Nothing there that would give any evidence of opening the top or disconnecting the wiring harness as far as I could tell. Of course mine is no longer under warranty so I am not concerned about that. Just watched an entire movie and everything worked as expected.
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Denon AVR-X3600H AV Receiver Review
- Thread starter amirm
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Nothing there that would give any evidence of opening the top or disconnecting the wiring harness as far as I could tell. Of course mine is no longer under warranty so I am not concerned about that. Just watched an entire movie and everything worked as expected.
I checked a few of the speaker outs and decided they were all off, can't do it tonite but in the morning I will test all speakers and be sure none of the amps are activated. I will report back then.
Wish I could disconnect the transformer but looks like it does some other stuff from the look of the wiring. That seems to be the only place any real heat is still coming from.
Thanks to GXAlan for the info on this.
Thanks for doing this!
Do you have a kill-a-watt or similar device? Would be quite interesting to see power draw with and without power amp portion connected...
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Kill-A-Watt-Electricity-Monitor-P4400/202196386
I do not. Would be interesting.
Hmmm... I expect this mod will buy you a couple of beers every year.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #386
Someone asked about ECO mode. I thought I tested and reported that it does NOT act like turning off the amps as the 11.1 config allows.
Do you need to do the special power on procedure each time you turn on the AVR or only one time?
each time
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What happens if you don’t? Immediate protect mode?
Yes
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If we can’t convince Denon to enable a ‘Super ECO’ mode to completely disable energy wasting (and performance robbing) unused amplifiers via firmware (assuming the hardware is capable) I think there will be a market for a simple cable to go in between the original cable and board that contains whatever device (if possible) that’s needed to fool the protect mode as far as the amp being disconnected.
If it were proven to improve performance on the 3500 similar to the trick mode on the 3600 I’d gladly pay $100 for such a device.
Someone mentioned that this could be as simple as a resistor. I wish I knew enough to figure this out.
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That's annoying. Just have to wait for the X8500h to drop in price, I guess.
I'm glad my reading of the service manual helped! I suspect it will improve SINAD because the effect of clipping is purely analog.
It's very easy to do IF you are turning the unit on manually every time as I do. If it is in a location where you only use the remote to start it up then it of course becomes a problem. If I was in that situation I would have to find a workaround as I have other things (like an expensive motocross habit) to spend that amount of money on, especially since I am retired and currently living on Social Security only.
Not sure how much more it will go down. It is a current model year and will be in the line next year and possibly the year after once the HDMI 2.1 board upgrade is made available. At that point, new ones will have the HDMI 2.1 board in it and the model number will be X8500HA or something similar (like when the Marantz AV8802 became the AV8802A). As it stands there are several places where you can get a full warranty x8500 (3 year warranty, not a refurb) for $2799. It should provide better measured results than even the x3600H in both DAC and Amp measurements and if more power is needed on any channels, you can disconnect any channel in the amp assign menu. It should outperform both the 8805 and 7705 by a wide margin it would seem running in this manner if the x3600h are any indication. I have one and I really enjoy using it.
After checking some of the speaker outputs there is some problem on the output which I am pretty sure would DAMAGE SPEAKERS!
Fortunately I had no speakers hooked up so no damage. DO NOT DO THIS until someone finds a solution (if possible).
I do not have the technical know how to figure it out so I am going to go back to normal but I will check if someone thinks they can solve it.
Fortunately I had no speakers hooked up so no damage. DO NOT DO THIS until someone finds a solution (if possible).
I do not have the technical know how to figure it out so I am going to go back to normal but I will check if someone thinks they can solve it.
Thinking about this a little more... is disconnecting the amps worth it? or I should say it could be worth it in some specific scenarios..
I believe the following applies to both the X3500h and X3600h
-With the amps still connected Amir has measured SINAD @ 97 when at 1.4V on the center channel with no Amp Disconnect
-If your external amps don't require more than that, you might get a few extra SINAD but I can't imagine it would be audible
-The risks seem to outweigh the benefits when used within these parameters
-It only seems interesting for those with external amps requiring more than 1.4V (such as the 2V example)where the performance gain is substantial (from 74-97 SINAD). It seems many of the most popular, multichannel amps from Outlaw and Emotiva require less than 1.4V
I believe the following applies to both the X3500h and X3600h
-With the amps still connected Amir has measured SINAD @ 97 when at 1.4V on the center channel with no Amp Disconnect
-If your external amps don't require more than that, you might get a few extra SINAD but I can't imagine it would be audible
-The risks seem to outweigh the benefits when used within these parameters
-It only seems interesting for those with external amps requiring more than 1.4V (such as the 2V example)where the performance gain is substantial (from 74-97 SINAD). It seems many of the most popular, multichannel amps from Outlaw and Emotiva require less than 1.4V
Agreed since my test didn't work out anyway. And in my case it is with the X5200 which hasn't been reviewed.
Not worth risking any damage or loss of warranty IMO.
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I think the x3600h is an amazing device. I do not own one yet. But I own a x2500h (driving focal aria 906 and a PC-2000) for my living room setup. It sounds very engaging an very fun. The living room is not well treated so it is hard to tell how good it really is.
I wish I would have the x3600h for my music room setup. In my music room I have a miniDSP SHD, RME-ADI2, D30 DAC, XTZ edge A2,.... All these boxes could be easily replaced by the x3600h at a fraction of the cost and with probably the same SQ and the same feature set. Really compelling.
I wish I would have the x3600h for my music room setup. In my music room I have a miniDSP SHD, RME-ADI2, D30 DAC, XTZ edge A2,.... All these boxes could be easily replaced by the x3600h at a fraction of the cost and with probably the same SQ and the same feature set. Really compelling.
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I suggest not getting too caught up in the SINAD chase. I though worst case for the pre-outs is about 76db. Which paired with a good external amp is still cleaner than pro amps like Crown or QSC which got recommended and many people enjoy without complaining about distortion. Is the difference in potential SINAD even audible? I doubt it at anything below extreme volume levels At least eco mode will reduce power waste for those using solely external amps.
It is easy to focus on SINAD because it is a simple number. It is important that the limits of usefulness have been discussed quite a lot in many discussions. I think the key takeaway in such discussions stated by Amir in another discussion (link) is his description of the usefulness of SINAD and its limitations:
"A few points. Whether someone can detect non-linear distortion is highly depends on perception qualities of the listener. In testing lossy compression for example, we know that trained listeners do a ton better than non-trained. So this is not a static number.
On why measure, in every case I show SINAD it is accompanied with FFT. It is the FFT that is instructive of whether the distortions can be audible. I realize people mostly focus on the SINAD since it is easier to digest but I do make an attempt to show the picture at the same time.
SINAD by itself then is best thought of engineering excellence when not focused on too accurately. I show the SINAD figures in four buckets for this reason. No question in my mind that a device in forth bucket is much worse design than those in first or even second bucket. In this manner, we use SINAD as a rough figure of merit without falling into the pitfall of using it too accurately when it doesn't have such predictive power.
The other reason to show SINAD is that the industry uses THD+N which is the same thing as SINAD. By measuring this we can tell how truthful the manufacturer is in their specifications."
So will an increase of SINAD be audibile? I think the answer is it depends on more than just the simple SINAD score. I think as we are getting around 100, I think we are getting into an area where gains would be hard to detect for many of us (such as myself).
