JBL goes Dirac Live ready and Class-D

[SpoOokY]

Tried the EZ
View attachment 389484

WTF? Is your sub even activated?

 

[Bentail]

What made you decide to return it?

There were a number of reasons. First off, the sound is great, however my current AVR was much more robust when running in direct mode, and no room correction. I want to also mention that my older receiver, Marantz 6012 was made prior to the DAC change. It has the AKM DAC. At that point, I just could not justify the change. Since I returned the 7100, I have tried a couple of other AVRs and none have matched the JBL, MA7100 in performance. I enjoyed the crisp clear sound of the MA7100. I run Martin Logan Motion 40i fronts, and it had no problem driving those.

I have become spoiled with the convenience of HEOS built into the receiver. I control my lossless music from the computer over that along with other streaming methods. I really missed that in the JBL. There is no onscreen streaming directly from the MA7100. The upside to that is there is less chance for interference from internal electronics. Pardon my rambling.
Another reason is the one year warranty, as I mentioned in another post. As I read the posts from seasoned Audiophiles, about the new JBL AVR series, I hope that JBL realizes that their target market may have hit the wrong mark. We, seasoned audio folks, are interested also.

I am considering going back to the MA7100 as a replacement. Now that Dirac Live is available, it should be a game changer. The ez set room correction, is a throwback to HK, as it was on their last AVRs. It was ineffective then to me. I was a die-hard HK owner from the 80’s until they left the market. Thanks to KYUU, I am now waiting to hear from Amir on his test results. If it gets a Happy Panther, I am back in.

 

[fristil]

WTF? Is your sub even activated?

I think my usb-c port on phone is wanky, but it plays alot of bass. Gonna try with some other phones

 

[fristil]

With another phone

 

[SpoOokY]

With another phone
View attachment 389490

That one looks way better! BTW, with the room settings prior to the actual calibration the bass up to around 300hz gets shifted up and downwards. To the right, the actual volume gets increased forcing the correction to lower bass, to the left the opposite. Not very self-explanatory but once you have fiddled around with it you begin to get the point.

 

[tusc]

@tusc @SpoOokY @fristil Any of you willing to pop yours open and get some pics of the internals where we can read what's printed on the chips?

@kyuu I’ll consider it after I pass the return period.

 

[tusc]

I have become spoiled with the convenience of HEOS built into the receiver. I control my lossless music from the computer over that along with other streaming methods. I really missed that in the JBL. There is no onscreen streaming directly from the MA7100. The upside to that is there is less chance for interference from internal electronics. Pardon my rambling.
Another reason is the one year warranty, as I mentioned in another post. As I read the posts from seasoned Audiophiles, about the new JBL AVR series, I hope that JBL realizes that their target market may have hit the wrong mark. We, seasoned audio folks, are interested also.

Appreciate the review!

Not sure if you saw my post from one page back about playing lossless music (local) from your computer: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...rac-live-ready-and-class-d.55462/post-2069680 . You can do this with LMS, JRIver, and other solutions if you don't want to use Roon. Granted, you can't start streaming from the receiver, but you can from your phone or computer.

I agree the one year warranty is short but hope there's less chance of failure given that it's a class D amp with less heat generated.

 

[SpoOokY]

Appreciate the review!

Not sure if you saw my post from one page back about playing lossless music (local) from your computer: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...rac-live-ready-and-class-d.55462/post-2069680 . You can do this with LMS, JRIver, and other solutions if you don't want to use Roon. Granted, you can't start streaming from the receiver, but you can from your phone or computer.

I agree the one year warranty is short but hope there's less chance of failure given that it's a class D amp with less heat generated.

Well, this thing gets pretty hot. It could be the HDMI section but the top cover is pretty hot even during normal living room volumes.

 

[NOAMattD]

How hot? Normal hot, Thai hot, or Denon hot?

If you're up for a little scienceing, grab a probe)meat thermometer and lay it up there for a few minutes while putting it through its paces & report back.

 

[kyuu]

How hot? Normal hot, Thai hot, or Denon hot?

If you're up for a little scienceing, grab a probe)meat thermometer and lay it up there for a few minutes while putting it through its paces & report back.

A meat thermometer? Doesn't everyone have a FLIR camera laying around?

 

[tusc]

Well, this thing gets pretty hot. It could be the HDMI section but the top cover is pretty hot even during normal living room volumes.

Well, this accessory might come in handy if you are installing the AVR in a cabinet with limited air flow. I bought it for my older receiver but not sure if I'll need for the JBL. I have a lot of clearance on top for air flow. I just put it on today so will report back what temperatures I see after a couple of hours of use. It's in a cool basement in the midwest so might not be the same scenario as others (note the ambient temp of 72F).

If it's the HDMI section, will it still heat up if you're just streaming music and no video is being processed?

AIRCOM T10, AV Receiver Cooling Fan with LCD Temp Controller, 17" Front Exhaust

Your source to create smart growing systems with components including advance grow tents, inline fans, clip-on fans, LED grow lights, and UIS™ controllers.

acinfinity.com

 

[Bentail]

Appreciate the review!

Not sure if you saw my post from one page back about playing lossless music (local) from your computer: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...rac-live-ready-and-class-d.55462/post-2069680 . You can do this with LMS, JRIver, and other solutions if you don't want to use Roon. Granted, you can't start streaming from the receiver, but you can from your phone or computer.

I agree the one year warranty is short but hope there's less chance of failure given that it's a class D amp with less heat generated.

I used a variation of Chromecast to play music from my computer to the 7100 via an IPad. It sounded great. I just found it cumbersome. I will just have to get used to it.

 

[NOAMattD]

Well, this accessory might come in handy if you are installing the AVR in a cabinet with limited air flow. I bought it for my older receiver but not sure if I'll need for the JBL. I have a lot of clearance on top for air flow. I just put it on today so will report back what temperatures I see after a couple of hours of use. It's in a cool basement in the midwest so might not be the same scenario as others (note the ambient temp of 72F).

If it's the HDMI section, will it still heat up if you're just streaming music and no video is being processed?

AIRCOM T10, AV Receiver Cooling Fan with LCD Temp Controller, 17" Front Exhaust

Your source to create smart growing systems with components including advance grow tents, inline fans, clip-on fans, LED grow lights, and UIS™ controllers.

acinfinity.com

View attachment 389528

So is 72 what it's detecting from the unit and 83 is when it turns on? Because that's ridiculously cool. Even if it's measuring 83 from the unit that's still very low.

 

[tusc]

So is 72 what it's detecting from the unit and 83 is when it turns on? Because that's ridiculously cool. Even if it's measuring 83 from the unit that's still very low.

That’s after just turning on the receiver. Let me get back to you after watching a movie.

 

[GXAlan]

Unless you define "fine" as "the bare minimum that does the job", this is not true in most cases. You can't EQ nulls, at least not properly.

Agree. I would put it in the category of upfiring Atmos speakers. A lot of people criticize it, but a lot of critics haven’t tried it on their own home and truly done a comparison of bed layer only versus bed layer plus height.

Going to subs. You can try to reduce nulls by moving your sub, again because you only need to optimize for a single position. Even dual, non independent subs will go a long way of “fine”.

You can always miniDSP/MSO as well.

If as a community we are too pedantic about maximum performance, it may discourage those from entering the hobby.

We want to protect consumers from outright bad choices like those 2000W PMPO desktop speakers. But if you say that a single nice sub like a RSL 12 or Neumann Kh750 will be “bare minimum” it’s a bit discouraging.

 

[tusc]

So is 72 what it's detecting from the unit and 83 is when it turns on? Because that's ridiculously cool. Even if it's measuring 83 from the unit that's still very low.

It never went above 83 tonight. With the movie paused in a quiet room you can barely hear the fan.

 

[SpoOokY]

How hot? Normal hot, Thai hot, or Denon hot?

If you're up for a little scienceing, grab a probe)meat thermometer and lay it up there for a few minutes while putting it through its paces & report back.

Sorry, don‘t have the equipment for that. But it certainly gets hotter than my T758v3 after watching a movie at high volumes. Probably I should try sticking my ATV 4K into a 4K instead HDMI1 which is a 8K input. Maybe that disables the 8K chipset…

Above that, still extremely satisfied. No issues at all so far and with the sub set to always-on everything just works. This is such a nice and great sounding AVR. Even the Denon 3800 from a friend of mine has more issues after more than a year on the market. Well done, JBL!

 

[pogo]

In terms of sound, the X3800 won't be able to hold a candle to the JBL. Perhaps you can make a comparison on a simple 2.0 setup without tone controls and other sound corrections.

 

[SpoOokY]

In terms of sound, the X3800 won't be able to hold a candle to the JBL. Perhaps you can make a comparison on a simple 2.0 setup without tone controls and other sound corrections.

That is also my expectation. Testing it won’t be that easy as the friend of mine lives 600km away from me . And he has a completely different system in a very, very difficult room with a lot of nulls and peaks. Sounds rather bad at his place. Even a 2.000 watts PMPO amp would not mean a sacrifice in sound quality I recon ;D.

 

[jaakkopetteri]

Going to subs. You can try to reduce nulls by moving your sub, again because you only need to optimize for a single position.

Having a single position doesn't reduce the amount of nulls. You might find an ok compromise where no null is completely excited, but they are still there

If as a community we are too pedantic about maximum performance, it may discourage those from entering the hobby.

I wasn't being pedantic at all. I'm just saying that nulls are a huge detriment and a second sub is often WAY more important than height speakers. I'm not saying you can't get a good setup without multiple subs, just that people don't really have their priorities straight.

If a manufacturer would release speakers with a sharp 12dB drop around 100Hz for example, everyone would gasp here saying it's a fundamentally flawed speaker that doesn't make any sense. When a room however causes it, people go "meh, just try some EQ, no big deal"

We want to protect consumers from outright bad choices like those 2000W PMPO desktop speakers. But if you say that a single nice sub like a RSL 12 or Neumann Kh750 will be “bare minimum” it’s a bit discouraging.

I never mentioned anything about RSL or Neumann. Why would you resort to strawman arguments like this?
I would personally much rather have two generic subs from Polk, for example, than a single "best" subwoofer. For people with more need for output, that might not be as viable