I currently own the Denon 3800H which has sufficient power for my quite transparent speakers. As you seem to know a lot more than me, could I bother you to take a peak at the review of amir and see if you agree that moving up in the range of denon and marantz is not usefull for a SQ piont of view?
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
Understand if you don't have time, but I would be most thankfull if you do and will send you a big load of karma and thanks! ; )
As I mentioned before, when the gap is that small, you need to dig deeper into the details, instead of just looking at the SINAD number as just one point. So in order to get a more accurate answer to your question, the
minimum info required would include the following:
- Your speaker's specs that include sensitivity, impedance/phase angle characteristics.
- Your maximum spl (peak) requirements at your listening distance.
- Listening distance.
That's assuming you will not be using external amp, since you are only considering the SINAD of the AVR-X3800H's 87 dB or so, that is measured at the binding posts.
That way, you will know the likely range of the pre out voltage and will therefore know the SINAD range you can expect.
I know people are concerned more about noise, not so much distortion, still, SINAD is likely enough info because a) it is most likely not all noise, and b) even if the SINAD is completely dominated by noise, unless your room is really quiet, -87 dB is most likely not going to be an audible issue when listening even nearfield, say 2 meters from speakers and even during the quietest passage of music or movie tracks, even -75 dB should be fine, I would worry more if it drops to below 70 dB.
Here's an example of how/why you have to look deeper into the details:
The 87 dB is for about 2.0 V level, if in your application the pre out voltage range is mostly between 0.3 V and 1.25 V, SINAD would be about 90 dB, and if it stays below 0.8 V, it could be as good as 92-93 dB.
I listen from about 11 ft, and my pre out voltage never get close to 1 V, rarely above 0.5 V even during the highest peaks but obviously you have to figure what your maximum requirement is, that's why I would need the info listed above.
As they say, people don't realize how little power they need, or people don't realize how often their amps would clip, in real world use. Both can be true.
Keep in mind that D+M AVRs gain are about 29 dB, so at pre out voltage 1.2 V, the AVR's output would be about 143 W into 8 ohms, or 286 W into 4 ohms, the power amp at that point will be clipping anyway.
So really, regardless of the info requirements I listed above, you should focus on SINAD at pre out voltage below 1.2 V, and SINAD at that point is not 87 dB, but about 91 dB.
That said, people will say things like, that's based on the 1 kHz test frequency, how about at higher frequencies? In that case, you would look carefully on the appropriate curve and pay attention to SINAD when the test frequency is 5 kHz. I wouldn't worry much about test frequency higher than 5 kHz because the harmonics will be at frequencies approaching the inaudible range for humans.
Again, this is just one example of the more detailed analysis required, before your question can be answered with reasonable accuracy and relevancy, and that's because the gap you specified in your original post is small. If it is the SR8015, then I would say yes the power amp section will be the bottleneck, without going through the details, because the gap is just so big, that answer to the same question would be obvious enough.
