Denon AVR-X8500H AVR Review

[Anterantz]

If you don't need more power, then the answer would be "No", based on the measurements of the 8500.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/rotel-rb-991-power-amplifier-measurements

The Rotel is of course more powerful, may be 1.5 to 2 dB more, but seem to be saying power is not the issue.
If you compare the following:

Frequency response: No issues with both.
IMD: Both seem fine
SNR: The 8500 actually looked better
THD+N: You can see from the graphs below that the difference are likely not audible unless you have the so called golden ears.

I wouldn't spend a lot of money on such an old power amplifier for no good reasons but of course that's just my opinion.

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Hello Peng, thanks for answering, as I said, my room is very small and I never go beyond the reference level because it sounds a lot! I just wanted to improve the stereo a bit (eye to me it sounds very, very good) but I was wondering if I would win even more using the preout front and getting a cleaner signal! I'm not going to spend € 1000/2000 on any stage or integrated because I really have plenty of how it currently sounds

 

[peng]

Hello Peng, thanks for answering, as I said, my room is very small and I never go beyond the reference level because it sounds a lot! I just wanted to improve the stereo a bit (eye to me it sounds very, very good) but I was wondering if I would win even more using the preout front and getting a cleaner signal! I'm not going to spend € 1000/2000 on any stage or integrated because I really have plenty of how it currently sounds

I have owned and still own quite a few separate preamp, power amps but only one integrated amp. To me, integrated amp has very narrow applications, with the advanced in AVRs and two channel receivers, I just don't see much value of integrated amps. If you are an audiophile, then go for real separates. Unless you are willing to pay a lot more, you will not find flagship DAC ICs and/or volume control ICs in integrated amps.

It's you money, and the Rotel may in fact sound better to you, because of the famous Placebo effect that works especially well on audiophiles. It even worked for me, but that's years ago.

 

[Anterantz]

I have owned and still own quite a few separate preamp, power amps but only one integrated amp. To me, integrated amp has very narrow applications, with the advanced in AVRs and two channel receivers, I just don't see much value of integrated amps. If you are an audiophile, then go for real separates. Unless you are willing to pay a lot more, you will not find flagship DAC ICs and/or volume control ICs in integrated amps.

It's you money, and the Rotel may in fact sound better to you, because of the famous Placebo effect that works especially well on audiophiles. It even worked for me, but that's years ago.

Hello, what do you mean with separations? I do not understand what you mean that a stereo integrated is limited, I had a marantz 8005 that I used with a 32 / 348khz nuprime dac and although it sounded very good I ended up selling it since the 8500 in stereo sounds the same or I would say even better than the 8005 since the denon sometimes had to check that the multi-channel spatiality that gives its stereo mode is not on! I have had separated such as a marantz av7705 + emotive basx-700 for surround and atmos and the marantz 8005 for l / r before buying the denon and I stay street with the 8500 ... Greetings

 

[peng]

Hello, what do you mean with separations? I do not understand what you mean that a stereo integrated is limited, I had a marantz 8005 that I used with a 32 / 348khz nuprime dac and although it sounded very good I ended up selling it since the 8500 in stereo sounds the same or I would say even better than the 8005 since the denon sometimes had to check that the multi-channel spatiality that gives its stereo mode is not on! I have had separated such as a marantz av7705 + emotive basx-700 for surround and atmos and the marantz 8005 for l / r before buying the denon and I stay street with the 8500 ... Greetings

I don't know about you, but to me, separates generally means separate devices such as the following (but not limited to):
DAC
Tuner
Processor
Preamp
Power amp

Integrated amplifier is typically a "One-box device" that may include a DAC (not always), preamp, and power amp all packed into one box.

In my experience, low to mid range integrated amplifiers tend to have average quality DAC and preamp volume control ICs in them, in some cases, they even share some of the same parts in their AVR cousins (example: Yamaha's A-S801 and the models below it). They typically are not much more powerful than a mid range AVR. The much more expensive ones such Anthem's STR integrated amp is an example of what I would consider a real and good quality integrated amp that AVRs can't match in terms of specs and build quality. It doesn't mean they will "sound better" in a double blind test, but their owners will likely tell you they do, even night and day kind of "better sound". If you level match your X8500H and the 7705+Emotiva power amp or the PM8005, in a blind listening tests using analog input, in pure direct mode, I would bet you cannot tell them apart. That's just my belief.

 

[da Choge]

Does anyone know if the new Marantz SR8015 has an Amp Assign - "Custom" mode like the Denon X8500H? I know it has a pre-out mode similar to Denon's, but it seems from the discussion, if you want to use external amps and get the best preamp performance from the AVR, you have to actually disconnect the pre-outs from the amp section, which only the Amp Assign section of the Settings can accomplish.

BTW, it has probably already been referenced, but G. DellaSala's YouTube Bench-Test Review of the Marantz SR8015 has come out and he gives it a big "Thumbs-Up". His tests show good performance, but not quite as good as ASR's test of the Denon X8500H, I think. It seems the major benefit to the performance of the SR8015 may have been accomplished by Marantz finally modifying their (bleeped) HDAM modules!

 

[Anterantz]

Does anyone know if the new Marantz SR8015 has an Amp Assign - "Custom" mode like the Denon X8500H? I know it has a pre-out mode similar to Denon's, but it seems from the discussion, if you want to use external amps and get the best preamp performance from the AVR, you have to actually disconnect the pre-outs from the amp section, which only the Amp Assign section of the Settings can accomplish.

BTW, it has probably already been referenced, but G. DellaSala's YouTube Bench-Test Review of the Marantz SR8015 has come out and he gives it a big "Thumbs-Up". His tests show good performance, but not quite as good as ASR's test of the Denon X8500H, I think.

I think it's only exclusive to Denon, but do not Isooe!

 

[Anterantz]

Hi guys, a question, those of you who have denon 8500 or 6500 do you like to listen to music in pure direct mode? It sounds garbage to my ears compared to activated audyseey..which these japs have manufactured at a cost of 3k av, I refuse to think that it sounds so bad!

 

[Dj7675]

Hi guys, a question, those of you who have denon 8500 or 6500 do you like to listen to music in pure direct mode? It sounds garbage to my ears compared to activated audyseey..which these japs have manufactured at a cost of 3k av, I refuse to think that it sounds so bad!

Never, ever. It shouldn’t be a surprise either. Never understood the appeal. Fixing room issues, using subs, etc will always make it sound better imho.

 

[Anterantz]

Never, ever. It shouldn’t be a surprise either. Never understood the appeal. Fixing room issues, using subs, etc will always make it sound better imho.

Exact companion I never liked the pure direct, they only used decent in direct mode in the arcam avr390 and the previous marantz av7705 + pm8005 that I used in bypass mode fed my front ends! There is a world for me to activate audyseey in my living room and it is when I get the best stereo sound to date! By the way I see that you pilot the 8500 haha, could you give me a brief summary that the dialogue enhancer provides in the medium, high, low options? Greetings

 

[Dj7675]

I can do better. An image is worth a thousand words. Below is exactly what it does and it works very well. I don’t use it very often, but if a movie/show has poor dialogue intelligibility it works great. Even just the low/medium setting.

 

[Anterantz]

I can do better. An image is worth a thousand words. Below is exactly what it does and it works very well. I don’t use it very often, but if a movie/show has poor dialogue intelligibility it works great. Even just the low/medium setting.View attachment 81420

Well, I have activated high, low and medium and I do not notice that db elevation that the photo shows! I do not use it either since I do not appreciate differences, greetings

 

[SILLENT HILL]

Yes I would Definitely like to see The Marantz SR8015 on your bench

 

[Anterantz]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Denon AVR-X8500H Flagship 13.2 Audio/Video Receiver (AVR). It is kindly loaned to me by a member and costs US $3999.

The 8500H is a beast: it is both deep and heavy. Thankfully the transformer is centrally located so as manageable as 51 pounds can be:
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If RCA connectors were Christmas lights, you would have the best one in the entire neighborhood with this AVR:

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In use, the AVR-X8500H ran a bit cooler than its lower end siblings. I think I measured a post-testing temperature of 45 degrees C. Still, I highly recommend ample cooling as once again, there is a fan under the heatsinks but it does not turn on in normal usage (ECO mode off).

If you have read my previous reviews of AVRs, you know that I test the pre-amp output with and without amplifiers active (if there is such an option). I tried to do this with the 8500H but at first failed miserably. I set the amplifier config to "pre" which I thought would shut down all the amps. Performance was poor indicating the amps were probably still on. Discussing it with the owner, he suggested that I turn off the individual channels and set the Amp config to Custom. Doing that indeed turned off the amps resulting in much better DAC performance. I asked Denon about it but their engineering team is on holiday. The suggestion was that perhaps this is something that is fixed in later firmware revisions? I did not try to test that.

As with other Denon and Marantz measurements of late, I sent my results to them for review. Per above, engineering team was on vacation but US contacts felt good about the data and so we are running with them.

AVR DAC Pre-out HDMI Measurements
Per my standard testing protocol, I feed the AVR stereo 1 kHz PCM digital signal and adjust the volume to produce 2 volts nominal. Like all the other Denon & Marantz AVRs, this meant volume level of 82.5. Pure Direct mode was used for all testing. And per introduction above, the front L&R amps are shut off:

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Aha! We have set a record folks. An AVR that produces a SINAD (sum of distortion and noise) that exceeds 100 dB! Hooray!!!

View attachment 77694

Whoever said AVRs are too complicated to ever have good SINAD needs to eat their hat, shorts, or whatever they put forward if shown wrong. It is very nice to see at least some scaling of SINAD with respect to price.

Sweeping the digital level to see the performance at different output levels we get:
View attachment 77698

Since you can turn all the amplifiers on and off per channel, you don't have to worry about the second graph but I post it for consistency with other AVRs that can't do this. It does nicely show the peak performance though which is at 104 dB SINAD and 1.45 volts. But you don't lose hardly any performance at 2 volts (with amp shut off of course).

Dynamic range is nearly good enough to keep up with the SINAD:

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Intermodulation distortion is fine for an AVR:
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As is 32-tone test masquerading as music:

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Filter has good attenuation:

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Which helps when we see distortion versus frequency:

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Jitter and spurious tone and noise is not pretty but not an audible concern:
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Our hearing threshold is way too high for the low frequency spray to be audible. Still, I like to see Denon clean this up. A dirty spoon doesn't change the flavor of your soup but I rather have a clean one still!

Linearity was excellent in channel but degraded a bit in the other:
View attachment 77702

Zone 2 DAC Audio Performance
The owner asked for the Zone 2 performance. I fumbled through the menus and found an option to send all output to zones 2 and 3 and got this out of Zone 2 pre out:

View attachment 77703

Output was capped at half a volt which hurt noise performance resulting in a SINAD of nearly 98 dB. If volume could go higher, it seems it would reach the same performance as the mains as distortion is very low at -104 dB or so. If you are going to use an external amp for these zones, better get one with high sensitivity.

AVR Amplifier Performance
I started the testing here by using HDMI as the input as that is likely how all of you will be using the AVR:

View attachment 77704

For comparison to other amplifiers though, analog testing is more convenient so I tested the CD input:

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We see that performance is essentially the same. The DAC in the AVR is way better than the amplifier so it doesn't impact performance when we use HDMI.

I wish one channel wasn't much worse than the other as otherwise, the overall ranking would be good. As it is, it is a bit worse than the cheaper Denons:

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Among all amplifiers of all types, performance is above average:
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Not state of the art though. So external amplification should improve overall performance given how good the DAC is.

CD frequency response in pure direct mode is nice and wide:
View attachment 77708

Signal to noise ratio could be a bit better at 5 watts but good enough at full power:
View attachment 77709

Crosstalk is like other Denon AVRs which once again is good enough:

View attachment 77710

AVR Power Measurements
Let's start with 4 ohm load and see what that gets us:

View attachment 77711

I like to see that graph sloping down until clipping sets in. As it is, it indicates that distortion becomes dominant quite early. Good amount of power is available which increases yet again if we allow 1% THD+N and use burst measurements:

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Amplifier performance is very predictable in a good way:
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Switching to 8 ohm we essentially get the same power as Denon specifiies:

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All of these tests are in 2-channel mode but the AVR power supply is designed to power more channels. As a result, we are getting the best case performance numbers. Let's see the impact of each channel as we go from one to five channels:

View attachment 77716

So there is no cliff there. We still get a respectable 131 watts per channel with all five channels driven continuously (1% distortion+noise)

Conclusions
Testing AVRs and even expensive processors has been a depressing trip. A highlight however has been Denon AVRs which generally outperform their competition. So it is with great pleasure to see their flagship AVR bettering the performance of all home theater products tested so far. Yes, it is a more expensive product but at least you get more when you pay more. Features like ability to turn off any amplification channel is super important for a high-end theater where you want to have some external amplification.

Needless to say, I am happy to recommend the Denon AVR-X8500H.

-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

I had to test this AVR twice: once with the broken Pre mode and then with the amp turned off. Considering how much work they are to measure as is, this was a ton of work. I hope that makes you feel sorry for me by donating what you can using : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Hello amir, did you answer denon about the data of the denon 8500 in the test of 5w to 4ohm? I still explain that it could fail in this test, as it has returned worse db than the 3700/4700? You just have to see internally the monobloc stages and a transformer that alone weighs more than the 3700, someone explain it to me? I demand that you give a clear answer in this section to clarify to users like me that they paid 3k for a better av than the input range

 

[Dj7675]

Hello amir, did you answer denon about the data of the denon 8500 in the test of 5w to 4ohm? I still explain that it could fail in this test, as it has returned worse db than the 3700/4700? You just have to see internally the monobloc stages and a transformer that alone weighs more than the 3700, someone explain it to me? I demand that you give a clear answer in this section to clarify to users like me that they paid 3k for a better av than the input range

You demand? Amir is not Denon, he just reviewed/bench tested it. As such it makes no sense to “demand” anything from him. It was surprising the amps didn’t measure better, but the x8500 does offer many features measures better on the DAC side. Also, it has 13 amps stuffed in one box. The “demand” should be asked of Denon to see if a response can be gotten from them as to why the amps don’t measure better in the higher model.

 

[amirm]

You just have to see internally the monobloc stages and a transformer that alone weighs more than the 3700, someone explain it to me?

The transformer determines total amount of (raw) energy available to all the amps. It has little to do with how distortion-free one or two amps run at just 5 watts. If things were so easy, I would just weigh the transformer instead of measuring the whole unit!

Also, the good channel is the same as 4700. It is just that one channel is weaker than the other. This happens a lot and has to do with parts variation, location of the amplifier relative to supply and speaker out/input, etc. This differential was 5 dB and for the purpose of comparison, I averaged the two channels so made the final results a bit less competitive. Overall though, it is basically the same as 4700.

 

[peng]

Also, the good channel is the same as 4700. It is just that one channel is weaker than the other. This happens a lot and has to do with parts variation, location of the amplifier relative to supply and speaker out/input, etc. This differential was 5 dB and for the purpose of comparison, I averaged the two channels so made the final results a bit less competitive. Overall though, it is basically the same as 4700.

That's why in the comparison table I did, I included both Ch1 and Ch2 for the 5 W tests, for those interested..

 

[Anterantz]

You demand? Amir is not Denon, he just reviewed/bench tested it. As such it makes no sense to “demand” anything from him. It was surprising the amps didn’t measure better, but the x8500 does offer many features measures better on the DAC side. Also, it has 13 amps stuffed in one box. The “demand” should be asked of Denon to see if a response can be gotten from them as to why the amps don’t measure better in the higher model.

Hello, the google translator misinterpreted my words, I would never demand anything from Amir, I would miss more! Just ask if Denon answered his measurements of the 8500 and that I require DENON as a user of an 8500 to explain how a load of 5w at 4ohm is better in the 4700 than in the 8500h ... I feel cheated of paying 3k and seeing that the 8500 is only better at sinad a couple decibels vs 4700 and more power and more channels that I will ever get to use

 

[Anterantz]

The transformer determines total amount of (raw) energy available to all the amps. It has little to do with how distortion-free one or two amps run at just 5 watts. If things were so easy, I would just weigh the transformer instead of measuring the whole unit!

Also, the good channel is the same as 4700. It is just that one channel is weaker than the other. This happens a lot and has to do with parts variation, location of the amplifier relative to supply and speaker out/input, etc. This differential was 5 dB and for the purpose of comparison, I averaged the two channels so made the final results a bit less competitive. Overall though, it is basically the same as 4700.

Hi Amir, thank you for your answer but I feel very confused, so according to your tests, what advantage is there to pay double for the 8500 if you are not going to use more than 9/11 channels? So according to your tests, the amplification of the 4700 with 5w loads is better than the 8500h, right? because in the 4700 the gain is set to 26db and in the 8500h to 29db? Regards

 

[studiocity]

I have often wond

Hi guys, a question, those of you who have denon 8500 or 6500 do you like to listen to music in pure direct mode? It sounds garbage to my ears compared to activated audyseey..which these japs have manufactured at a cost of 3k av, I refuse to think that it sounds so bad!

I have often wondered this myself, I have not found denon, 6700, or 8500 to sound that great in pure direct. My pioneer flagship sc89 didn’t either, without setting up the room correction.

 

[studiocity]

The transformer determines total amount of (raw) energy available to all the amps. It has little to do with how distortion-free one or two amps run at just 5 watts. If things were so easy, I would just weigh the transformer instead of measuring the whole unit!

Also, the good channel is the same as 4700. It is just that one channel is weaker than the other. This happens a lot and has to do with parts variation, location of the amplifier relative to supply and speaker out/input, etc. This differential was 5 dB and for the purpose of comparison, I averaged the two channels so made the final results a bit less competitive. Overall though, it is basically the same as 4700.

Does this mean that some x8500h units may be the same for both channels? Caused by parts variation? As opposed to design ramifications.