Denon AVR-X3800H Review

[AndreaT]

On the used market I got my cheaper yamaha RX-V373 for $40.00 With remote, and it does a lot.

The Aventage one cost about $300.00 (used) with remote has more power and Parametric multiband Eq and some other features.
I like them mostly for the ease of use.....Separates can not even begin to match what these do, as far as surround processing, and on screen menus etc.

I get separates can be had that are technically "Better" and I have and have had many separates now and in the past.
But to do multichannel sound or movies, I just see the ease of an AVR as hard to beat.

These are not my primary music playing systems, but I often do play music on them.

Agree. My integrated for movies is an Emotiva Bas-X and a SW in a 2.1 format. It does it for me driving a pair of Pioneer SB. At the price you quote, the quality/price ratio returns well above the unit.

 

[voodooless]

In my situation any AVR would have to be compatible with active speakers and I'd buy ****** small speakers for the surrounds, that's the only thing I can think of.

That’s exactly what I have right now. Active LRC, ****** passive surrounds. It’s quite okay that way

 

[Robbo99999]

That’s exactly what I have right now. Active LRC, ****** passive surrounds. It’s quite okay that way

What setup you got exactly? I might note it for the future in terms of what's possible. I'm not too aware of what AVR's can output in terms of all active or some active & some passive, and maybe ****** small speakers are by definition mostly passive.....I don't know (they are for bundled AVR's, in terms of the ****** small speakers are often passive).

 

[Bleib]

Which is fine if they're all good quality speakers, but then you might need to compromise on space with the other channels and have rubbish speakers for those......which is ok I guess or have enough space & money for good speakers for the other channels too. In my situation any AVR would have to be compatible with active speakers and I'd buy ****** small speakers for the surrounds, that's the only thing I can think of.

Don't be too consumed by the idea that you need superb speakers all around. There's not so much sound coming from them most of the time, and since the AVR sends the lower bas signals to the sub and / or the bigger better front speakers so you can't even hear where the bass comes from means that the smaller speakers are OK to use as surround speakers. Dispersion is more important, and of course the usual thing that they do not for instance distort easily.

(I have Denon 3600 currently and switching back to just 2 channel just because I want more space in the room for other things. I watch quite a bit movies with headphones anyway)

 

[voodooless]

What setup you got exactly? I might note it for the future in terms of what's possible. I'm not too aware of what AVR's can output in terms of all active or some active & some passive, and maybe ****** small speakers are by definition mostly passive.....I don't know (they are for bundled AVR's).

3x Genelec 8040, 2x Cambridge Audio SX-50, DIY sub (needs a redo), Marantz SR6010. The Marantz is in dire need for a replacement. Basically all the channel relays are broken. For the actives that is not a problem though. The passive rears will also be replaced in time. If I can find a nice second hand set of 8030s, I’d go for those, but other ideas include DIY LR’s and then the 8040’s will get surround duty.

The X3800H might have been a nice replacement, but I’m holding on for another year or will find some other replacement… I’m not going to reward Denon for delivering an overpriced downgrade.

 

[amirm]

If you had 100 units of the same product and applied the same test, how confident are you that you’re getting identical results?

Given the measurements from Denon I feel good about the results here being representative. Test 100 people though and you will get an entirely different picture.

 

[GaryH]

FWIW, I generally agree that the SINAD here is "fine" from an audibility standpoint, but there definitely are speakers with less than -70dB distortion, at least at some frequencies. The Genelec 8351B are around -68dB at 1khz and 96dB(!) output and almost certainly lower than that at 86dB, though we cannot see exactly how much. Do people use such speakers with AVRs? Well, yes, obviously, they do

Nah, I just digitized the 86 dB percentage distortion plot and the lowest it gets is 0.033% which is -69.6 dB, so it doesn't make the cut

 

[GXAlan]

@symphara

Search - Audiophonics

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Everyone asking if x or y is audible who has a variety of gear at home should strongly get one of these. Then you know if whatever new gear you buy is performing similarly to reviews or if you got a golden sample (or defect). That answers your question if your setup is performing well.

This also lets you decide when you need to stop chasing the next upgrade.

I was reluctant to buy off AliExpress and didn’t like that Amazon only had Grade B. Audiophonics ships from France to the USA quickly, and they even have Grade A units in stock if you want.

 

[Dj7675]

I think my comment was self explanatory.
Compared to top notch components that measure great.
I listen to classical mostly, I have good hearing, and I am discerning about good sound.

Honestly a bit insulting to try to add conditions to what I said. I mean in comparison to EVERYTHING that has or is available in Hi-Fi since I started this hobby around 1980.

There simply is NOT this huge divide in sound quality, that I often see attributed to most AVRs, on forums and so on.
Are they totally equal.....probably not, but the compromises are good enough that in NORMAL LISTENING, in a normal quiet house with well recorded music, they are not obvious to most.

I see the "Beating down AVRs" thing becoming like bashing Bose almost. It has become almost a sport by some to trash stuff, usually with no actual experience with the unit under discussion.

I resisted wanting to hear an AVR based on all the bad comments, until I heard one playing at a friends house, unaware of what it was, and found out he used a 7 year old bottom of the line Yamaha AVR. I found the same unit for next to nothing and hooked it up.
Viola, it sounds quite decent OVERALL, not in comparison to a boombox, but in comparison to EVERYTHING>

Bought another AVENTAGE series from Yamaha, same result. It was trashed on this forum.
I guess my point is, I felt mostly the same way BEFORE I heard one.
I think that says a lot.

There is a lot to agree with here...
-Normal listening is probably good enough. Many people do not listen at high volumes and/or listen in a normal living room environment which is often much noisier than a dedicated listening environment. I don't think it is a big leap to think that in those environments the kind of performance here would be fine.
-Receiver bashing-It is easy to bash the receiver or A/V processor. However when looking at the utility they provide, I am actually amazed at overall value they provide relative to what they can do.... When you look at what they actually do it is pretty amazing in many regards.
That being said those that want to be more certain that noise or distortion are not ever an issue when at reference level and/or in quite environments in a high performance multichannel system, this is an objectively pretty big step backwards for the 3xxxx series. What brought about this decision, I don't know... but I don't think should be excused because some don't think it should be audible (not that you are saying that).
Between these results and the very slow rollout of Dirac DLBC, I would think many more may pass on this unit than would have if it performed like the 3700 and DLBC came sooner. It still may do well, but I think they left a lot of sales on the table with the poor showing and slow Dirac rollout. And that is on Denon and whomever made these decisions IMO.

 

[amirm]

Nah, I just digitized the 86 dB percentage distortion plot and the lowest it gets is 0.033% which is -69.6 dB, so it doesn't make the cut

Acoustic measurements are polluted by environmental noise, precision errors, and additional microphone noise. And in your case, low pixel resolution of the graph you digitized. As a result, minimum distortion is likely much lower and would continue to decline at lower playback levels.

 

[GXAlan]

Interesting post. I may be off base here as I haven't owned an AVR in sometime but don't AVRs use analog volume control? If this is true I think it makes things more interesting.

At least with the AVRs that I have tested, when driving lower volts (either from lowering my digital signal) versus turning the volume down, the results are probably within a dB or so. There may be complex interactions between digital and analog volume depending on the specific implementation.

It’s somewhat complicated because with my Sony AVR, I need to do +10 on the speaker trim levels to get the best SINAD. I imagine the speaker trim is digital and the volume is analog. This doesn’t seem to be an issue on my Marantz gear.

There is also a lot of different behaviors. There are some that peak before clipping, others that peak very early on and others that keep getting better the higher the voltage is.

 

[beaRA]

@amirm , any thoughts on whether you'd consider bringing some more "AVR specific" tests into your suite in comparison to the usual DACS & amps you measure? The reason I ask is that aren't they often bundled with various roomEQ solutions? It's those roomEQ solutions and speaker setup solutions that I'm thinking have the biggest influence on whether an AVR can successfully integrate into your room and give you a good experience. Is it worth reviewing AVRs to reflect this difference? I know it's a big time suck, as it basically equates to setting up each AVR perfectly for a room and then somehow comparing performance (perhaps through listening position measurements after "EQ" as well as subjective listening impression). I just know from properly setting up (time aligning/volume aligning) my parent's old Onkyo AVR from yr 2010 that AVR's can bring so much to a movie watching/listening experience, and god knows how poorly that one would measure in your suite of measurements - so my point being that effective room setup is probably a lot more important than your current DAC/amp measurements that you apply to AVR's. I can see it being a major time suck and perhaps unknowns in how you quantify & compare AVR's if you were to go down some of the route I mention, but I'm thinking to get a good experience from an AVR is not primarily about it's DAC & amp measurements.

EDIT: maybe only review one AVR every 2 (or more) months or so and really go to town on it - treat it as a special exercise due to it's time constraints & natural complexity (get someone else to do it specifically??!!??).

I don't think every implementation of the same room correction software needs to be tested. Once D&M do release a Dirac update, this generation of products introduce a cool opportunity to directly compare Dirac to Audyssey MultEQ XT32 on equivalent hardware. I would like to see the HPF/LPF slopes verified as a standard measurement for any product with bass management.

 

[peng]

But when you are using analog volume control downstream of the DAC like in an AVR when you send a full scale signal you will get the full scale distortion behavior, even if the volume position is at -20 dB.

If I understood right, the full scale signal you are referring to is 0 dBFS that is for digital signal. For music it is obviously not at fixed level regardless of digital or analog, but would vary with the music/movie contents. The volume control would just act like a gain control, though it would typically control the amount of attenuation instead of gain.

There is a good thread that is relevant to the topic:

AVR input levels from DAC

So I have a Denon A110 which is basically the same as the 8500. The Denon analog input spec states 200mv and when I inquired to Denon support they said the same thing. I have the X16 at 0db and previously the node2i at fixed volume plugged in and have not heard any signs of distortion/clipping...

www.audiosciencereview.com

It also brings up an interesting point about headroom with DSP. It was brought up at some point in this thread that Dirac can boost up to 10 dB (at least in the miniDSP implementations). When you have a device like a miniDSP where the SHARC DSP is doing volume control this boost isn't a huge deal. If you have lower level recordings you can safely increase the volume all the way up to 0 dB and if you have recordings that are at full scale you can set the volume to -10 dB to avoid clipping. But with an analog volume control you need to make sure you avoid clipping in the digital domain, only safe way I see of doing this is setting a permanent attenuation of 10 dB which means you may have issues with achieving decent volume with lower level recordings.

Michael

For D+M AVRs and AVPs the following linked articles may also help:

AVR-Audio Video Reciever-Build Quality: Part V - HomeTheaterHifi.com

Good News! Marantz Says No More AVR LSIs for You! You might recall my article on Audio Video Receiver Build Quality announcing the downgrade of the analog section of almost every AVR and Pre Pro coming from the major Far Eastern manufacturers. The article discussed how multi-channel audio...

hometheaterhifi.com

And for block diagram for the D+M AVRs/AVPs:

 

[Vincentponcet]

A TI pcm5102A costs 2.5$, they need 4 to replace the AKM ak4458 8 channels chip.
An ESS 9018 costs 40$, but provides -120db thd+n and 129db DNR on paper, compared to -93db thd+n and 112db DNR for the TI.
So when increasing the price of the device of 500$, they consider it was worth saving 2*30$.
Bumping the price of 60$ more would not have changed the price positioning. And having a PCB handling 4 times more chips is not free, so the real price impact would be probably be even lower. And they would get digitally controlled volume instead of using the crappy volume control IC.
This is just the result of management by finance people. It sounds like engineers have no voice in the decision making process at Denon.

 

[Sancus]

Nah, I just digitized the 86 dB percentage distortion plot and the lowest it gets is 0.033% which is -69.6 dB, so it doesn't make the cut

Oh I assume you mean the percentage graph, lol, I'm pretty sure they're very inaccurate below 0.1% due to the size of the lines. Anyway, a better example may be the KH 420 which is specifically called out as having >70dB SINAD.

 

[Robbo99999]

3x Genelec 8040, 2x Cambridge Audio SX-50, DIY sub (needs a redo), Marantz SR6010. The Marantz is in dire need for a replacement. Basically all the channel relays are broken. For the actives that is not a problem though. The passive rears will also be replaced in time. If I can find a nice second hand set of 8030s, I’d go for those, but other ideas include DIY LR’s and then the 8040’s will get surround duty.

The X3800H might have been a nice replacement, but I’m holding on for another year or will find some other replacement… I’m not going to reward Denon for delivering an overpriced downgrade.

Fair enough, those Cambridge Audio SX-50 aren't the "****** little speakers" I was talking about though, I was referring to those mega small ones you get or used to get bundled with AVR's years ago.

 

[ABall]

Sounds fair but as long as you also consider the graph SINAD vs output voltage know the actual output range you will be using in your system. For example, for your own use, pre out will not exceed 1.5 V or so, disconnecting the internal amps will make no difference in terms of SINAD, though it will still have other benefits.

Hi peng, could you please elaborate a little? are you saying that bellow 1.5v there will be no gain in SINAD if we connect say Nilai500 to FL/FR ? My speakers are 94db so wont require a massive amount of power as my seat is about 3 meters from them. I have the newer 3700h, seems good but I wonder if I can improve it for 2 channel audio.

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[symphara]

Given the measurements from Denon I feel good about the results here being representative. Test 100 people though and you will get an entirely different picture.

Far from me to suggest testing people. Staying in the realm of instrumented testing, I just wonder what you base your confidence on? Please don’t feel the need to get defensive, I am not implying anything at all, I don’t have or plan to get a 3800, I don’t work for Denon or the industry at all etc.

 

[symphara]

@symphara

Search - Audiophonics

Search page

www.audiophonics.fr

Everyone asking if x or y is audible who has a variety of gear at home should strongly get one of these. Then you know if whatever new gear you buy is performing similarly to reviews or if you got a golden sample (or defect). That answers your question if your setup is performing well.

This also lets you decide when you need to stop chasing the next upgrade.

I was reluctant to buy off AliExpress and didn’t like that Amazon only had Grade B. Audiophonics ships from France to the USA quickly, and they even have Grade A units in stock if you want.

I’m not asking if x or y is audible. I’m not sure I understand your post and what does it have to do with me. What would I personally do with an E1DA and what would that prove? I don’t have an 3800H to test and if I understand correctly @amirm uses an Audio Precision Analyzer, which is completely different.

 

[peng]

Hi peng, could you please elaborate a little? are you saying that bellow 1.5v there will be no gain in SINAD if we connect say Nilai500 to FL/FR ? My speakers are 94db so wont require a massive amount of power as my seat is about 3 meters from them. I have the newer 3700h, seems good but I wonder if I can improve it for 2 channel audio.

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I created a spreadsheet to calculate pre out voltage required for the targeted output power (W), for example 1.5 V will get you 223 W if your amp's gain is 29 dB, or 177 W if the amp's gain is 28 dB. If I remember right your Hypex amp's gain is 27.8 dB so you probably will get about 170 W with pre out voltage of 1.5 V. According to measurements, SINAD of the X3700H that has the AKM DAC IC should be close to 100 dB, that is 0.001% THD+N.

Your 94 dB sensitive speaker whether it's nominal impedance is 8 ohms or 4 ohms, can hit reference level from 3 meters with less than 150 W, assuming 3 dB of room gain. I suspect your volume will be well below -10 when you listen to music. In terms of SINAD, preamp mode or not will not likely make any difference in your application.

Note: I cannot guarantee 100% accuracy of my spreadsheet. If you or anyone finds any errors in it, please let me know and I will make the necessary corrections.

Blue - Gain in dB
Red - Power output in Watts