Hello everyone,
This is a review and measurements of the Denon DVD-A11, DVD(A), SACD, CD player and transport.
Denon DVD-A11 - Presentation
The Denon DVD-A11 was available from 2004 to 2006 and was kind of the successor of the Denon DVD-A1 which I previously reviewed. That said, the A11 was almost half the price of the A1, but at 2500€ at the time, it was still a high-end DVD Player.
With 6kg less than the A1, it is still a massive universal player with nearly 13kg (28.5lbs). So, some economy of scale was in the air for Denon.
It reads all available formats of the era, adding the SACD (that the A1 did not offer) on top of CD Audio, DVD and DVD Audio. Strangely enough, the SACD logo is discrete on bottom left (but engraved), while the tray received a golden-proud DVD Audio/Video emblem, go figure.
The back of this unit is quite busy:
For the first time this Denon offered a digital video output. We also get analog multi channel outputs, lovers of multichannel DVDA and SACD were happy (and still are, I guess).
On top of some now obsolete Denon Link and IEEE1394 output, we have our still standard SPDIF Coax and optical outputs.
The Denon is also very busy on the inside:
The chassis of this unit is luxurious but nowhere close to its DVD-A1 predecessor. Besides all the Audio processing units, we get several BurrBrown DACs on my interest:
You can see two of the three BurrBrown DACs on this picture, the DSD1790 and PCM1790, which are essentially the same. As per the service guide of the Denon, the PCM1790 was used for the two main channels, while the DSD1790 was used for surround channels:
As you might have seen, the Denon features the "AL24 Processing Plus", in-house oversampling filter, that is active only with PCM signal (that excludes DSD) and for all output channels!
This universal player also decodes the HDCD discs and I'm happy that Denon went the hard way of authorizing high resolution PCM digital output, despite copy protection, as the below table shows:
Theoretically, the above makes it the ideal transport. Of course, SACD digital output were forbidden, too bad, but the internal DACs were good enough as we'll see.
User Experience
On a personal perspective, this universal player is surprisingly pleasant. The buttons don't have the luxury touch of the A1, but it's ok. The big surprise to me came from the speed of action of the drive when fed with a CDA, DVDA or SACD. It is nearly as fast as the legendary good old Sony KSS drives.
The on-screen menu is cryptic and requires to read the documentation to properly setup the audio, I got lost many times.
Other than that, I loved the fact it can play SACD stereo and multichannel with the adhoc analog outputs.
I tested SACD and DVDA commercials discs and I had no issue, including with multichannel 24/192 DVDA. But the Denon can’t read a CDR and refused to read the TOC of some of my commercial CDs too.
When a multichannel DVDA is played, it will automatically downmix to 2 channels if the related on screen menu is set accordingly. For the SACD, it is necessary to use the front panel of the Denon to select the multichannel layer or the stereo one. No downmix, as far as I understood.
And it is gapless playback with all formats, of course!
Denon DVD-A11 - Measurements (Analog outputs - CDA and DVDA)
All measurements performed with an E1DA Cosmos ADCiso (grade 0), and the Cosmos Scaler (100kohms from unbalanced input) for analog outputs, and a Motu UltraLite Mk5 for digital outputs.
For once, I won't be consistent with my usual way of reviewing CD players because the big Denon does not read CDRs. So I had to create a DVD Audio, in a rush, with few test files so I could review the performances. This was a little nightmare to learn how to do that, but my friend @Vintage02 was of great help to reduce my learning curve to a reasonable amount of time. That said, I did not have time to reproduce all my usual test files, but I have a good set of them to report the real performances of the big baby.
With the software I used to author and burn a DVDA, I was restricted to 16 or 24bits, and 48kHz/96kHz/192kHz sampling rate. So, I created two DVD Audio test discs, one at 16bits/48kHz (to compare with my usual test CD) and one at 24bits/48kHz (to get high res tests).
Let's start at 16bits.
The Denon output 2.2Vrms, a little more than the standard 2Vrms. I saw a small 0.2dB channel mismatch. The phase was non inverting and dead flat across the bandwidth.
Measurements - Analog out 16bits/48kHz
The following tests mimic my usual CD tests but at 48kHz, instead of 44.1kHz. Let's start with my standard 999.91Hz test tone @0dBFS (without dither):
Nice, we get the full resolution of the PCM 16bits with negligible distortion (-114dB). We can see some PS leakage though (50Hz and harmonics), and we get a better view of that below:
At -120dBr, we can ignore, impossible to hear, but I would have preferred not seeing them.
I forgot to add the view at -6dBFS (without dither):
The power supply leakage decreased a little, good news.
Around the second harmonic, you can see some spikes that are due to the quantization errors in the digital domain. It means that the Denon has a much higher resolution than 16bits so that we can see the mathematical rounding approximation in the digital signal.
As a matter of facts, I have calculated that with 48kHz, I should use a sine of 999.21Hz, instead of my usual 999.91Hz, because it generates a better spread of these rounding errors over the bandwidth (less repeat of identical subframes in the resulting PCM code). Thanks to the high resolution of the Denon to get me to realize it!
----
Next is the bandwidth:
It is very flat, no surprises, but my guess is that with true 44.1kHz, we would see the typical roll off at 20kHz from the Denon AL24 filter.
We can see the almost 0.2dB channel mismatch.
----
Let's have a look at the job of the oversampling filter, with a wider bandwidth:
The filter attenuates by roughly -90dB which is fair. That said it does not look like the standard AL24 filtering of Denon, and that is a surprise. Indeed, I could not find a trace of the usual trick from Denon with this filter that recognizes typical AES tests and switches to a shaper filter in that case. Here it is always a sharp filter, which I prefer, but it is not the AL24. Weird. Only testing the same with 16bits/44.1kHz could confirm if the behavior is different (I guess yes).
Another feature of the Denon filter is to increase the bit depth in real time, which means the standard 3DC test of Stereophile does not show a square signal, but a sine (due to the increased bit depth and associated calculation to increase the resolution of the signal). So let's try:
Yeah, it's not a square but a beautiful sine, meaning the AL24 filter is indeed in action. That was a true technical advantage of this filter. It increases the resolution at very low level, providing a refined digital signal signal to the DAC. We have very little noise in this test, meaning a silent "CD" player.
So my guess is that the Denon AL24 filter goes "sharp" mode with 48kHz, which is good news on my perspective.
----
Let's have a look at the multitone test that a lot of you like very much:
Besides one spike at 150Hz, which I see regularly, we get 18bits distortion-free range, nice.
----
Let's move on to the jitter test:
This trace is good, we get only very low level random noise and few spikes, worst case at -110dBr, so that is impossible to hear, very good for the era and a universal player.
----
Sorry no inter-sample overs tests since I did not have the time to create the necessary files, they would have required more time than I had, maybe in the future.
----
Other measurements (not shown):
The Dynamic range is the best that can be measured (unweighted) with 16bits.
Crosstalk is very low with my test that prevents shut down of the unsolicited channel.
Pitch error is a small -12ppm (GPSDO corrected).
This CD Player is gapless and will properly decode CDs with Pre-emphasis.
----
The below is a test I like a lot, the THD vs Frequency at -12dBFS. With older DACs, it shows their limitation in resolution:
Here it is extremely good, meaning the BurrBrown DACs generate minimum distortion.
----
As I did with the Sony CDP-597, I add a "max DAC resolution" measurement test. It is performed from a 999.91Hz sine @-12dBFS with shape dither (from Audacity). I restrict the THD+N span to 20Hz - 6kHz in REW not to account for the noise of the shape dither beyond 6kHz. I take the calculated ENOB and simply add 2bits to it (due to the -12dB attenuation, as 1bits=6dB). The potential maximum, when calculated from the digital WAV file, is 18.7bits under this test. A "transparent" DAC should achieve 18.7bits, ie 100% in this test.
Here are the results compared to others:
I was honestly expecting better than that. The limitation is the noise floor, not the distortion and it is likely to limit the performances in 24bits as well.
Overall, the performances with 16bits is near perfect. This old universal player is an ideal CD Player, and I say well done to Denon!
Measurements - Analog out 24bits/48kHz
Like I said at the beginning of this review, I got lost many times in the Audio setup. At one point I saw everything was truncated to 16bits and then I changed an option and got a higher resolution.
With that, my standard 999.91Hz @0dBFS is the below (FFT length reduced to 128k/4 averages to mimic Amir's FFTs, instead of my standard 512k/32 averages):
Oddly enough I got much more power supply leakage (50Hz and harmonics). The SINAD is near 110dB, very good for an old DVD Player! The distortion is extremely low, too bad there is that low level noise.
Denon DVD-A11 - Measurements (Analog outputs - SACD)
The low level noise is also what limits the performances with the SACD, but all channels have the exact same performances. The below is from the Denon Audio Check CD and that is a 1kHz sine tone @-16dBSACD (=-16dBFS):
Most of the distorsion is the one of the test SACD, not from the A11. We again get PS leakage but less than with 24bits PCM, and some from 60Hz leakage too (go figure).
Denon DVD-A11 - Testing the drive (from Audio CD)
What would be good measurements if the drive would not properly read a slightly scratched CD, or one that was created at the limits of the norm? The below tests reply to these questions.
Here are the results:
It is one of the best drives I’ve tested and I'm not surprised for a universal one, they tend to be quite efficient at these tests. What's the good surprise here is that this performance comes with speed too, I like it.
Denon DVD-A11 - Digital Output (from Audio CD)
Since the Denon can't read my CDR, I used the Pierre Verany's test CD to analyze the digital output. It's not as efficient as my standard tests, but still good enough to make me confident that there's no digital transformation of the PCM signal. This test CD contains only a 500Hz test tone @0dBFS, and the below in an overlay of the digital output and a rip of the same track:
The multiple spikes are the quantization (rounding) errors in 16bits, since that is an undithered test signal. The two traces overlay perfectly. This means to me no digital transformation.
It also means Denon did not go the easy way of using an ASRC to satisfy the digital copy protection requirements for SPDIF output. This player processes digital signal with multiple paths as to not modify it when it is unnecessary.
Conclusions
This is a universal Player, more than 20 years old, that achieved a good 18bits full resolution, only limited by low level noise. Mine might have had a rough life, and it could explain some power supply leakages and a bit more noise than brand new. But even as is, it is an achiever.
It is also a robust drive than can serve as a more than ideal transport, except for SACD discs (no digital output in that case).
There are better measuring universal players, such as the OPPO BDP-95, but I like to see older devices measuring very well, and this is one of them.
This big Denon is a musical device that won't negatively impact the best masters. Do we need to ask for more?
I hope you enjoyed this review and I wish you a lovely weekend!
This is a review and measurements of the Denon DVD-A11, DVD(A), SACD, CD player and transport.
Denon DVD-A11 - Presentation
The Denon DVD-A11 was available from 2004 to 2006 and was kind of the successor of the Denon DVD-A1 which I previously reviewed. That said, the A11 was almost half the price of the A1, but at 2500€ at the time, it was still a high-end DVD Player.
With 6kg less than the A1, it is still a massive universal player with nearly 13kg (28.5lbs). So, some economy of scale was in the air for Denon.
It reads all available formats of the era, adding the SACD (that the A1 did not offer) on top of CD Audio, DVD and DVD Audio. Strangely enough, the SACD logo is discrete on bottom left (but engraved), while the tray received a golden-proud DVD Audio/Video emblem, go figure.
The back of this unit is quite busy:
For the first time this Denon offered a digital video output. We also get analog multi channel outputs, lovers of multichannel DVDA and SACD were happy (and still are, I guess).
On top of some now obsolete Denon Link and IEEE1394 output, we have our still standard SPDIF Coax and optical outputs.
The Denon is also very busy on the inside:
The chassis of this unit is luxurious but nowhere close to its DVD-A1 predecessor. Besides all the Audio processing units, we get several BurrBrown DACs on my interest:
You can see two of the three BurrBrown DACs on this picture, the DSD1790 and PCM1790, which are essentially the same. As per the service guide of the Denon, the PCM1790 was used for the two main channels, while the DSD1790 was used for surround channels:
As you might have seen, the Denon features the "AL24 Processing Plus", in-house oversampling filter, that is active only with PCM signal (that excludes DSD) and for all output channels!
This universal player also decodes the HDCD discs and I'm happy that Denon went the hard way of authorizing high resolution PCM digital output, despite copy protection, as the below table shows:
Theoretically, the above makes it the ideal transport. Of course, SACD digital output were forbidden, too bad, but the internal DACs were good enough as we'll see.
User Experience
On a personal perspective, this universal player is surprisingly pleasant. The buttons don't have the luxury touch of the A1, but it's ok. The big surprise to me came from the speed of action of the drive when fed with a CDA, DVDA or SACD. It is nearly as fast as the legendary good old Sony KSS drives.
The on-screen menu is cryptic and requires to read the documentation to properly setup the audio, I got lost many times.
Other than that, I loved the fact it can play SACD stereo and multichannel with the adhoc analog outputs.
I tested SACD and DVDA commercials discs and I had no issue, including with multichannel 24/192 DVDA. But the Denon can’t read a CDR and refused to read the TOC of some of my commercial CDs too.
When a multichannel DVDA is played, it will automatically downmix to 2 channels if the related on screen menu is set accordingly. For the SACD, it is necessary to use the front panel of the Denon to select the multichannel layer or the stereo one. No downmix, as far as I understood.
And it is gapless playback with all formats, of course!
Denon DVD-A11 - Measurements (Analog outputs - CDA and DVDA)
All measurements performed with an E1DA Cosmos ADCiso (grade 0), and the Cosmos Scaler (100kohms from unbalanced input) for analog outputs, and a Motu UltraLite Mk5 for digital outputs.
For once, I won't be consistent with my usual way of reviewing CD players because the big Denon does not read CDRs. So I had to create a DVD Audio, in a rush, with few test files so I could review the performances. This was a little nightmare to learn how to do that, but my friend @Vintage02 was of great help to reduce my learning curve to a reasonable amount of time. That said, I did not have time to reproduce all my usual test files, but I have a good set of them to report the real performances of the big baby.
With the software I used to author and burn a DVDA, I was restricted to 16 or 24bits, and 48kHz/96kHz/192kHz sampling rate. So, I created two DVD Audio test discs, one at 16bits/48kHz (to compare with my usual test CD) and one at 24bits/48kHz (to get high res tests).
Let's start at 16bits.
The Denon output 2.2Vrms, a little more than the standard 2Vrms. I saw a small 0.2dB channel mismatch. The phase was non inverting and dead flat across the bandwidth.
Measurements - Analog out 16bits/48kHz
The following tests mimic my usual CD tests but at 48kHz, instead of 44.1kHz. Let's start with my standard 999.91Hz test tone @0dBFS (without dither):
Nice, we get the full resolution of the PCM 16bits with negligible distortion (-114dB). We can see some PS leakage though (50Hz and harmonics), and we get a better view of that below:
At -120dBr, we can ignore, impossible to hear, but I would have preferred not seeing them.
I forgot to add the view at -6dBFS (without dither):
The power supply leakage decreased a little, good news.
Around the second harmonic, you can see some spikes that are due to the quantization errors in the digital domain. It means that the Denon has a much higher resolution than 16bits so that we can see the mathematical rounding approximation in the digital signal.
As a matter of facts, I have calculated that with 48kHz, I should use a sine of 999.21Hz, instead of my usual 999.91Hz, because it generates a better spread of these rounding errors over the bandwidth (less repeat of identical subframes in the resulting PCM code). Thanks to the high resolution of the Denon to get me to realize it!
----
Next is the bandwidth:
It is very flat, no surprises, but my guess is that with true 44.1kHz, we would see the typical roll off at 20kHz from the Denon AL24 filter.
We can see the almost 0.2dB channel mismatch.
----
Let's have a look at the job of the oversampling filter, with a wider bandwidth:
The filter attenuates by roughly -90dB which is fair. That said it does not look like the standard AL24 filtering of Denon, and that is a surprise. Indeed, I could not find a trace of the usual trick from Denon with this filter that recognizes typical AES tests and switches to a shaper filter in that case. Here it is always a sharp filter, which I prefer, but it is not the AL24. Weird. Only testing the same with 16bits/44.1kHz could confirm if the behavior is different (I guess yes).
Another feature of the Denon filter is to increase the bit depth in real time, which means the standard 3DC test of Stereophile does not show a square signal, but a sine (due to the increased bit depth and associated calculation to increase the resolution of the signal). So let's try:
Yeah, it's not a square but a beautiful sine, meaning the AL24 filter is indeed in action. That was a true technical advantage of this filter. It increases the resolution at very low level, providing a refined digital signal signal to the DAC. We have very little noise in this test, meaning a silent "CD" player.
So my guess is that the Denon AL24 filter goes "sharp" mode with 48kHz, which is good news on my perspective.
----
Let's have a look at the multitone test that a lot of you like very much:
Besides one spike at 150Hz, which I see regularly, we get 18bits distortion-free range, nice.
----
Let's move on to the jitter test:
This trace is good, we get only very low level random noise and few spikes, worst case at -110dBr, so that is impossible to hear, very good for the era and a universal player.
----
Sorry no inter-sample overs tests since I did not have the time to create the necessary files, they would have required more time than I had, maybe in the future.
----
Other measurements (not shown):
- IMD AES-17 DFD "Analog" (18kHz & 20kHz 1:1) : -70.8dB
- IMD AES-17 DFD "Digital" (17'987Hz & 19'997Hz 1:1) : -73.7dB
- IMD AES-17 MD (41Hz & 7993Hz 4:1): -101.2dB
- IMD DIN (250Hz & 8kHz 4:1) : -91.8dB
- IMD CCIF (19kHz & 20kHz 1:1) : -72.7dB
- IMD SMPTE (60Hz & 7kHz 1:4) : -96.3dB
- IMD TDFD Bass (41Hz & 89Hz 1:1) : -120.4dB
- Dynamic Range : 98.9dB (without dither)
- Crosstalk: -124dBr (1kHz), -107dBr (10kHz)
- IMD Crosstalk: -127dBr (1kHz in one channel, 5kHz in the other, IMD components analyzed as side bands of the 5kHz test tone).
- Pitch Error : 19'996.76Hz (19'997Hz requested) ie -12ppm
- Gapless playback : Yes
- De-emphasis compliance : Yes
The Dynamic range is the best that can be measured (unweighted) with 16bits.
Crosstalk is very low with my test that prevents shut down of the unsolicited channel.
Pitch error is a small -12ppm (GPSDO corrected).
This CD Player is gapless and will properly decode CDs with Pre-emphasis.
----
The below is a test I like a lot, the THD vs Frequency at -12dBFS. With older DACs, it shows their limitation in resolution:
Here it is extremely good, meaning the BurrBrown DACs generate minimum distortion.
----
As I did with the Sony CDP-597, I add a "max DAC resolution" measurement test. It is performed from a 999.91Hz sine @-12dBFS with shape dither (from Audacity). I restrict the THD+N span to 20Hz - 6kHz in REW not to account for the noise of the shape dither beyond 6kHz. I take the calculated ENOB and simply add 2bits to it (due to the -12dB attenuation, as 1bits=6dB). The potential maximum, when calculated from the digital WAV file, is 18.7bits under this test. A "transparent" DAC should achieve 18.7bits, ie 100% in this test.
Here are the results compared to others:
| CD Player model or DAC | Calculated ENOB (999.91Hz sine @-12dBFS with shape dither, THD+N span = 20Hz - 6kHz) | Percentage of max resolution achieved (higher is better) |
| SMSL PL200 | 18.7bits | 100% |
| OPPO BDP-95 | 18.7bits | 100% |
| SMSL PS-200 (from CD player) | 18.6bits | 99.47% |
| SMLS PL20 | 18.5bits | 98.93% |
| Denon DCD-900NE | 18.5bits | 98.93% |
| Onkyo C-733 | 18bits | 96.26% |
| SMSL PL150 | 18bits | 96.26% |
| SMSL PL100 | 17.9bits | 95.72% |
| Denon DVD-A11 | 17.6bits | 94.12% |
| Sony CDP-597 | 17.5bits | 93.58% |
| Onkyo DX-7355 | 17.3bits | 92.51% |
| Denon DCD-3560 | 17.2bits | 91.98% |
| Yamaha CD-S303 | 16.8bits | 89.84% |
| Revox B-226S | 16.8bits | 89.94% |
| Accuphase DP-70 | 16.6bits | 88.77% |
| Sony CDP-337ESD | 16.6bits | 88.77% |
| Teac VRDS-25x | 16.5bits | 88.24% |
| Marantz CD-73 | 14.9bits | 79.68% |
I was honestly expecting better than that. The limitation is the noise floor, not the distortion and it is likely to limit the performances in 24bits as well.
Overall, the performances with 16bits is near perfect. This old universal player is an ideal CD Player, and I say well done to Denon!
Measurements - Analog out 24bits/48kHz
Like I said at the beginning of this review, I got lost many times in the Audio setup. At one point I saw everything was truncated to 16bits and then I changed an option and got a higher resolution.
With that, my standard 999.91Hz @0dBFS is the below (FFT length reduced to 128k/4 averages to mimic Amir's FFTs, instead of my standard 512k/32 averages):
Oddly enough I got much more power supply leakage (50Hz and harmonics). The SINAD is near 110dB, very good for an old DVD Player! The distortion is extremely low, too bad there is that low level noise.
Denon DVD-A11 - Measurements (Analog outputs - SACD)
The low level noise is also what limits the performances with the SACD, but all channels have the exact same performances. The below is from the Denon Audio Check CD and that is a 1kHz sine tone @-16dBSACD (=-16dBFS):
Most of the distorsion is the one of the test SACD, not from the A11. We again get PS leakage but less than with 24bits PCM, and some from 60Hz leakage too (go figure).
Denon DVD-A11 - Testing the drive (from Audio CD)
What would be good measurements if the drive would not properly read a slightly scratched CD, or one that was created at the limits of the norm? The below tests reply to these questions.
Here are the results:
| Test type | Technical test | Results |
| Variation of linear cutting velocity | From 1.20m/s to 1.40m/s | Pass |
| Variation of track pitch | From 1.5µm to 1.7µm | Pass |
| Combined variations of track pitch and velocity | From 1.20m/s & 1.5µm to 1.40m/s & 1.7µm | Pass |
| HF detection (asymmetry pitch/flat ratio) | Variation from 2% to 18% | Pass |
| Dropouts resistance | From 0.05mm (0.038ms) to 4mm (3.080ms) | Up to 2.5mm |
| Combined dropouts and smallest pitch | From 1.5µm & 1mm to 1.5µm & 2.4mm | Pass |
| Successive dropouts | From 2x0.1mm to 2x3mm | Up to 2.4mm |
It is one of the best drives I’ve tested and I'm not surprised for a universal one, they tend to be quite efficient at these tests. What's the good surprise here is that this performance comes with speed too, I like it.
Denon DVD-A11 - Digital Output (from Audio CD)
Since the Denon can't read my CDR, I used the Pierre Verany's test CD to analyze the digital output. It's not as efficient as my standard tests, but still good enough to make me confident that there's no digital transformation of the PCM signal. This test CD contains only a 500Hz test tone @0dBFS, and the below in an overlay of the digital output and a rip of the same track:
The multiple spikes are the quantization (rounding) errors in 16bits, since that is an undithered test signal. The two traces overlay perfectly. This means to me no digital transformation.
It also means Denon did not go the easy way of using an ASRC to satisfy the digital copy protection requirements for SPDIF output. This player processes digital signal with multiple paths as to not modify it when it is unnecessary.
Conclusions
This is a universal Player, more than 20 years old, that achieved a good 18bits full resolution, only limited by low level noise. Mine might have had a rough life, and it could explain some power supply leakages and a bit more noise than brand new. But even as is, it is an achiever.
It is also a robust drive than can serve as a more than ideal transport, except for SACD discs (no digital output in that case).
There are better measuring universal players, such as the OPPO BDP-95, but I like to see older devices measuring very well, and this is one of them.
This big Denon is a musical device that won't negatively impact the best masters. Do we need to ask for more?
I hope you enjoyed this review and I wish you a lovely weekend!
Last edited:
