Denon AVR-A1H High-end AVR Review

[Billy Budapest]

Voted “fine” because although the level of performance is far below SOTA, it manages decent performance for FIFTEEN channels of high power amplification. That’s impressive. Plus, although expensive, it actually represents a pretty good value. Try to buy a pre/pro that can handle 15 channels of processing and three separate five channel amps for $6400. I doubt you could do that.

 

[rynberg]

Another SOTA AVR and the same type of comments from people who don't even have home theater setups (or have simple ones). This is for people who want an all-in-one solution with 15-channels of processing plus multiple subwoofers. You can buy audibly transparent 11-channel processing from Denon or others for under $2,000. This isn't meant for those people or for stereo only setups.

I 100% get and agree with pushing companies to have well engineered products, but a product with 19-channels of audio processing, 15-channels of power, substantial video section, and networking all in a single relatively compact chassis is not going to have the same performance of SOTA 2-channel DACs. It's beyond tiring to hear the same old comments expecting that level of performance in an all-in-one solution with this much functionality.

 

[GD Fan]

What stands out to me is how linear the multitone grass is, almost all precisely mowed at -110. Can't recall seeing anything quite that uniform in other tests previously. Is it coincidence or is something happening there?

 

[Billy Budapest]

Another SOTA AVR and the same type of comments from people who don't even have home theater setups (or have simple ones).

Speak for yourself. I have four HT systems in my home. One 7.2.3, one 7.1, and two 5.1.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

A key question is whether it supports only Dirac Live, or Dirac DLBC and Dirac ART.

It looks like a decent unit, but that price!

Great review, Amir, thank you.

 

[rynberg]

Speak for yourself. I have four HT systems in my home. One 7.2.3, one 7.1, and two 5.1.

Eh? Your response is inline with mine and not the type of comment I was addressing.

Every time a high channel count AVR is reviewed, we get pointless commentary from stereo-only users and it just reduces S/N ratio here (ironic, given the nature of their comments).

 

[Billy Budapest]

Eh? Your response is inline with mine and not the type of comment I was addressing.

Got it! I just disagree with calling it a SOTA product. I don’t think the Denon and Marantz products are at the bleeding edge. But for a TOTL receiver, it definitely represents a good value. We are talking about 15 solid channels of amplification.

 

[rynberg]

Got it! I just disagree with calling it a SOTA product. I don’t think the Denon and Marantz products are at the bleeding edge.

It's a SOTA AVR in my opinion. Who is making a better performing AVR with this channel count and these features? I mean an earlier poster referenced the Trinnov at 3x the cost of this Denon (and also not an AVR).

 

[Rja4000]

Thanks for testing !

Toslink doesn't support the 192 kHz sampling of my standard multitone test so we have to go with the 7-tone version:

Why not to use the 48k version?
The test signal is identical.
You just need to use FFT window size 4 times smaller, and bin size would remain the same.
Just asking...

 

[masterhw]

It's a SOTA AVR in my opinion. Who is making a better performing AVR with this channel count and these features? I mean an earlier poster referenced the Trinnov at 3x the cost of this Denon (and also not an AVR).

I think the hesitancy to call this “state of the art” is because it’s quite a bit behind audio-only products that are a fraction of the cost. I expect there are some disgruntling knowing they are paying a not-insignificant performance premium for pursuing playback in the Dolby/DTS world. I know because I am one.

 

[rynberg]

I think the hesitancy to call this “state of the art” is because it’s quite a bit behind audio-only products that are a fraction of the cost. I expect there are some disgruntling knowing they are paying a not-insignificant performance premium for pursuing playback in the Dolby/DTS world. I know because I am one.

Again, name an AVR with this channel count and features that is performing better than this...people coming from an audio-only stereo-only world need to "get over it" to some extent. That's my point. Expecting a single box to have 19-channels of processing with HDMI and network to have 140 dB SINAD is just silly and pointless.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

It's a SOTA AVR in my opinion. Who is making a better performing AVR with this channel count and these features? I mean an earlier poster referenced the Trinnov at 3x the cost of this Denon (and also not an AVR).

Personally I disagree with calling any AVR a Sota product. As a type of product, these receivers get the second or third best class of everything: Dacs, Amps, Dsp, you name it. Some are clearly better than others, but their individual functionality is bested by $100 Dacs, $150 amplifiers, DSP systems like Dirac DLBC, Audiolense, and Accourate. So while something like this Denon may be the best (or near best) of a bad product category, I too have a hard time calling it Edge of the Art. And, it's absurdly overpriced. If the Codec Overlords licensed Atmos, Dts-X and Atmos on Window's boxes, we could have all the functions now being done on these unitasking computers, performed at least as well on very inexpensive Window's fanless PC's with 16-24 channel LPCM transferred to multichannel DACS (and companies would build them), and out from there to inexpensive Class D chip amps which would run circles around the amps in these boxes. All this could be done for l.t. $2000-2500, and would offer true state of the art performance. As opposed to this 'big box from a big box store' which is definitely not "Edge of the Art."

 

[GXAlan]

It's a SOTA AVR in my opinion. Who is making a better performing AVR with this channel count and these features? I mean an earlier poster referenced the Trinnov at 3x the cost of this Denon (and also not an AVR).

And remember, the Trinnov Altitude 32 doesn’t even have the ability to power on via remote!

I think the hesitancy to call this “state of the art” is because it’s quite a bit behind audio-only products that are a fraction of the cost. I expect there are some disgruntling knowing they are paying a not-insignificant performance premium for pursuing playback in the Dolby/DTS world. I know because I am one.

But here’s the thing. The SINAD from even this amp is “insignificantly” worse than a dedicated AHB2 in many home environments where the noise floor is limited by the HVAC. However, the benefits of multichannel audio are very much significant for movies.

Personally I disagree with calling any AVR a Sota product... If the Codec Overlords licensed Atmos, Dts-X and Atmos on Window's boxes

You mean Linux boxes? The Codec overlords licensed these codecs to Trinnov. With these codecs, they have needed to invest a silly amount of money into something that isn’t 2-3K but $20K and up.

SOTA we award to -120 dB DACs when we have DACs that claim true 28-bit performance. SOTA we award to Topping Pre90’s when the Soulution preamps are better. SOTA doesn’t mean the absolute best.

It’s the best capabilities as achieved by those in the art of cinema surround processors with HDMI CEC reliability and global warranty and service capability.

When you say “codec overlords”, it really means those who invested in the development of IP related to cinema reproduction. Things are free if you steal them. But that’s stealing . Codecs aren’t free and handing the decode end to end in digital in the manner of the appropriate approved codec isn’t trivial to develop either.

 

[PJ 1]

Again, name an AVR with this channel count and features that is performing better than this...people coming from an audio-only stereo-only world need to "get over it" to some extent. That's my point. Expecting a single box to have 19-channels of processing with HDMI and network to have 140 dB SINAD is just silly and pointless.

I applaud your effort but you're swimming against the current on this site. For every post trying to point out the level of functionality something like this AVR brings to market, you'll be greeted with 5x as many "topping amps get XXX SINAD for 1/10th the cost". It's sad because ASR DOES PROVIDE a service to us audiophiles but the constant droning on and on and on about SINAD not matching a desktop DAC won't ever relent. Future buyers who come to the site for information not found elsewhere have to sort through pages of mud slinging unnecessarily. There are SO many educated professionals that could add to the discussion but why bother when they are constantly bombarded with drivel over "DAC performance". If I wanted to read about DACs, I'd go to that page on the site.

 

[Gyosa1]

150w $6.5k ?
No thanks …
Better options exist for far less money

Bk

 

[OverTheAir]

150w $6.5k ?
No thanks …
Better options exist for far less money

Bk

Perhaps you'll help us all out by listing them?

 

[phoenixdogfan]

And remember, the Trinnov Altitude 32 doesn’t even have the ability to power on via remote!


But here’s the thing. The SINAD from even this amp is “insignificantly” worse than a dedicated AHB2 in many home environments where the noise floor is limited by the HVAC. However, the benefits of multichannel audio are very much significant for movies.



You mean Linux boxes? The Codec overlords licensed these codecs to Trinnov. With these codecs, they have needed to invest a silly amount of money into something that isn’t 2-3K but $20K and up.

SOTA we award to -120 dB DACs when we have DACs that claim true 28-bit performance. SOTA we award to Topping Pre90’s when the Soulution preamps are better. SOTA doesn’t mean the absolute best.

It’s the best capabilities as achieved by those in the art of cinema surround processors with HDMI CEC reliability and global warranty and service capability.

When you say “codec overlords”, it really means those who invested in the development of IP related to cinema reproduction. Things are free if you steal them. But that’s stealing . Codecs aren’t free and handing the decode end to end in digital in the manner of the appropriate approved codec isn’t trivial to develop either.

Nobody said anything about stealing from the Codec Overlords. If legacy codecs can be licensed (with licensing fees paid presumably to run as part of the software packages like JRiver), why can't Dolby Atmos, DTS-X, and Auro 3D be similarly licensed? And please don't tell me they could not be done for less than the fees on something like a Trinov. Maybe as a Codec Overlord needs $20 k per unit when the hardware endpoint is only going to sell 50 units worldwide per annum, but on a PC? How hard would it be to recoup all your development costs and insure a lavish return if your product was on something that sold millions of units annually? Or do we need to ask Bill Gates about that one?

 

[Acerun]

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.
View attachment 426757

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:
View attachment 426764
We are bound by the third harmonic distortion product setting SINAD at a very respectable level for home theater products:

View attachment 426765

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:
View attachment 426766
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:
View attachment 426771

Dynamic range is also respectable:
View attachment 426768

As is though, we are still trailing older budget DACs:
View attachment 426769
View attachment 426770

Toslink doesn't support the 192 kHz sampling of my standard multitone test so we have to go with the 7-tone version:
View attachment 426790

There is fair but of spurious tones in our jitter test but fortunately, they are at inaudible levels:
View attachment 426772

The filter is the default one in DAC silicon:
View attachment 426786

View attachment 426788

Lack of higher out of band attenuation results in rising distortion+noise with frequency:
View attachment 426791

Denon AVR-A1H Amplifier Measurements
I started testing with the same Toslink input: [ECO mode turned off in all the tests]
View attachment 426794
This is about what I expect from the standard bin of parts at Denon&Marantz:
View attachment 426795

Performance drops a bit with analog input:
View attachment 426797

Crosstalk is also rather poor:
View attachment 426802

Fortunately the main application is digital input so let's continue with that for the test of the tests:
View attachment 426800

Frequency response is flat and extended despite the limitation of 96 kHz digital input:
View attachment 426804

IMD test of 19 and 20 kHz shows typical AVR performance:
View attachment 426810

We have healthy amount of power:
View attachment 426805
View attachment 426807
Spec is 150 watts and we are getting 157 watts into 2 channel.

Allowing 1% THD, we naturally get more power, especially in burst:
View attachment 426808

My new test at 40 Hz produces the same:
View attachment 426809

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:
View attachment 426817

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:
View attachment 426818

At the end of testing, the amplifiers were fairly warm but not alarmingly so:
View attachment 426819

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???

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

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Seems like the x8500h is better.

 

[Old_School_Brad]

This is an excellent addition.

 

[Cadillacofminds]

Who thinks that with humanity having cinema featuring 15 channels of audio they ought to be coming across more people laboring in medical research?