Denon AVR-X3800H Review

[peng]

Well there was no misunderstanding…i assumed the 3800h should be around 50w/ch 5-7ch+ driven. Which is the same for my yamaha (although it is 150w/ch into 2ch, and 50w/ch into 7ch+, as far as the reviews state for pretty much every yamaha aventage lineup)

Then it is in fact a case of misunderstanding on the following:

- You started talking about Yamaha, so naturally unless you make it clear later that it was the Denon 3800, I would think that when you suddenly mentioned 50 W, you would stil be referring to the Yamaha 3080 that you started on. Yes you did mention the 3800 too in a later post but your original question was about the 3080

Your post#3010:

Coming from a yamaha a3080, will i notice a downgrade in sound…? Any idea

- You might have misunderstood Denon's 5-7 ch rated outputs. It has never said anything about 50 W/ch with 5-7 ch+ driven. You can however, read the reviews where Amir did measure Denon AVRs (selected models only) such as the following, on the X3700H that has the same power supply and power amps as the X3800H:

Here you say 100 W, not 50 W, but at 1% THD+N, as I mentioned, use conditions has to be considered, for example, if you raise the bar to 0.1% THD+N then you would get a little less output.

- It is not very useful to use the 100 W rated output because a) that's only the case if the amp is delivering the exact same outputs to all channels simultaneously, that is practically speaking not likely in real world applications.

- And, that 100 W/Ch is for 8 ohm resistive load, if a 4 ohm resistor test load is used, the numbers will change, likely higher on short term, but much lower on longer term, say if for longer than a few seconds.

So yes there are misunderstanding, in this case not only between our back an forth posts, but also on the interpretation of the output power based on different conditions. It seems that you are not open to clarifying points made in multiple posts so I am not going to continue, and would just move on and back to my little corner in my HT room.

 

[sahil fardeen]

Then it is in fact a case of misunderstanding on the following:

- You started talking about Yamaha, so naturally unless you make it clear later that it was the Denon 3800, I would think that when you suddenly mentioned 50 W, you would stil be referring to the Yamaha 3080 that you started on. Yes you did mention the 3800 too in a later post but your original question was about the 3080

Your post#3010:



- You might have misunderstood Denon's 5-7 ch rated outputs. It has never said anything about 50 W/ch with 5-7 ch+ driven. You can however, read the reviews where Amir did measure Denon AVRs (selected models only) such as the following, on the X3700H that has the same power supply and power amps as the X3800H:

Here you say 100 W, not 50 W, but at 1% THD+N, as I mentioned, use conditions has to be considered, for example, if you raise the bar to 0.1% THD+N then you would get a little less output.

View attachment 492625

- It is not very useful to use the 100 W rated output because a) that's only the case if the amp is delivering the exact same outputs to all channels simultaneously, that is practically speaking not likely in real world applications.

- And, that 100 W/Ch is for 8 ohm resistive load, if a 4 ohm resistor test load is used, the numbers will change, likely higher on short term, but much lower on longer term, say if for longer than a few seconds.

So yes there are misunderstanding, in this case not only between our back an forth posts, but also on the interpretation of the output power based on different conditions. It seems that you are not open to clarifying points made in multiple posts so I am not going to continue, and would just move on and back to my little corner in my HT room.

Oh buddy i didn’t mean to offend you in anyway, please, if that’s what you have interpreted in my messages then i am sorry, I will stop it here by now. Please

 

[kawauso]

I don't understand your point entirely though, in any case, my comments should be taken at face value, that is, only on the caveats I included. My concerns about a "50 W" amp, without knowing the underlying conditions, mainly voltage and current into what impedance, phase angles and yes the frequency band too, it does matter.

I don't want to say I agree or disagree to your points, instead I want to be clear that I don't fully understand your point, that's all.

As I state in my original response to his given conditions, I never said he could do the SPL he needed, and I repeated that in my post# 3050 as he seemed to have missed the key word I used, that is "some". "some" does not equal his own use case.


Haha no thanks, my typical listening level is probably 85 dB maximum, from 8-10 ft and my volume dial on my Denon or Marantz AVRs/AVPs would be -20 to -15 occasionally, or -40 to -30 on my Anthem AVM70. If you bring the 3153 to my HT room, I would probably drive them with one of my several tiny fosi V3 amps.

I have never referred to the Denon AVR, and told him that in my post# 3052:



Sometimes I found the downside of people responding so quickly is, while nice, could leading to confusion as people missed each other in the back and forth. It is like two people heading the opposite direction keep trying to let the other go straight, yet end up both doing the same and actually end up colliding in the worse scenario. In this, case, for some reasons, I probably got preconceived incorrectly (my fault I assume), that I meant something that I didn't, lol......

I’ve managed to push my Reference 1 Meta and the A1H into audible clipping even with a 250 Hz high-pass filter applied.
This means the A1H’s 4-ohm headroom (around 270 W) was fully exhausted, and vocal distortion became clearly audible.
After switching to the NCx500, that distortion disappeared completely, even at the same SPL — and also at slightly higher SPL.

Most people never drive a solid-state amplifier to the point where its headroom becomes the limiting factor, so this kind of discussion only matters for people who can actually push their system into clipping.

With my JBL S9900 driven in BTL mode with an NC502MP, I recently wanted to test around 500 W at home, but at about 115 dB at 2 meters (roughly 100 W), my ears reached their limit long before the amplifier did.
Around 100 W is something even the A1H can deliver easily, so the benefit of high-sensitivity speakers becomes extremely obvious.

With the KEF system, I have to disable Dirac to free up enough headroom for these SPL levels.
But with the JBL system I can reach these levels even with Dirac engaged, without running into any issues.

 

[peng]

I will clarify the “some” part.

Most home theatre owners (99%) would absolutely have zero trouble driving a speaker like this jbl 3153, at reference level and far seating, with just an avr like the 3800h alone. This is why i disagreed with you.

With other speakers, what you have stated holds true. There would be cases were 50w wouldn’t be sufficient/ would require external amplification.

Just one last time, I have never said or even implied anything like that, all my comments/remarks are based on engineering science, you can verify it to a large extent by plugging in numbers in any good online calculator.

Your claims such as, "Most home theatre owners (99%) would absolutely have zero trouble driving a speaker like this jbl 3153, at reference level and far seating, with just an avr like the 3800h alone." is something that I would never disagree anyway because of your choice of words like "most", and "far". In fact, that's like stating the obvious.

 

[kawauso]

Well there was no misunderstanding…i assumed the 3800h should be around 50w/ch 5-7ch+ driven. Which is the same for my yamaha (although it is 150w/ch into 2ch, and 50w/ch into 7ch+, as far as the reviews state for pretty much every yamaha aventage a30x0 lineup)

All AVRs draw from a shared power supply, so when multiple channels are driven at the same time, the available power per channel naturally drops. This is simply how multichannel amplifier design works.

And in real program material, all channels never demand the same wattage simultaneously, nor do they share identical impedance or frequency loads. That only happens in lab torture tests.

Because of that, chasing theoretical “all-channels-driven” numbers isn’t very meaningful.
For practical use, the 2-channel power rating already tells you everything you need to know about an AVR’s real-world capability.

 

[peng]

Most people never drive a solid-state amplifier to the point where its headroom becomes the limiting factor, so this kind of discussion only matters for people who can actually push their system into clipping.

To me, the conversation (not with you) took a bit of a wrong term when he posted:

Under “some” use case? No. These jbls can tear you apart with as little as 10w. Why do you think it would not serve my case?

and it unfortunately continued even after I clarified (shouldn't need to...):

Don't know why you would say no if you don't know what that "some" is?
I did not say it wouldn't serve your case, it would because if you listen to 95 dB maximum at 3.3 m. But it wouldn't in case someone wants 85 dB average, 105 dB peak from 4m, or even the same 3.3m.

basically, but clearly telling him I agreed that it would serve his case, but it would not, in "some" cases.

That's why I felt somehow there was some preconceived idea..

As to what you said in your post, I fully agreed and that's why I said under some cases (yes even with that JBL, though it that case, I probably should substitute some with "rare" just to be more agreeable).

 

[peng]

Oh buddy i didn’t mean to offend you in anyway, please, if that’s what you have interpreted in my messages then i am sorry, I will stop it here by now. Please

Its all good, going back to watch TV now.

 

[sahil fardeen]

To me, the conversation (not with you) took a bit of a wrong term when he posted:



and it unfortunately continued even after I clarified (shouldn't need to...):



basically, but clearly telling him I agreed that it would serve his case, but it would not, in "some" cases.

That's why I felt somehow there was some preconceived idea..

As to what you said in your post, I fully agreed and that's why I said under some cases, that is not all cases, but there are always some..lol..

I didn’t quote anything except saying that it would work even for 85db continous and 105db peaks…. at 4m just like you said here:

But it wouldn't in case someone wants 85 dB average, 105 dB peak from 4m, or even the same 3.3m.

You have stated it “wouldn’t”. Thats when i have told it would have no problems doing that specific “case” - which is 85db continuous, 105db peaks at 4m

 

[delta76]

While it is good to have an in depth technical discussion, I will just go in and say, stop worrying and buy a x3800h. if you need one and have money to do so
The only valid reason not to, is that you have more money to go higher, like x4800h or x6800h or even higher.

x3800h will work absolutely just fine for your setup. You might need to add external amp, if your speakers are highly insensitive and you want to play really loud, but for a home theatre setting that rarely happens. If it does, most AVR will struggle except for a few flagship ones. Maybe.

When I had my x4700h, the total power it draws for my 5 speakers setup was 10w when it becomes uncomfortably loud to me.

 

[ban25]

While it is good to have an in depth technical discussion, I will just go in and say, stop worrying and buy a x3800h. if you need one and have money to do so
The only valid reason is that you have more money to go higher, like x4800h or x6800h or even higher.

x3800h will work absolutely just fine for your setup. You might need to add external amp, if your speakers are highly insensitive and you want to play really loud, but for a home theatre setting that rarely happens. If it does, most AVR will struggle except for a few flagship ones. Maybe.

When I had my x4700h, the total power it draws for my 5 speakers setup was 10w when it becomes uncomfortably loud to me.

And if it does go into overcurrent protection, perhaps because you are driving 9 low-sensitivity speakers at reference volume while watching a movie and a loud explosion played in all channels at 105 dB trips it, then you'll know because the AVR will shut down and you'll get an error code. Anything less is not going to trigger a shutdown.

 

[EWL5]

Yamaha has been reportedly limiting power when it detects more than 5ch being used. They have been doing this for ages.

It dates back to previous generations like a3050. And its still persisting on the a6a. Very sure its on the 3080 too

I didn't know that about Yamaha (note to self: don't buy Yamaha)!

I'm not a fan of nanny circuitry, especially since the primary purpose of an AVR for most people is multi-channel audio!

 

[Bucking]

So 8 ohm mode (regardless if the speakers are 4 or 8 ohms) and Eco mode set to auto should probably be fine right?

 

[ban25]

So 8 ohm mode (regardless if the speakers are 4 or 8 ohms) and Eco mode set to auto should probably be fine right?

Correct.

 

[dlaloum]

Yamaha has been reportedly limiting power when it detects more than 5ch being used. They have been doing this for ages.

It dates back to previous generations like a3050. And its still persisting on the a6a. Very sure its on the 3080 too

All AVR's have power supplies that are incapable of providing max power continuously to all channels.

One of the biggest limitations in the AVR genre, is the power supply.

Hence you will see 2ch/stereo tests showing substantially higher power than the "all channels driven" specifications.

Basically, at some point you hit the power supplies current limit... and then things start to go wrong.

This is not limited to Yamaha, it applies to ALL AVR's.

If the AVR is not based on a switch mode power supply (SMPS) then the weight of the AVR (primarily driven by transformer and capacitors) will provide some rough indication of the capacity of the power supply...

Look at the difference in weight of flagship models like the Onkyo RZ70 and Denon AV1 vs more mass market models such as the RZ50 and X3800... a lot of that is down to the power supply.

Denon are one of the few companies that have published details of their power supply capacities in marketing materials - and it is worth noting the difference in the capacitor sizing/capacity, as well as transformer as you go up the range!

If using external power amps, then these have their own power supply, and obviously that removes those channels load from the power supply of the AVR, leaving more power supply capacity for the rest. (Hence although the external power amp may not be more powerful than the AVR per spec, the fact that it frees up capacity on the AVR, could potentially result in improvements in the remaining AVR powered channels)

 

[sahil fardeen]

serious suggestions here, thanks

 

[sahil fardeen]

I didn't know that about Yamaha (note to self: don't buy Yamaha)!

I'm not a fan of nanny circuitry, especially since the primary purpose of an AVR for most people is multi-channel audio!

I bought yamaha only as they are believed to be more “reliable” and long lasting. Few people i know of are still using a3010 since release(2011) and its an hdmi model.

 

[ban25]

Of course, if you are plugging those external amps into a shared 15A or 20A breaker, you have your limit, all the same.

 

[dlaloum]

I bought yamaha only as they are believed to be more “reliable” and long lasting. Few people i know of are still using a3010 since release(2011) and its an hdmi model.

The Yamaha engineering quality and reliability, especially from midrange and up, has traditionally always been very good.

Their lifetime has been long, whereas Denon as well as Onkyo/Integra have had reliability issues at various times over the last 15 years.... both have overcome those issues, and the current generation appears to be reliable.
However, as you say, Yamaha have earned a good reputation.

They are good quality, good reliability, BUT have poor RoomEQ system (YPAO) - and with the current state of play, the biggest single factor in the end result performance quality, is the RoomEQ.... as a result, Yamaha is now on the defensive.... and Denon/Marantz are leading the way with ART.

 

[dlaloum]

Of course, if you are plugging those external amps into a shared 15A or 20A breaker, you have your limit, all the same.

I don't see anything being discussed here that would stress a standard 10A circuit (which is the standard circuit minimum in Australia) let alone 15A/20A...

 

[sahil fardeen]

The Yamaha engineering quality and reliability, especially from midrange and up, has traditionally always been very good.

Their lifetime has been long, whereas Denon as well as Onkyo/Integra have had reliability issues at various times over the last 15 years.... both have overcome those issues, and the current generation appears to be reliable.
However, as you say, Yamaha have earned a good reputation.

They are good quality, good reliability, BUT have poor RoomEQ system (YPAO) - and with the current state of play, the biggest single factor in the end result performance quality, is the RoomEQ.... as a result, Yamaha is now on the defensive.... and Denon/Marantz are leading the way with ART.

i have asked various technicians here locally and everyone of them claimed yamaha to be more reliable than others. Their flagship series 2000 and 3000 series are built like a tank and they dont cheap out on components.
Well nothing is free from trouble in the world of hdmi.