Arcam AVR10 Review

[Anterantz]

Hello Amir or Peng Haber if you can help me since I read you a lot and see that you handle all the records.

I just sent my avr20 to the arcam sat because from the first day it gives me the feeling that the preout outputs cover my subwoofer and
the stage I use for the 4 atmos.

The sat told me that it was all correct and within the values given by the manufacturer but it did not give me any proof of it, and asked to measure the output voltage of an avr it is not necessary to reset it
and leave it from the factory?

Then something is happening with my subwoofer and it is that with my old denon 8500 the sub was set to -25db and that was enough and with the avr20 I have to raise them to -15db to sound similar and the current stage
I use for atmos something similar happens!

The gain is 26db and 1v does this influence what I noticed at low volume?

Greetings

 

[reddeath]

It is a number of things:

1. Not enough attention to keep noise and distortion down as we see in 2-channel equipment. This comes down to excellent analog design -- a skill that is harder and harder to find these days (the money is in digital design as far as engineering).

2. In the case of AVR, an isolated power supply is NOT used for the DAC, causing the amplifier overload to also drag performance of the DAC (through pre-out) down with it.

3. They have a complex DSP pipeline with many licensed libraries with no source code or ability to modify. When you string these together, each can eat into the headroom by many dBs, resulting in poor noise performance.

4. Bugs in the signal processing causing overflow and clipping with test signals or music that is recorded at or near 0 dB.

5. Strong pressure to build a ton of functionality with the lowest possible budget. This is impacts the amplifiers for sure but also the choice of DACs.

6. No one in the industry measuring audio performance of AVRs at the level we do. No monitoring means no attention from marketing department to do well with respect to engineering. As a result, some random performance target is chosen rather than state of the art.

7. Too little sales volume for the huge amount of work/grief to get these devices to work. Number of logos has grown exponentially but the the market has not. Competition forces low prices as well.

So it is not just one issue but a combination of process, design, budget, market realities, etc.

@amirm Just out of curiosity, what was the firmware version of the AVR10 that you tested? Looking through the firmware release notes, I found a point describing change to something around the DAC to improve its performance. Arcam seems to be making a lot of bug fixes and improvements with really many firmware releases. I think it would be worthwhile to test this or another unit in the AVR series with the latest firmware installed.

 

[Krobar]

@amirm Just out of curiosity, what was the firmware version of the AVR10 that you tested? Looking through the firmware release notes, I found a point describing change to something around the DAC to improve its performance. Arcam seems to be making a lot of bug fixes and improvements with really many firmware releases. I think it would be worthwhile to test this or another unit in the AVR series with the latest firmware installed.

Might be most interesting to test an AVR11, AVR21 or AV41 in a few months time since these will have the new HDMI 2.1 card and the latest hardware revision.

 

[Filmgeek47]

Yeah as a general note it’d be great to see the firmware version on devices listed in reviews going forward. lots of AVR’s seem to be coming out of the gate half-finished on the software side, so it’d be helpful to see what version is being tested. Reading through the old Arcam threads there were a lot of early reviews mentioning hiss/high noise floor which was apparently improved markedly in subsequent updates.

 

[Jeff1412]

Even though it was tested awfully back in 2020, I’m getting an AVR11 next week. Will be using it for 5.1 home theatre and 2.0 or 2.1 music listening. Not sure if we can justify the cost, but I’m hopeful for its performance.

P.S it seems that they have fixed some bugs via the newest firmware update.

 

[TommyGraz]

Is there already some feedback on the performance of the AVR11?

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

Bought a 2 channel Arcam SR250 over a year ago and have been very happy with its sound and the build quality is pretty good. Found their customer service abysmal had one or two issues setting it up, never had come across Dirac before. Emailed them a couple of times and like AMIR nothing came back.

 

[TommyGraz]

Thanks for the feedback. I am wondering whether the design and the measurement results of the AVR11 are better now, compared to the AVR10. Feature-wise the the AVR11 is currently one of the most compelling AVRs on the market. I would like to run it in pre-amp mode and I also like to listen 2-channel music expecting audiophile sound quality. According to the measurement results of Amir neither the Pre-amp section nor the CD Direct Mode of the AVR10 delivers decent signal quality. It's frustrating.

It's difficult to find a device that has no serious issues. The Anthem AVRs provide good signal quality from what I can read, but they have a noisy internal fan which is an absolute NoGo. Same issue applies to the NAD T778. However, for this one the fan can be easily replaced by an ultra silent one. But for the NAD T778 a lot of devices had to be replaced for several reasons. As such, there seem to be serious production quality issues.

 

[SupremeAV]

Thanks for the feedback. I am wondering whether the design and the measurement results of the AVR11 are better now, compared to the AVR10. Feature-wise the the AVR11 is currently one of the most compelling AVRs on the market. I would like to run it in pre-amp mode and I also like to listen 2-channel music expecting audiophile sound quality. According to the measurement results of Amir neither the Pre-amp section nor the CD Direct Mode of the AVR10 delivers decent signal quality. It's frustrating.

It's difficult to find a device that has no serious issues. The Anthem AVRs provide good signal quality from what I can read, but they have a noisy internal fan which is an absolute NoGo. Same issue applies to the NAD T778. However, for this one the fan can be easily replaced by an ultra silent one. But for the NAD T778 a lot of devices had to be replaced for several reasons. As such, there seem to be serious production quality issues.

I'm ordering an AVR11 this week to replace my old Marantz AV7702. Hopefully it doesn't disappoint. I don't think it will though, worst case I'll just flip it and get a Marantz Cinema 40 when it releases and as Dirac available.

 

[Prolix]

my question remains; After room correction, can you HEAR the difference?

No. Well, not if you're a human.

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

No. Well, not if you're a human.

Recently AMIR tested a Chord upscaler and it test results generally were awful and it was not recommended obviously. So the measurements would point to it degrading the listening experience, yet he couldn’t tell any difference whether it was in or out of the circuit. So what did the tests tell us about the Chord upscaler and does it call into question most of the tests carried out on audio equipment? After over 50 years into HiFi and having worked on and tested audio equipment from the early tube kit to modern
class D / digital equipment, the only modern equipment were test results are 100% relevant are speakers. Bought an Arcam SR250 streaming amplifier it sounds superb whether you use Dirac or not.

 

[Yeats]

I've read multiple reviews here. Seems like nothing is good enough for you guys. It's sort of a joke. Whatever.

 

[Tks]

I've read multiple reviews here. Seems like nothing is good enough for you guys. It's sort of a joke. Whatever.

Bootlicking for sub-CD quality performance is hardly a more justified side of the fence to be on.

 

[anarchist]

I see that Arcam supports 220V power in its products, I wonder if AVR10 also supports PAL in addition to NTSC?
And may be even tuner section supports both Europe and US bands?
Can an owner confirm?

 

[anarchist]

I see that Arcam supports 220V power in its products, I wonder if AVR10 also supports PAL in addition to NTSC?
And may be even tuner section supports both Europe and US bands?
Can an owner confirm?

Arcam support was rather quick - yes to both my questions. And they said apparently PAL/NTSC is not relevant in HDMI world.
I have seen reports from owners of Denon/Marantz switching to Arcam AVRs and noticing sound quality improvement - going to try myself too.