This is a review and detailed measurements of the Denon AVR-X8500H Flagship 13.2 Audio/Video Receiver (AVR). It is kindly loaned to me by a member and costs US $3999.
The 8500H is a beast: it is both deep and heavy. Thankfully the transformer is centrally located so as manageable as 51 pounds can be:
If RCA connectors were Christmas lights, you would have the best one in the entire neighborhood with this AVR:
In use, the AVR-X8500H ran a bit cooler than its lower end siblings. I think I measured a post-testing temperature of 45 degrees C. Still, I highly recommend ample cooling as once again, there is a fan under the heatsinks but it does not turn on in normal usage (ECO mode off).
If you have read my previous reviews of AVRs, you know that I test the pre-amp output with and without amplifiers active (if there is such an option). I tried to do this with the 8500H but at first failed miserably. I set the amplifier config to "pre" which I thought would shut down all the amps. Performance was poor indicating the amps were probably still on. Discussing it with the owner, he suggested that I turn off the individual channels and set the Amp config to Custom. Doing that indeed turned off the amps resulting in much better DAC performance. I asked Denon about it but their engineering team is on holiday. The suggestion was that perhaps this is something that is fixed in later firmware revisions? I did not try to test that.
As with other Denon and Marantz measurements of late, I sent my results to them for review. Per above, engineering team was on vacation but US contacts felt good about the data and so we are running with them.
AVR DAC Pre-out HDMI Measurements
Per my standard testing protocol, I feed the AVR stereo 1 kHz PCM digital signal and adjust the volume to produce 2 volts nominal. Like all the other Denon & Marantz AVRs, this meant volume level of 82.5. Pure Direct mode was used for all testing. And per introduction above, the front L&R amps are shut off:
Aha! We have set a record folks. An AVR that produces a SINAD (sum of distortion and noise) that exceeds 100 dB! Hooray!!!
Whoever said AVRs are too complicated to ever have good SINAD needs to eat their hat, shorts, or whatever they put forward if shown wrong.
It is very nice to see at least some scaling of SINAD with respect to price.
Sweeping the digital level to see the performance at different output levels we get:
Since you can turn all the amplifiers on and off per channel, you don't have to worry about the second graph but I post it for consistency with other AVRs that can't do this. It does nicely show the peak performance though which is at 104 dB SINAD and 1.45 volts. But you don't lose hardly any performance at 2 volts (with amp shut off of course).
Dynamic range is nearly good enough to keep up with the SINAD:
Intermodulation distortion is fine for an AVR:
As is 32-tone test masquerading as music:
Filter has good attenuation:
Which helps when we see distortion versus frequency:
Jitter and spurious tone and noise is not pretty but not an audible concern:
Our hearing threshold is way too high for the low frequency spray to be audible. Still, I like to see Denon clean this up. A dirty spoon doesn't change the flavor of your soup but I rather have a clean one still!
Linearity was excellent in channel but degraded a bit in the other:
Zone 2 DAC Audio Performance
The owner asked for the Zone 2 performance. I fumbled through the menus and found an option to send all output to zones 2 and 3 and got this out of Zone 2 pre out:
Output was capped at half a volt which hurt noise performance resulting in a SINAD of nearly 98 dB. If volume could go higher, it seems it would reach the same performance as the mains as distortion is very low at -104 dB or so. If you are going to use an external amp for these zones, better get one with high sensitivity.
AVR Amplifier Performance
I started the testing here by using HDMI as the input as that is likely how all of you will be using the AVR:
For comparison to other amplifiers though, analog testing is more convenient so I tested the CD input:
We see that performance is essentially the same. The DAC in the AVR is way better than the amplifier so it doesn't impact performance when we use HDMI.
I wish one channel wasn't much worse than the other as otherwise, the overall ranking would be good. As it is, it is a bit worse than the cheaper Denons:
Among all amplifiers of all types, performance is above average:
Not state of the art though. So external amplification should improve overall performance given how good the DAC is.
CD frequency response in pure direct mode is nice and wide:
Signal to noise ratio could be a bit better at 5 watts but good enough at full power:
Crosstalk is like other Denon AVRs which once again is good enough:
AVR Power Measurements
Let's start with 4 ohm load and see what that gets us:
I like to see that graph sloping down until clipping sets in. As it is, it indicates that distortion becomes dominant quite early. Good amount of power is available which increases yet again if we allow 1% THD+N and use burst measurements:
Amplifier performance is very predictable in a good way:
Switching to 8 ohm we essentially get the same power as Denon specifiies:
All of these tests are in 2-channel mode but the AVR power supply is designed to power more channels. As a result, we are getting the best case performance numbers. Let's see the impact of each channel as we go from one to five channels:
So there is no cliff there. We still get a respectable 131 watts per channel with all five channels driven continuously (1% distortion+noise)
Conclusions
Testing AVRs and even expensive processors has been a depressing trip. A highlight however has been Denon AVRs which generally outperform their competition. So it is with great pleasure to see their flagship AVR bettering the performance of all home theater products tested so far. Yes, it is a more expensive product but at least you get more when you pay more. Features like ability to turn off any amplification channel is super important for a high-end theater where you want to have some external amplification.
Needless to say, I am happy to recommend the Denon AVR-X8500H.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
I had to test this AVR twice: once with the broken Pre mode and then with the amp turned off. Considering how much work they are to measure as is, this was a ton of work. I hope that makes you feel sorry for me by donating what you can using : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The 8500H is a beast: it is both deep and heavy. Thankfully the transformer is centrally located so as manageable as 51 pounds can be:
If RCA connectors were Christmas lights, you would have the best one in the entire neighborhood with this AVR:
In use, the AVR-X8500H ran a bit cooler than its lower end siblings. I think I measured a post-testing temperature of 45 degrees C. Still, I highly recommend ample cooling as once again, there is a fan under the heatsinks but it does not turn on in normal usage (ECO mode off).
If you have read my previous reviews of AVRs, you know that I test the pre-amp output with and without amplifiers active (if there is such an option). I tried to do this with the 8500H but at first failed miserably. I set the amplifier config to "pre" which I thought would shut down all the amps. Performance was poor indicating the amps were probably still on. Discussing it with the owner, he suggested that I turn off the individual channels and set the Amp config to Custom. Doing that indeed turned off the amps resulting in much better DAC performance. I asked Denon about it but their engineering team is on holiday. The suggestion was that perhaps this is something that is fixed in later firmware revisions? I did not try to test that.
As with other Denon and Marantz measurements of late, I sent my results to them for review. Per above, engineering team was on vacation but US contacts felt good about the data and so we are running with them.
AVR DAC Pre-out HDMI Measurements
Per my standard testing protocol, I feed the AVR stereo 1 kHz PCM digital signal and adjust the volume to produce 2 volts nominal. Like all the other Denon & Marantz AVRs, this meant volume level of 82.5. Pure Direct mode was used for all testing. And per introduction above, the front L&R amps are shut off:
Aha! We have set a record folks. An AVR that produces a SINAD (sum of distortion and noise) that exceeds 100 dB! Hooray!!!
Whoever said AVRs are too complicated to ever have good SINAD needs to eat their hat, shorts, or whatever they put forward if shown wrong.
It is very nice to see at least some scaling of SINAD with respect to price.Sweeping the digital level to see the performance at different output levels we get:
Since you can turn all the amplifiers on and off per channel, you don't have to worry about the second graph but I post it for consistency with other AVRs that can't do this. It does nicely show the peak performance though which is at 104 dB SINAD and 1.45 volts. But you don't lose hardly any performance at 2 volts (with amp shut off of course).
Dynamic range is nearly good enough to keep up with the SINAD:
Intermodulation distortion is fine for an AVR:
As is 32-tone test masquerading as music:
Filter has good attenuation:
Which helps when we see distortion versus frequency:
Jitter and spurious tone and noise is not pretty but not an audible concern:
Our hearing threshold is way too high for the low frequency spray to be audible. Still, I like to see Denon clean this up. A dirty spoon doesn't change the flavor of your soup but I rather have a clean one still!
Linearity was excellent in channel but degraded a bit in the other:
Zone 2 DAC Audio Performance
The owner asked for the Zone 2 performance. I fumbled through the menus and found an option to send all output to zones 2 and 3 and got this out of Zone 2 pre out:
Output was capped at half a volt which hurt noise performance resulting in a SINAD of nearly 98 dB. If volume could go higher, it seems it would reach the same performance as the mains as distortion is very low at -104 dB or so. If you are going to use an external amp for these zones, better get one with high sensitivity.
AVR Amplifier Performance
I started the testing here by using HDMI as the input as that is likely how all of you will be using the AVR:
For comparison to other amplifiers though, analog testing is more convenient so I tested the CD input:
We see that performance is essentially the same. The DAC in the AVR is way better than the amplifier so it doesn't impact performance when we use HDMI.
I wish one channel wasn't much worse than the other as otherwise, the overall ranking would be good. As it is, it is a bit worse than the cheaper Denons:
Among all amplifiers of all types, performance is above average:
Not state of the art though. So external amplification should improve overall performance given how good the DAC is.
CD frequency response in pure direct mode is nice and wide:
Signal to noise ratio could be a bit better at 5 watts but good enough at full power:
Crosstalk is like other Denon AVRs which once again is good enough:
AVR Power Measurements
Let's start with 4 ohm load and see what that gets us:
I like to see that graph sloping down until clipping sets in. As it is, it indicates that distortion becomes dominant quite early. Good amount of power is available which increases yet again if we allow 1% THD+N and use burst measurements:
Amplifier performance is very predictable in a good way:
Switching to 8 ohm we essentially get the same power as Denon specifiies:
All of these tests are in 2-channel mode but the AVR power supply is designed to power more channels. As a result, we are getting the best case performance numbers. Let's see the impact of each channel as we go from one to five channels:
So there is no cliff there. We still get a respectable 131 watts per channel with all five channels driven continuously (1% distortion+noise)
Conclusions
Testing AVRs and even expensive processors has been a depressing trip. A highlight however has been Denon AVRs which generally outperform their competition. So it is with great pleasure to see their flagship AVR bettering the performance of all home theater products tested so far. Yes, it is a more expensive product but at least you get more when you pay more. Features like ability to turn off any amplification channel is super important for a high-end theater where you want to have some external amplification.
Needless to say, I am happy to recommend the Denon AVR-X8500H.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
I had to test this AVR twice: once with the broken Pre mode and then with the amp turned off. Considering how much work they are to measure as is, this was a ton of work. I hope that makes you feel sorry for me by donating what you can using : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Last edited:
