decoding circuits fit the cigarette pack size printed board which is not even shielded. Most of the corners are cut literally. I was thinking that $1500.00 list price receiver should have more than just 3 gilded sockets (I'm not even sure that three front RCA sockets are gilded on this Denon - the yellow color is suspicious). Well let's stop chuckling and start listening.
First it requires some setup... I'd like to remind Denon engineers that we are living in XXI century and even $30.00 Chinese DVD players have color menu with some graphics - 3805 brings us back to DOS - black screen with white letters in 320X240 resolution. Menus are complicated and not intuitive. Some of the settings require pressing of "<" button instead of central "ENTER" button which can infuriate most patient user. I have very complicated system and I'm complication junkie but this is beyond my patience. The remote sucks - almost unreadable in daylight and to understand what mode is turned on now you have to carefully review rows and rows of tiny inscriptions which haven't any borders to distinguish one from another.
Display is laughable - cheap greenish color looks so unsophisticated and
OK, initial settings done at last and... the sound is as pathetic as power caps. Thin and lacking bass even in stereo mode. I don't know what reviewers were comparing it to but this Denon was easily beaten by 1989 Sony STR-D2020 and 1997 Technics SA-TX30 receivers I have in other rooms. I'm not even mentioning Sony TA-N55ES and TA-N77ES amps which eat this Denon for breakfast. My front 60 lbs each, four feet front channel towers each with two 10" woofers ($2300.00 list price) mated with this Denon sounded almost the same as small shelf speakers I use for surround. After spending hours trying to understand menus I discovered that auto setup rolled off bass quite significantly but restoring EQ to flat and even using direct and pure direct (whatever they meant!) modes didn't help much. The bass just still is not there - it's OK for artifical movie explosions and helicopter blades but tight, solid, rolling bass of well recorded musical instrument just don't comes out of this Denon.
Video section is good but when I tried to make some video recordings through it I discovered that rec out setup is absolutely stupid and frustrating to use. Moreover, rec out audio doesn't output the converted digital signal! - only analog inputs. Rec out is united with Zone 2 output and this complicates setup even more. To simply make a copy from one VCR to another requires complicated rec out setup procedure and often it's easier to reconnect the cables than to search for this function in complicated manual because it's impossible to memorize or find it intuitively.
Then I discovered that it can't downconvert component video. It can upconvert any video input (composite or s-video) to component which is OK but why they didn't add couple of ICs to downconvert component video is puzzling.
To the attention of Denon engineers - I have Sony preamp which has input renaming function and it was made back in 1989...Here we are almost 20 years later and Denon folks haven't figured out how to include extra 2 kilobytes of memory and couple of strings of commands in microcontroller code to ease the life of user who has to scratch his head recalling what he connected to DBS input. I have 3XVCRs, LD and DVD players justconnecting and using them is a pain in the...
Speaker terminals are very cheap - I seen a better terminals on $100 Chinese home theaters in a box. Too small for any decent cables, can't connect spades.
Overall it is very complicated and not user friendly. Dispaly and remote are hard to read and understand.
Can't recommend it especially for list price.
Strengths:
Decent video section though it lacks downconverting.
56 tuner presets though octal system is stupid
Upconverts video signals but not downconverts component video
Weaknesses:
Sound is OK only for cheap action movies but it just can't play music
Inputs can't be renamed
Manual is just a list of functions and doesn't help much explaining what they are for.
Not flexible for interconnecting and interacting components
Rec out mode is overcomplicated even for overcomplication junkie
Cheap speaker terminals
Complicated menus
Stupid octal tuner preset system
Worthless and user unfriendly remote
