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Denon AVR-X3800H is released.

DerRoland

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Why should Amir comment other posts? He believe only his own findings at a measurement run. I wish someone can send him a 3800h. He would joyfully check the improvements of the new series.
 

CyrusTheGreat_600BC

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Why should Amir comment other posts? He believe only his own findings at a measurement run. I wish someone can send him a 3800h. He would joyfully check the improvements of the new series.
You don’t that it’s weird Denon did not send him one?
 

DerRoland

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The previous X3700 and up all shut down the amp. See Amir’s reviews. Mine certainly does. So it is very very likely the X3800 does too in pre-amp mode.
The 3700 manual says:
Set “Assign Mode” to “Pre Amplifier” if connecting all channels to the Pre-out connectors using an external amplifier. link
This stops operation of the internal power amplifier of this unit, reducing interference in the pre amplifier created by the power amplifier.
Is it really a full shut down (power off) or only a disconnect, when they “stop their operation”? I thought the consensus here is they disconnect only.
 

HarmonicTHD

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The 3700 manual says:

Is it really a full shut down (power off) or only a disconnect, when they “stop their operation”? I thought the consensus here is they disconnect only.
In my response I didn’t distinguish between power off and disconnect. In pre amp mode the amp runs cooler and SINAD improves at least for the X3700 and higher models. If that is achieved with power off or disconnect, I don’t know and so far I didn’t bother. It just works. ;-)
 

GXAlan

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The silence from Amir worries me too. Not a single comment about 800 series yet. I know my position on this. Mine was delayed to the hurricane Ian, so if/when it finally delivers, I’ve 30 days to return it. If noise level is more than my 3700, I just keep that one for another year or two.

I doubt Amir has a X3800H from Sound United. I suspect we will need someone to send one in ASAP to know

There was much less of a marketing push this round compared to prior launches in my opinion, suggesting some change from the higher ups. We did see a nice interview in Japanese and a new set of detailed discussions in French though. But we still have very limited data about the Marantz gear.

There is also a lag between the Shirakawa products and non-Shirakawa products being launched and the use of the PCM5102A which is good but not as good as the AK4458’s used in the past.

At least for line level outputs, anyone can test a receiver with an E1DA Cosmos as pkane’s Multitone software. That’s the real trick going forward. Look at how having Erin has increased the speaker measurements we can get. The APx555 and APx585 are better but if we want gear like the RX-A8A tested it will have to be home brew.
 

peng

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Got it, thanks for that. I just looked and the X3800 user manual also says the same (page 44).

I must be thinking of the previous X3600 where there was just a disconnect vs a shutdown.

Actually, I think more than likely you were right in the first place, that the amps would still be powered whether disconnected to the pre outs using the amp assign function or preamp mode. It might have been possible that the newest models do power down the power amps but according to Gene that is not the case.

Unless someone can confirm the otherwise, I would assume the X3800H, like the X3700H in amp assign to pre out or preamp mode just disconnects the inputs of the power amps to the outputs of the preamps. That means the power amps will still be connected to the power rails and receiving bias currents. Technically speaking, in some way it is not a bad thing to keep the power amps "powered" anyway.
 

peng

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I doubt Amir has a X3800H from Sound United. I suspect we will need someone to send one in ASAP to know

There was much less of a marketing push this round compared to prior launches in my opinion, suggesting some change from the higher ups. We did see a nice interview in Japanese and a new set of detailed discussions in French though. But we still have very limited data about the Marantz gear.

There is also a lag between the Shirakawa products and non-Shirakawa products being launched and the use of the PCM5102A which is good but not as good as the AK4458’s used in the past.

At least for line level outputs, anyone can test a receiver with an E1DA Cosmos as pkane’s Multitone software. That’s the real trick going forward. Look at how having Erin has increased the speaker measurements we can get. The APx555 and APx585 are better but if we want gear like the RX-A8A tested it will have to be home brew.

Have you or pkane "home brew" anything that has the PCM5102A in the signal path and can share some results? I think people are concerned that since the PCM5102A's SINAD is 93 dB versus the AK4458's 107 dB, wouldn't the likes of the X3800H's pre out SINAD be limited to the theoretical limit of 93 dB (assuming the volume control and any OPAs are not the bottleneck and don't add any distortions/noise) when not wired differentially with 2 pieces per stereo pair? I believe 93 dB or even 90 dB is still very good so this is just theoretical thing.. Thank you for your opinion.
 

delta76

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I doubt Amir has a X3800H from Sound United. I suspect we will need someone to send one in ASAP to know

There was much less of a marketing push this round compared to prior launches in my opinion, suggesting some change from the higher ups. We did see a nice interview in Japanese and a new set of detailed discussions in French though. But we still have very limited data about the Marantz gear.

There is also a lag between the Shirakawa products and non-Shirakawa products being launched and the use of the PCM5102A which is good but not as good as the AK4458’s used in the past.

At least for line level outputs, anyone can test a receiver with an E1DA Cosmos as pkane’s Multitone software. That’s the real trick going forward. Look at how having Erin has increased the speaker measurements we can get. The APx555 and APx585 are better but if we want gear like the RX-A8A tested it will have to be home brew.
Amir has had good communications with Denon engineering team and I think they respect each other. It is not even impossible that he was sent an early unit for comment, but he was under NDA so he can't even talk about it.

I was about to create a thread to see if anyone in the US would be willing to send him one, and we all chip in for shipping cost/insurance.
 

GXAlan

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Amir has had good communications with Denon engineering team and I think they respect each other. It is not even impossible that he was sent an early unit for comment, but he was under NDA so he can't even talk about it.

I was about to create a thread to see if anyone in the US would be willing to send him one, and we all chip in for shipping cost/insurance.
That’s what I thought too. (That he had a unit). But once the products were annnounced and units actually made it to end customers, the lack of a review or even preliminary article of some sort suggests that they haven’t.

It’s possible he just has an AV10 which would still be under NDA potentially.

When the X4700H bug was identified, Sound United was doing YouTube chats with influencers and showing their own APx555 measurements done at the factory. Again, if the numbers were good for any of the products, you would have thought that it would be part of the marketing press kits. My level of worry is high now that we have end users mentioning some audible noise.
 

Tabby Koneko

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Further testing from my last post:

When operating normally and not trying to make two vastly different speakers sound the same, the noise is not an issue. At movie-watching volumes, the noise is below my hearing threshold in a dead-silent house when I am at 30 cm from the cone. Assuming my hearing threshold is 20 dB, and my movie watching volume is (peak) 95 dB at 2 m, the SNR is 92 dB, which sounds reasonable as this includes DSP overhead. I do not have tools to get actual numbers, unfortunately.

In addition, I retested the Vanatoo T0s being fed from an JDS Atom+ DAC set at maximum volume, and it had the same level of noise, so it must be inherent to the speaker and not by what is driving it.

I went to test latency. I used "music" mode, which had Audyssey enabled as I would prefer to use that always. I then set up software so that when I clicked a button, it would emit a tone via ASIO to the AVR. ASIO4All was set to use a 512 sample buffer at 48 kHz (10.6 ms). I then recorded at high speed my finger clicking the button. Comparing timestamp of click, timestamp of tone, and ASIO buffer, the latency was 61 ms. One can consider this an upper bound, as it included mouse click latency (polling + wireless), software latency, and buffers I did not have time estimates for.
 

delta76

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Review by whathifi https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/denon-avc-x3800h
In our test room, we use Audyssey MultEQ XT32 to calibrate our 7.2.4 system, which uses Dolby Atmos toppers. For most of our reviewing, the AVC-X3800H is in its Pure Direct Mode.
Isn't Pure Direct Mode bypassing any room correction by Audyssey? (it does in my old Onkyo AVR). If yes, then big :facepalm:
 

CyrusTheGreat_600BC

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Review by whathifi https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/denon-avc-x3800h

Isn't Pure Direct Mode bypassing any room correction by Audyssey? (it does in my old Onkyo AVR). If yes, then big :facepalm:
This is the kind of review we all want to avoid. Quoted from the same article:

“Through the 3800, though, there are rich-sounding voices with a warmth and naturalism that’s more engaging than the 3700 and even some of its pricier competition. There’s more sense of the space that the characters are in, too, with the short reverb of the cockpit and the background whirr of the engine adding plenty of depth.”
 

delta76

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Yeah I know Whathifi is famous (or infamous) for their (non sense) subjective reviews, but "reviewing" an AVR by running calibration then bypassing them is a new level of incompetency.
 

peng

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Yeah I know Whathifi is famous (or infamous) for their (non sense) subjective reviews, but "reviewing" an AVR by running calibration then bypassing them is a new level of incompetency.

Many forum members (here and elsewhere..) claimed similar kind of things in their subjective measurements too. Not sure if it's the reviewers influencing/biasing the readers/users or the other way around.

It is hard to understand why people keep coming to forums and asked questions like, "I am considering products A, B and C that has the features I need but want to know which one will sound better", or "would I hear better sound if I replace my product A with product B", or adding an external amp etc., knowing full well (they probably do, but prefer to play ostrich..). If they simply do a search on the internet, they will find answers to such questions will invariably be all over the map. Why wouldn't they just read reviews with measurements is beyond me.:D
 

delta76

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I was there, I was quite overwhelmed by the speaker measurements, so when Google led me to this site I pressed back pretty fast. :)

anyway, my post was not about subjective impressions, we all already know that, it's about incompetency. Reviewing only by your ears is already wrong, no argument about that, but reviewing an AVR without room correction (albeit running it) is, well, a completely new level. And they were conscious about that (not turning on Pure Direct Mode by mistake)
 

gew55

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Yeah I know Whathifi is famous (or infamous) for their (non sense) subjective reviews, but "reviewing" an AVR by running calibration then bypassing them is a new level of incompetency.
OMG :facepalm:
That's really amazing :rolleyes:
 

gew55

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@amirm can you please share if you are testing this or if you got one to review? I knew several US members were planning to send you one. Waiting for your review to make my decision :)
I think he already made this review.
But waiting to post it because the results are hum ho.
Because if leniency with his new audio friends he waits until we all ordered one ☺️
 

lc6

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Actually, I think more than likely you were right in the first place, that the amps would still be powered whether disconnected to the pre outs using the amp assign function or preamp mode. It might have been possible that the newest models do power down the power amps but according to Gene that is not the case.

Unless someone can confirm the otherwise, I would assume the X3800H, like the X3700H in amp assign to pre out or preamp mode just disconnects the inputs of the power amps to the outputs of the preamps. That means the power amps will still be connected to the power rails and receiving bias currents. Technically speaking, in some way it is not a bad thing to keep the power amps "powered" anyway.

Technically speaking, it is a very bad thing because the amps unnecessarily consume energy that only converts to heat which requires even more energy for HVAC to cool the HT during hot months; that heat also raises the temp of internal components which reduces their lifespan. See my post with power consumption measurements when amps are disconnected. For those who did not follow that discussion thread, I shared other 3800H's power consumption measurements and my "first impressions" struggle with Audyssey and various bugs there as well.
 
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