Denon AVR-X3800H Review

[popej]

Then for CDs where I am actually experimenting more with pure sound and play via Pure Direct, I am still looking for an external DAC, haven't setteled on one yet.

I don't think internal DAC is limiting performance, it is rather internal amplifier.

Also, looking to add amp's for my LR channels. This would bypass the internal DAC there with the cost of not being able to use Audyssey of course.

Wouldn't you settle on inaudible improvements in electronics disregarding real improvements in acoustic given by Audyssey?
I would rather buy Audyssey app and tweak Audyssey to my preferences.

 

[phn]

I don't think internal DAC is limiting performance, it is rather internal amplifier.

This is partially why I'd like to experiment with external amps. Also for the reason I'd like to have a tad more power to my LR channels.

Wouldn't you settle on inaudible improvements in electronics disregarding real improvements in acoustic given by Audyssey?
I would rather buy Audyssey app and tweak Audyssey to my preferences.

I very much like Audyssey, I do have the app, and am considering buying their full MultEQ software for PC.

That said, I am also keen to experiment how good of a sound I could come up with having worked with room acoustics. My room still is the number one issue for good sound due to plastered concrete blocks our house is built with.

It would indeed be nice to have a Pure Direct that would sound good in comparison what Audyssey room treatment is able to accomplish with my acoustic treatment so far. (Bass traps, acoustic paneling, heavy curtains, etc).

 

[popej]

It would indeed be nice to have a Pure Direct that would sound good in comparison what Audyssey room treatment is able to accomplish with my acoustic treatment so far. (Bass traps, acoustic paneling, heavy curtains, etc).

That's true. But Audyssey comes with bass management and loudness correction (Dynamic EQ). I wouldn't give it up.

 

[phn]

That's true. But Audyssey comes with bass management and loudness correction (Dynamic EQ). I wouldn't give it up.

I compeltely agreed and I have no plan to give up on Audyssey, bass management and in particular DEQ included. Pure Direct is sort of a side project, with an aim to make it sound as good as I can, with limits to as how far I can take room acoustics.

 

[EWL5]

x3800 owners,

looking to get the x3800 as it is affordable compared to the x4800 but the SINAD discussions are very confusing even after reading 100 pages of this thread for us non engineers.

what precautions do you have to take while matching speakers with the x3800 to avoid issues with the SINAD problems with this avr ?

at what decibel levels do the SINAD issues become a distraction while watching movies/listening to music ?

can we add a High Quality external DAC between the x3800 and the Speakers to overcome/avoid/circumvent these SINAD issues mentioned on the x3800 ASR review...?

I came over from a 2016 Pioneer AVR that retailed for $1600 and was a fairly decent receiver. Despite the 3800 being in the absolute price range, it is at least a half step down from my older receiver in terms of raw power and built-in calibration. Adjusting for inflation, the receiver I should have gotten was either the 4800 or the Onkyo RZ70 (they were both priced slightly out of reach) and would have been much more comparable to what I was replacing. If I could do it over again, I'd probably get the RZ70 w/built in Dirac and call it a day.

The answer to your question really depends on what AVR you are replacing!

 

[keepthingsclean]

Anyone here running the 3800 in a phantom-center setup?
When I upgraded my system, I removed the center and currently run the PreOut to a pair of Genelec 8030 left and right plus a Sub.
System is configured as "No center" and I was hoping for the AVR to somehow downmix the Center-channel reasonably to L and R.

Started John Wick 4 yesterday as a first test through an AppleTV and was almost shocked with the lack of clarity on the dialogues (almost unwatcheable for a non-native English speaker). Tinkered with the settings, switched the Output of the AppleTV from PCM (which yields in Multi In on the AVR) to send unencoded Dolby, set the Dialogue Enhancer to "High" but was yet not able to get any useful result.

So is it the AVR and its lackluster attempt of downmixing? Is it the movie that makes that process even harder than it needs to be? Some setting that I miss? Or is phantom center really that inferior? (Which is strange given how often people recommend it as a possible solution to start with).

The Marantz 1509 I had before was the similarily bad in that regard and it was fixed by surrender and adding a dedicated center speaker.

So it seems I need to find a passive center again that sonically matches the Genelecs - or an active center of the same make or at least similar.

 

[ban25]

I've never found a phantom center to be truly effective. You need perfect seating position and calibration, and even then, a real center will be superior for dialog.

 

[Robbo99999]

Anyone here running the 3800 in a phantom-center setup?
When I upgraded my system, I removed the center and currently run the PreOut to a pair of Genelec 8030 left and right plus a Sub.
System is configured as "No center" and I was hoping for the AVR to somehow downmix the Center-channel reasonably to L and R.

Started John Wick 4 yesterday as a first test through an AppleTV and was almost shocked with the lack of clarity on the dialogues (almost unwatcheable for a non-native English speaker). Tinkered with the settings, switched the Output of the AppleTV from PCM (which yields in Multi In on the AVR) to send unencoded Dolby, set the Dialogue Enhancer to "High" but was yet not able to get any useful result.

So is it the AVR and its lackluster attempt of downmixing? Is it the movie that makes that process even harder than it needs to be? Some setting that I miss? Or is phantom center really that inferior? (Which is strange given how often people recommend it as a possible solution to start with).

The Marantz 1509 I had before was the similarily bad in that regard and it was fixed by surrender and adding a dedicated center speaker.

So it seems I need to find a passive center again that sonically matches the Genelecs - or an active center of the same make or at least similar.

I don't have a surround movie channel theatre setup, but I do have 2 Anechoic Flat speakers setup in stereo (in perfect equilateral triangle if I move a chair!), and movie dialogue is always intelligible albeit it varies from movie to movie. For my Roku stick I set it up in Dolby Digital Plus Stereo mode for best overall results subjectively - to me that gives the most bass impact whilst retaining clarity through rest of the range. So of course that's a phantom centre, and it really doesn't make movies less intelligible as far as I can tell......if you're perfect equilateral triangle then in my experience you don't miss a centre speaker (and it totally realistically feels that the sound is coming straight from the screen for anything central, and smooth transitions to anything from left to right). I don't think centre speakers are gonna be that important unless you've not got all your speakers calibrated properly (& properly located) for your listening position. (If you can't perfectly locate your speakers, then it's important to volume match & time align your speakers at your listening position, which you should do anyway to be honest).

 

[ExPerfectionist]

can we add a High Quality external DAC between the x3800 and the Speakers to overcome/avoid/circumvent these SINAD issues mentioned on the x3800 ASR review...?

Chain needs to go "source > DAC > optional things like Audyssey/DSP (requiring another analog to digital step + DAC step) > volume control > amplification"

A DAC after the AVR and before the speakers would be missing the volume control and amplification of the analog signal into watts (unless speakers are wired), and an AVR outputs analog over RCA / XLR pre-outs (or through speaker terminals).

 

[RJG]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Denon AVR-X3800H 9.4 Home Theater Audio/Video Receiver. It was kindly drop shipped to me by a member and costs US $1,699.
View attachment 239676
Not much to say about the look of the unit as it is pretty much similar/same as last generations. Here is the back panel:
View attachment 239677

I had one operational problem with the unit where the Setup button would not bring up the menus anymore. A power cycle fixed it. I was happy to see solid extruded aluminum heatsink. Despite that, the top front of the of the unit (above the heatsink) got quite hot to the touch. I highly recommend ample airflow in that area. As usual, there is a fan there but it would not come on to cool the unit.

I grabbed a preliminary set of measurements from the DAC section of the 3800H and ran it by the company. Within typical margin of error, the measurements were the same as company's own.

Denon AVR-X3800H DAC Measurements
The DAC measurements and usage are made better by a global "preamplifier" mode which shuts down the amps and keeps them from overloading the unit during testing. I started my tests using Toslink optical to remove any possibility of ground loops:
View attachment 239678

I was fair bit disappointed to see the high distortion spikes which caused the unit to underperform the AVR-X3700H by some 10 dB. This naturally knocks down the positioning of the unit by good bit in our SINAD ranking:
View attachment 239679
The culprit seems to be the optimal output shifting fair bit lower in voltage:
View attachment 239680

With amps shut off, the 3700H was happy to go 2.0 volts.

So fairly large degradation here. Company explanation was that this was good enough for "99%" of the external amps out there. Be that as it may, it still doesn't explain the drop in performance at the peak level (101 dB for 3700 vs 95 for 3800).

Connecting HDMI causes a rise in noise floor but SINAD didn't change since it is dominated by distortion:
View attachment 239682

Fortunately dynamic range is unchanged from last generation:
View attachment 239683

IMD is naturally worse due to earlier saturation:
View attachment 239684

Linearity has suffered a bit:

View attachment 239685

Multitone shows the degradation we would expect:
View attachment 239686

Due to different DAC chip used (?), the filter performance is a bit worse as well:
View attachment 239687


View attachment 239688

This naturally increases the noise+distortion in our wideband measurements:

View attachment 239689

Quite poor result.

Jitter is bad but so was the last generation:
View attachment 239690

Denon AVR-X3800H Amplifier Measurements:
Let's start with analog input with and without pure mode:
View attachment 239691
This is good results.

Crosstalk is very similar to last generation and in need of some improvement:
View attachment 239692

Dashboard performance is a bit worse than last generation but not as bad as the hit in the DAC section:
View attachment 239693

View attachment 239694
HDMI input raises the noise floor:
View attachment 239695

Fortunately noise performance is the same as before:
View attachment 239696
Multitone has power supply noise in lower frequencies and rising distortion in highs:
View attachment 239701

Rest of the measurements are essentially identical to last generation AVR:
View attachment 239697

View attachment 239698

View attachment 239699

View attachment 239700

All in all, the amplifier is as performant as before.

Conclusions
I had high hopes going into this review thinking the company had seen the advantage its superior objective measurements in the past and would try to capitalize on them. Sadly, the reverse seems to be true with the DAC section taking a large step backward. Considering that the 3800 costs $500 more than 3700H, this is very surprising to me. Yes, inflation has a lot to do with that but surely the eye needed to be focused on making sure they at least met the same level of performance as last generation.

The good news is that the amplifier seems to be same design as last generation and has only taken a small hit.

Denon had been my "goto" recommendation for AVRs and even AVPs. When anyone asked me about either, I would just say "get a Denon AVR." While subjectively the performance of this new generation may be similar, I can't accept the regression in objective measured performance.

It is with much sadness that I cannot recommend the Denon AVR-X3800H.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

I saw that both the X3800h and X4800h use the same DAC--PCM5102A x8--but your review of the latter finds it to be fine. What's the difference?

 

[Ciobi69]

Hello everyone is the Dirac bass control available on this Denon? I'm forward to buy it especially for this function,I even heard there is a remote possibility for Dirac ART on this, thanks!

 

[hiphop_odc]

Hello everyone is the Dirac bass control available on this Denon? I'm forward to buy it especially for this function,I even heard there is a remote possibility for Dirac ART on this, thanks!

Not yet, should come later this year.

 

[Smalltalker]

I have a question and hoping someone can answer.
If I use a separate amplifier for most channels and use the pre-amp outs, does that impact the ratings? Are most of the downgrades in ratings due to the built-in amplifiers not handling the loads properly? For example, the distortion spikes?

 

[peng]

I have a question and hoping someone can answer.
If I use a separate amplifier for most channels and use the pre-amp outs, does that impact the ratings? Are most of the downgrades in ratings due to the built-in amplifiers not handling the loads properly? For example, the distortion spikes?

Impact on what rating, what distortion spikes are you referring to?

 

[Smalltalker]

Impact on what rating, what distortion spikes are you referring to?

The AVR-X3800H review states:
In the DAC measurements section:
I was fair bit disappointed to see the high distortion spikes which caused the unit to underperform the AVR-X3700H by some 10 dB. This naturally knocks down the positioning of the unit by good bit in our SINAD ranking:

Denon AVR-X3800H Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Denon AVR-X3800H 9.4 Home Theater Audio/Video Receiver. It was kindly drop shipped to me by a member and costs US $1,699. Not much to say about the look of the unit as it is pretty much similar/same as last generations. Here is the back panel...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[abdo123]

I have a question and hoping someone can answer.
If I use a separate amplifier for most channels and use the pre-amp outs, does that impact the ratings? Are most of the downgrades in ratings due to the built-in amplifiers not handling the loads properly? For example, the distortion spikes?

None of the distortion levels measured here in this review are audible. Don’t give this TOO much influence on your purchase decision. But that is very much not the case with other AVRs.

You need something that at least covers CD quality or is close to it ~96dB.

 

[popej]

I was fair bit disappointed to see the high distortion spikes which caused the unit to underperform the AVR-X3700H by some 10 dB. This naturally knocks down the positioning of the unit by good bit in our SINAD ranking:

It is valid, if you want to use x3800h as AV pre.
If you want an integrated AVR, then difference is only about 3dB.

 

[abdo123]

Just plugged in mine and ran a quick an audessy calibration. And wow!

Like it already improved my experience so much with dynamic EQ alone. and the fact that i got there with 10 mins? What a world we live in.

Looking forward for Dirac ART

 

[TimoJ]

Just plugged in mine and ran a quick an audessy calibration. And wow!

Like it already improved my experience so much with dynamic EQ alone. and the fact that i got there with 10 mins? What a world we live in.

Looking forward for Dirac ART

When using Dirac you will lose dynamic EQ.

 

[peng]

I believe if enough people asking for the feature, they will add it to future updates eventually. They (Dirac) must know how to do it.