And here I am sitting in India looking forward to buy a nice warm sounding AVR with only 5.1 DTS HD-MA/DOlby True HD suport and 100 W per channel 
Primarily for movies.
Primarily for movies.
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Denon AVR-X2200W Audio/Video Receiver Review
- Thread starter amirm
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Why would Zone 2 need a separate DAC when it can simply route analogue signal from a DAC that drives primary zone to a dedicated volume control followed by opamp acting as output buffer to the Zone 2 output?
Doing it with additional inferior DAC is simplly a bad engineering.
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My brand!
This was my receiver. Bought for $600 from ListenUp in 2016. It was replaced with a T758 v3 which I think sounds MUCH better, though Dirac is a big reason for that. Dirac is the main reason I cut away from Denon/Marantz. This receiver now powers 3 KEF eggs in the bedroom.
Surprised to see the power from the amplifier is similar, the NAD seemed a lot happier when all of my speakers were plugged into it (harshness cut way down at higher volumes). I have my LCR + Heights hooked up to an A5175 now, so I'm only using the NAD for my surrounds.
My LR are some KEF Model 1's from the late 90's, they have burned a couple of amplifiers out in past years because they are power hungry.
Thanks for getting this in Amir!
This was my receiver. Bought for $600 from ListenUp in 2016. It was replaced with a T758 v3 which I think sounds MUCH better, though Dirac is a big reason for that. Dirac is the main reason I cut away from Denon/Marantz. This receiver now powers 3 KEF eggs in the bedroom.
Surprised to see the power from the amplifier is similar, the NAD seemed a lot happier when all of my speakers were plugged into it (harshness cut way down at higher volumes). I have my LCR + Heights hooked up to an A5175 now, so I'm only using the NAD for my surrounds.
My LR are some KEF Model 1's from the late 90's, they have burned a couple of amplifiers out in past years because they are power hungry.
Thanks for getting this in Amir!
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You won't hear the noise at such high output level and all the distortion you will eventually hear will be coming from the speakers untill the point amp clips. At that point (which nobody can tell you where it is as it depends not only on amp but alo on the impedance of your speakers) you are risking to burn tweeters as amp will start to generate huge ammount of high harmonics.
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I highly doubt that because:
a) The vol control chip predate the updated dedicated chip that replaced the LSI (large scale integrated) chip that has 2X the distortions.
b) The dac also predated the upgraded AK4458 in the AVR-X2300W (2016 and newer) and higher models, the same one used in the so called higher end AVRs such as the Anthem MRX-1120.
The zone 2 DAC is the PCM5100, the specs of which are definitely not as good as the main DAC, the PCM1690. That's based on info in the service manuals.
You can see that the X3500H (two model years newer) has quite a bit better SINAD.
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"think" is the key word.
Dirac would make a difference for sure. In pure direct, I would think the two would likely sound more similar than different on all else being equal basis. The Denon has lower distortions, but the NAD's were low enough imo..
"think" is the key word.
Dirac would make a difference for sure. In pure direct, I would think the two would likely sound more similar than different on all else being equal basis. The Denon has lower distortions, but the NAD's were low enough imo..
Dirac made a substantial difference regarding imaging and frequency response corrections. I don't really listen on Pure Direct because my LR create some interesting modes in my small space.
I thought they needed the second DAC so that Z2 could play from a different source than the main zone simultaneously but I could be wrong. By the way, Yamaha, NAD and Onkyo (probably all others) do the same, i.e. separate DAC for Z2/3, and/or Network/USB.
No. Digital sources after DAC together with analog sources are routed in parallel to 3 switches: one is listening switch to select input for primary zone, the other is recording switch to select what to record and 3rd is a Zone2 switch to select input for Zone 2.
My Rotel processor does it that way.
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The old addage "all amps sound the same" is likely true for 99% of consumer systems due to placement, use of lower-sensitivity speakers, other bottlenecks etc."think" is the key word.
Dirac would make a difference for sure. In pure direct, I would think the two would likely sound more similar than different on all else being equal basis. The Denon has lower distortions, but the NAD's were low enough imo..
Interesting, thanks for the info. I still think it would be good to have actual measurements of the pre-outs of this unit to determine the preamp DAC's performance definitively. On-paper specs are sometimes trumped/ruined by good/poor implementation, which can result in newer not necessarily being better.
By the way, do you have any details on how Denon's AVR-X2400H might differ from this X2200W or the X3500H, and a link to the service manuals of each?
No. Digital sources after DAC together with analog sources are routed in parallel to 3 switches: one is listening switch to select input for primary zone, the other is recording switch to select what to record and 3rd is a Zone2 switch to select input for Zone 2.
My Rotel processor does it that way.
If you want to play a difference source in say zone 2, while watching 7.1 (8 channels) movie in the main zone, it does not matter how many routing switches you are still limited by the 8 channel PCM1690 right? What did I miss?
Sure, but such designs have DACs with enough channels to accomodate number of multichannels + 2 channels for Zone2.
Implementation is an important factor but in this case, the difference in specs between the PCM5100 (zone 2) and the AK4458 (main zone) is huge. You are talking -90 dB vs -107 dB!! That's a difference of 17 dB in terms of THD+N, on top of the 5 dB difference in SNR.
https://www.akm.com/content/dam/doc.../audio-dac/ak4458vn/ak4458vn-en-datasheet.pdf
http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pcm5100.pdf
The X2400H has the same DACs and preamp/vol IC as the X4400H and SR7012. I am not sure about the 3500/4500/6013/7013, but I bet they are the same too. If there are major changes on those critical items in the audio signal path they would have advertised the claimed positives like they did during the launch of the 2016?/2017 models.
I will be fantastic if Amir could measure a X4400H or X4500H, along with a SR7012, or SR7013 and compare them in pure direct mode with the FL/FR power amps disconnected via the amp assign settings. That may help put to rest the forever speculation on the differences between the two products that have virtually identical audio signal paths except the HDAM that is found in the SR models only.
In that case of course one would be enough. I am simply referring to 8 channel DACs typically found in AVRs such as D&M's including their non flagship prepros such as the AV7704. Some may not not prefer DACs with more than 8 channels though, in fact some may even push for the use of 2 channel/stereo DACs like the ones used in the AV8805 and AVR-X8500H (8 pieces).
DACs and op-amps are cheap, saving on them is a sign of bad engineering or a sign that good engineers were pushed to work with budget been too tight. I would never buy such product as who knows what other compromises have been made.
I was thinking more about the difference (if any) between the zone 2 DACs of the X2200W and the later models like the X3500H, wondering if the older implementation might actually be better in this case, considering the relatively poor measurements of the X3500H's preamp output on here.
When you say you "would never buy such product," can I assume that you will never buy an AVR regardless of price? The problem with this entire segment (AVRs) is that every product out there is compromised compared to stereo specific products, even from the same manufacturer. And the reason why is quite simple: 99.9% of people buying AVRs use it for home theater not critical music listening. In a home theater environment where visual stimuli is overwhelming, your critical listening skills diminish to zero, and you're just enjoying the "movie watching experience" without ever noticing that the SINAD is less than a $9 Apple dongle. Sure it would be great if measurements were better, but for real world consumers, such improvements would neither be noticed or appreciated. As a matter of fact, if you told its target audience that DTS-X will be eliminated so that more money could be put into engineering higher sound quality, consumers would choose another product that had DTS-X.
OP
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- #40
I didn't make a specific note of it. But I did start at max volume and it had huge amount of gain and clipped badly. I then pulled it way down. I want to say 80 on the volume control but not 100% sure. My bad for not noting it on the measurements.
