This is a review and detailed measurements of the Denon AVR-A1H 15.4 channel 8K AV Receiver (AVR). It kindly drop shipped by member from our company (Madrona) for testing and costs US $6,499.
Please pardon the low quality mobile phone picture. At 70+ pounds, the AVR was too heavy for me to carry upstairs to my lab. So I put it on a cart and brought my test instruments to it.
I am disappointed that the look of the unit is not any different than many models below it. Hopefully the performance is there to compensate for it.
For testing, I updated the firmware to the latest. All "DAC" tests are performed by putting the unit into "preamplifier" mode and thereby disabling its power amps. I like how Denon is consistent with volume control at 82.5 producing 2 volts on RCA and 4 volts on XLR on all of their units. That is how I conducted all the tests.
Because I was running the tests from my laptop, I could not drive the unit with HDMI. So all the testing unless noted otherwise, is using Toslink input. HDMI should be the same.
In case you are not familiar with the measurements that are about to follow, please watch my tutorial on DAC measurements:
And amplifiers:
Denon AVR-A1H AVR DAC Measurements
Let's start with the internal DAC measurements as seen on the "preout" RCA connectors:
We are bound by the third harmonic distortion product setting SINAD at a very respectable level for home theater products:
AVR-A1H has four subwoofer balanced outs that can be configured to be any other channel. I set them to Front Left and Right, hoping to get even better performance. Alas, this was not meant to be:
Distortion goes up which likely due to lower quality converters used for sub out. From here on, testing will be done with RCA.
Before I forget, notice that channel mismatch in both cases. If you use auto-EQ, this will be compensated for but it shouldn't be there.
Varying input level we see that optimal performance is a bit lower than 2/4 volts:
Dynamic range is also respectable:
As is though, we are still trailing older budget DACs:
Toslink doesn't support the 192 kHz sampling of my standard multitone test so we have to go with the 7-tone version:
There is fair but of spurious tones in our jitter test but fortunately, they are at inaudible levels:
The filter is the default one in DAC silicon:
Lack of higher out of band attenuation results in rising distortion+noise with frequency:
Denon AVR-A1H Amplifier Measurements
I started testing with the same Toslink input: [ECO mode turned off in all the tests]
This is about what I expect from the standard bin of parts at Denon&Marantz:
Performance drops a bit with analog input:
Crosstalk is also rather poor:
Fortunately the main application is digital input so let's continue with that for the test of the tests:
Frequency response is flat and extended despite the limitation of 96 kHz digital input:
IMD test of 19 and 20 kHz shows typical AVR performance:
We have healthy amount of power:
Spec is 150 watts and we are getting 157 watts into 2 channel.
Allowing 1% THD, we naturally get more power, especially in burst:
My new test at 40 Hz produces the same:
I now have a new test which samples power at 10 frequencies, attempting to compute power at 1% THD. Testing starts fast from 20 KHz but slows down as it gets down to 20 Hz. The amplifier is pushed hard into clipping for every measurement point:
No issues at all other than minor power drop at either end of the spectrum.
This is a typical class AB amplification showing rise in distortion proportional to frequency above 1 kHz:
At the end of testing, the amplifiers were fairly warm but not alarmingly so:
Hottest spot was something small on top left side. I looked but it was too hard to see what that is. The heatsinks and the transformer are almost as hot. Ambient temp was 20 degrees C.
Note that all of my testing was in stereo. If you drive all the channels, it will get hotter lest the fans under the heatsinks come on.
Conclusions
The Denon AVR-A1H is competently designed and represents the newer generation of AV products that get close to desktop level performance. We could argue about wanting a bit more from flagship product but there is not anything better with this level of functionality.
I am going to recommend the Denon AVR-A1H AVR. Now, who is going to help me pack it back in the box???
------------
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/
Please pardon the low quality mobile phone picture. At 70+ pounds, the AVR was too heavy for me to carry upstairs to my lab. So I put it on a cart and brought my test instruments to it.
I am disappointed that the look of the unit is not any different than many models below it. Hopefully the performance is there to compensate for it.
For testing, I updated the firmware to the latest. All "DAC" tests are performed by putting the unit into "preamplifier" mode and thereby disabling its power amps. I like how Denon is consistent with volume control at 82.5 producing 2 volts on RCA and 4 volts on XLR on all of their units. That is how I conducted all the tests.
Because I was running the tests from my laptop, I could not drive the unit with HDMI. So all the testing unless noted otherwise, is using Toslink input. HDMI should be the same.
In case you are not familiar with the measurements that are about to follow, please watch my tutorial on DAC measurements:
And amplifiers:
Denon AVR-A1H AVR DAC Measurements
Let's start with the internal DAC measurements as seen on the "preout" RCA connectors:
We are bound by the third harmonic distortion product setting SINAD at a very respectable level for home theater products:
AVR-A1H has four subwoofer balanced outs that can be configured to be any other channel. I set them to Front Left and Right, hoping to get even better performance. Alas, this was not meant to be:
Distortion goes up which likely due to lower quality converters used for sub out. From here on, testing will be done with RCA.
Before I forget, notice that channel mismatch in both cases. If you use auto-EQ, this will be compensated for but it shouldn't be there.
Varying input level we see that optimal performance is a bit lower than 2/4 volts:
Dynamic range is also respectable:
As is though, we are still trailing older budget DACs:
Toslink doesn't support the 192 kHz sampling of my standard multitone test so we have to go with the 7-tone version:
There is fair but of spurious tones in our jitter test but fortunately, they are at inaudible levels:
The filter is the default one in DAC silicon:
Lack of higher out of band attenuation results in rising distortion+noise with frequency:
Denon AVR-A1H Amplifier Measurements
I started testing with the same Toslink input: [ECO mode turned off in all the tests]
This is about what I expect from the standard bin of parts at Denon&Marantz:
Performance drops a bit with analog input:
Crosstalk is also rather poor:
Fortunately the main application is digital input so let's continue with that for the test of the tests:
Frequency response is flat and extended despite the limitation of 96 kHz digital input:
IMD test of 19 and 20 kHz shows typical AVR performance:
We have healthy amount of power:
Spec is 150 watts and we are getting 157 watts into 2 channel.
Allowing 1% THD, we naturally get more power, especially in burst:
My new test at 40 Hz produces the same:
I now have a new test which samples power at 10 frequencies, attempting to compute power at 1% THD. Testing starts fast from 20 KHz but slows down as it gets down to 20 Hz. The amplifier is pushed hard into clipping for every measurement point:
No issues at all other than minor power drop at either end of the spectrum.
This is a typical class AB amplification showing rise in distortion proportional to frequency above 1 kHz:
At the end of testing, the amplifiers were fairly warm but not alarmingly so:
Hottest spot was something small on top left side. I looked but it was too hard to see what that is. The heatsinks and the transformer are almost as hot. Ambient temp was 20 degrees C.
Note that all of my testing was in stereo. If you drive all the channels, it will get hotter lest the fans under the heatsinks come on.
Conclusions
The Denon AVR-A1H is competently designed and represents the newer generation of AV products that get close to desktop level performance. We could argue about wanting a bit more from flagship product but there is not anything better with this level of functionality.
I am going to recommend the Denon AVR-A1H AVR. Now, who is going to help me pack it back in the box???
------------
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/
