This is a review and detailed measurements of the Denon AVR-X3500H Home Theater Audio Video Receiver (AVR). It is kindly loaned to me by a member. The AVR-X3500H is a 2018 model but it is still available from Amazon for US $599 despite having a retail price of US $999. If it performs, this is a very attractive price.
The front panel of the unit is the same as any other AVR:
The volume control though has a much nicer feel than most other AVRs.
If there is a setup button on the front, I must have missed it as I could not find a way to program the unit without the remote control.
The back panel is as expected:
The speaker connectors were beefy enough for my heavy wires I use which I appreciated.
For testing, I reset the unit which put me in a wizard which was useful but then got stuck without a cancel button on room EQ. Somehow I got out of it but was not easy.
The on-screen graphs were not that attractive but did the job.
The amplifier modules use the same flimsy heatsinks many other AVRs use. Here, they made a mistake of running two wide ribbon cables over the left and right channels which likely block convection cooling fair bit. In use, during my normal testing those two challens felt pretty warm, eventually leading to amp limiting power output to some 35 watts or so. I then ran my regulated power test which caused the unit to shut down and go internal protection. I put a fan on it and it would again shut down. Clearly these AVRs are not designed for continuous duty operation.
I had a heck of a time getting my PC's Nvidia HDMI to route through the AVR-X3500H. It would only provide 1080p resolution at 4:2:0 causing color bleed due to interpolation there. And a fuzzy screen on my 4K display. Messing with menus and settings in Windows did not help. Worse yet, ASIO4ALL interface would not see the Nvidia HDMI audio channels at all. If you are planning to use a PC to drive this AVR, better be sure you know what you are getting yourself into.
DAC Audio Measurements
For this portion of the testing, I did not connect any speakers to the output terminals as to avoid stressing them. I then ran my HDMI tests by using Roon using WASAPI interface to play a couple of test files starting with our 1 kHz tone:
The default output at full volume was quite a bit higher and clearly clipping. So I lowered that to 2 volt but unfortunately performance was still lousy as you see. SINAD is dominated by harmonic distortion and not noise. Clearly the output is beyond its comfort factor (shown later). For now, the ranking is poor:
And among AVRs:
Here is the jitter test showing copious amount of jitter components:
As noted, I needed to use another interface in order to be able to run the rest of my tests so I opted to use Coax input for the following. First, let's compare the dashboard to see how it performs relative to HDMI:
Overall score remains the same but disappointing to see additional sidebands around our main tone of 1 kHz. Jitter test shows that in detail:
The sidebands beyond that are also elevated.
Intermodulation distortion relative to level shows that this DAC is designed for low level of output:
Even we back off from clipping though, performance still falls short.
Fortunately noise rating is good:
Filter response is typical:
Linearity was surprisingly good:
I could not run multitone test because it requires 192 kHz support and the coax input doesn't go that high.
AVR Amplifier Audio Measurements
I tested the amp using both digital (coax) and analog input. Let's start with analog:
Nice to see above average performance here relative to other AVRs:
It is also above average for amplifiers in general but of course well shy of state of the art:
Frequency response extended quiteh high indicating it is not digitized:
This is without running Room EQ.
Signal to noise ratio was not as good as the DAC section:
Crosstalk was especially poor:
This is what I see in $30 amplifiers. The concern here is not that you don't have enough channel separation but that what bleeds into the other channel many be worse than its own distortions.
Most important is power versus noise and distortion. Let's start there with 8 ohm and analog input:
The AR-X3500H massively outperforms the two NAD products in noise and distortion while matching the power rating. And on that front, the amp is exceeding its rated power.
For variety and to better simulate use case, I tested the Coax input to drive the amp. Here is the dashboard again:
Sadly noise floor has gone up causing SINAD to drop a couple of dBs. One things digital input would be preferred to an analog input from noise front but here, we take a step back. There is a reduction of spurious tones though higher up in frequencies so it does some good there.
Anyway, running with that to measure 4 ohm performance gets us this:
Again, the NAD T777 V3 is left in the dust with respect to noise and distortion.
Note that the amplifier is not rated for 4 ohm but works anyway.
Here is the regulated output test that caused the amplifier to shut down (sweep is from 20 khz down to 20 Hz):
I later ran the test from 20 to 20 kHz and it produced almost the same power starting at 20 Hz. But oddly again it shut down at the same 60 Hz point. The mains noise may be confusing the analyzer causing it to stay there longer leading to shut down. Not wanting the amp to be damaged, I did not try to run the test any further.
Finally, here is the FFT spectrum of a 1 kHz tone:
Lack of design hygiene shows spurious tones but they are very low in level and at any rate, much less than class D implementations.
Conclusions
Let's get the worst out of the way first: the Denon AVR-X3500H DAC implementation is quite poor. Clearly no care was included to make it perform well. It is much worse than the amplifier at the limit which is embarrassing. I was about to give it the worst score due to that (headless panther) but the amplifier pulled through. I appreciated the analog inputs not going through mysterious transformations. And low noise and distortion which bettered most AVRs I have tested.
Thermal performance has some issues but not as bad as some other budget AVRs such as Pioneer.
Overall, you have a lousy DAC but a good amplifier with Room EQ at attractive price in Denon AVR-X3500H. As such, it makes a decent option if you have such needs. If it goes on sale, it may be even a better bet.
--------
As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are welcome.
I need to hire someone to write better jokes for me. If you have been suffering through my bad jokes then I hope I can count on generous donations from you using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The front panel of the unit is the same as any other AVR:
The volume control though has a much nicer feel than most other AVRs.
If there is a setup button on the front, I must have missed it as I could not find a way to program the unit without the remote control.
The back panel is as expected:
The speaker connectors were beefy enough for my heavy wires I use which I appreciated.
For testing, I reset the unit which put me in a wizard which was useful but then got stuck without a cancel button on room EQ. Somehow I got out of it but was not easy.
The on-screen graphs were not that attractive but did the job.
The amplifier modules use the same flimsy heatsinks many other AVRs use. Here, they made a mistake of running two wide ribbon cables over the left and right channels which likely block convection cooling fair bit. In use, during my normal testing those two challens felt pretty warm, eventually leading to amp limiting power output to some 35 watts or so. I then ran my regulated power test which caused the unit to shut down and go internal protection. I put a fan on it and it would again shut down. Clearly these AVRs are not designed for continuous duty operation.
I had a heck of a time getting my PC's Nvidia HDMI to route through the AVR-X3500H. It would only provide 1080p resolution at 4:2:0 causing color bleed due to interpolation there. And a fuzzy screen on my 4K display. Messing with menus and settings in Windows did not help. Worse yet, ASIO4ALL interface would not see the Nvidia HDMI audio channels at all. If you are planning to use a PC to drive this AVR, better be sure you know what you are getting yourself into.
DAC Audio Measurements
For this portion of the testing, I did not connect any speakers to the output terminals as to avoid stressing them. I then ran my HDMI tests by using Roon using WASAPI interface to play a couple of test files starting with our 1 kHz tone:
The default output at full volume was quite a bit higher and clearly clipping. So I lowered that to 2 volt but unfortunately performance was still lousy as you see. SINAD is dominated by harmonic distortion and not noise. Clearly the output is beyond its comfort factor (shown later). For now, the ranking is poor:
And among AVRs:
Here is the jitter test showing copious amount of jitter components:
As noted, I needed to use another interface in order to be able to run the rest of my tests so I opted to use Coax input for the following. First, let's compare the dashboard to see how it performs relative to HDMI:
Overall score remains the same but disappointing to see additional sidebands around our main tone of 1 kHz. Jitter test shows that in detail:
The sidebands beyond that are also elevated.
Intermodulation distortion relative to level shows that this DAC is designed for low level of output:
Even we back off from clipping though, performance still falls short.
Fortunately noise rating is good:
Filter response is typical:
Linearity was surprisingly good:
I could not run multitone test because it requires 192 kHz support and the coax input doesn't go that high.
AVR Amplifier Audio Measurements
I tested the amp using both digital (coax) and analog input. Let's start with analog:
Nice to see above average performance here relative to other AVRs:
It is also above average for amplifiers in general but of course well shy of state of the art:
Frequency response extended quiteh high indicating it is not digitized:
This is without running Room EQ.
Signal to noise ratio was not as good as the DAC section:
Crosstalk was especially poor:
This is what I see in $30 amplifiers. The concern here is not that you don't have enough channel separation but that what bleeds into the other channel many be worse than its own distortions.
Most important is power versus noise and distortion. Let's start there with 8 ohm and analog input:
The AR-X3500H massively outperforms the two NAD products in noise and distortion while matching the power rating. And on that front, the amp is exceeding its rated power.
For variety and to better simulate use case, I tested the Coax input to drive the amp. Here is the dashboard again:
Sadly noise floor has gone up causing SINAD to drop a couple of dBs. One things digital input would be preferred to an analog input from noise front but here, we take a step back. There is a reduction of spurious tones though higher up in frequencies so it does some good there.
Anyway, running with that to measure 4 ohm performance gets us this:
Again, the NAD T777 V3 is left in the dust with respect to noise and distortion.
Note that the amplifier is not rated for 4 ohm but works anyway.
Here is the regulated output test that caused the amplifier to shut down (sweep is from 20 khz down to 20 Hz):
I later ran the test from 20 to 20 kHz and it produced almost the same power starting at 20 Hz. But oddly again it shut down at the same 60 Hz point. The mains noise may be confusing the analyzer causing it to stay there longer leading to shut down. Not wanting the amp to be damaged, I did not try to run the test any further.
Finally, here is the FFT spectrum of a 1 kHz tone:
Lack of design hygiene shows spurious tones but they are very low in level and at any rate, much less than class D implementations.
Conclusions
Let's get the worst out of the way first: the Denon AVR-X3500H DAC implementation is quite poor. Clearly no care was included to make it perform well. It is much worse than the amplifier at the limit which is embarrassing. I was about to give it the worst score due to that (headless panther) but the amplifier pulled through. I appreciated the analog inputs not going through mysterious transformations. And low noise and distortion which bettered most AVRs I have tested.
Thermal performance has some issues but not as bad as some other budget AVRs such as Pioneer.
Overall, you have a lousy DAC but a good amplifier with Room EQ at attractive price in Denon AVR-X3500H. As such, it makes a decent option if you have such needs. If it goes on sale, it may be even a better bet.
--------
As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are welcome.
I need to hire someone to write better jokes for me. If you have been suffering through my bad jokes then I hope I can count on generous donations from you using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
