This is a review and detailed measurements of the dbx DriveRack Venu360 audio processor including DAC and ADC. It was purchased new by a member and drop shipped to me for testing. The retail cost is US $1,136 but company has it on sale for US $909 as of this writing.
NOTE: dbx is owned by Harman. Our company, Madrona Digital, does a lot of business with Harman (on the custom installation side) so feel free to read as much bias as you like into this review.
As the name indicates the Venu360 fits in a single rack unit:
As I had feared, the machine user interface is very difficult to use. I asked my son to read through the manual and he eventually figured out how to configure it. Alas, we could not find a way to disable internal processing units. There are also various settings for different input and output levels. I messed with the latter a bit in the measurements to follow. My testing is strictly focused on the DAC functionality from the point of view of audiophile use. I am not qualified to evaluate the unit functionality for its intended purpose (live sound, etc.).
For my testing, I used AES input for digital feed and balanced Channels 1 and 2 for output:
dbx Venu360 DAC Performance
Out of box configuration was very strange with one channel clipping and another not. After half hour of messing with the unit, we managed to get it produce proper output voltages and distortion:
There is a lot of distortion plus some strange interference around our main tone. SIAND, representing noise and distortion, is quite poor in our domain:
We are talking about 14 bits of distortion-free range.
Company rates the device as having 1% THD+N at 24 dBu. Strangely, the max output is just 22 dBu. You only get there if you let the device severely clip:
Fortunately that doesn't happen until you get to 8.9 volts or so.
Dynamic range is more respectable than distortion:
IMD test versus level shows the early rise in distortion:
Jitter test shows high noise floor and aforementioned sidebands/noise around our main tone:
At this point, I was disappointed enough that I stopped running more tests.
Conclusions
Some pro products fit well in a hi-fi system. Sadly the dbx Venu360 isn't one of them. It is very difficult to use for some new to it. And measured performance is quite poor, certainly worse than mass market AVRs and such. If you need the specific functionality that it provides, it may be OK but would not be a choice for me over something like MiniDSP.
I can't recommend the dbx DriveRack Venu360 for our applications.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
NOTE: dbx is owned by Harman. Our company, Madrona Digital, does a lot of business with Harman (on the custom installation side) so feel free to read as much bias as you like into this review.
As the name indicates the Venu360 fits in a single rack unit:
As I had feared, the machine user interface is very difficult to use. I asked my son to read through the manual and he eventually figured out how to configure it. Alas, we could not find a way to disable internal processing units. There are also various settings for different input and output levels. I messed with the latter a bit in the measurements to follow. My testing is strictly focused on the DAC functionality from the point of view of audiophile use. I am not qualified to evaluate the unit functionality for its intended purpose (live sound, etc.).
For my testing, I used AES input for digital feed and balanced Channels 1 and 2 for output:
dbx Venu360 DAC Performance
Out of box configuration was very strange with one channel clipping and another not. After half hour of messing with the unit, we managed to get it produce proper output voltages and distortion:
There is a lot of distortion plus some strange interference around our main tone. SIAND, representing noise and distortion, is quite poor in our domain:
We are talking about 14 bits of distortion-free range.
Company rates the device as having 1% THD+N at 24 dBu. Strangely, the max output is just 22 dBu. You only get there if you let the device severely clip:
Fortunately that doesn't happen until you get to 8.9 volts or so.
Dynamic range is more respectable than distortion:
IMD test versus level shows the early rise in distortion:
Jitter test shows high noise floor and aforementioned sidebands/noise around our main tone:
At this point, I was disappointed enough that I stopped running more tests.
Conclusions
Some pro products fit well in a hi-fi system. Sadly the dbx Venu360 isn't one of them. It is very difficult to use for some new to it. And measured performance is quite poor, certainly worse than mass market AVRs and such. If you need the specific functionality that it provides, it may be OK but would not be a choice for me over something like MiniDSP.
I can't recommend the dbx DriveRack Venu360 for our applications.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
