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JBL MA7100HP AV Receiver Review
- Thread starter amirm
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@amirm , if firmware can only be updated via USB, what is the ethernet connection for?!!!
Also (per manual): can play from Spotify, Tidal; is Airplay, Chromecast, Roon ready; supports Smart Things & Crestron integration and exposes an IP control interface. Quite capable and open if everything works as intended.
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Yeah we were using a pic of the 510 because the video board on the 710 and up entirely covers the board with the amp, dac and other bits we want to see.
When I get it back from Amir, I'll have some time before I have any need to press it into service. So I'll probably open it up and take some pics of the innards. If it's not too much trouble, I might even see if I can peek under the heatsinks. And hey, at least JBL used some decent heatsinks instead of that spring metal that everyone else uses in AVRs of this price class.
Not there, not yet. Pass on AVRs, considering how stellar recent amplifiers and DACs have become for a few hundreds. Thank you Amir for a wonderful review!
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Yeah, stand-alone amps and DACs don't do a great job of decoding Dolby/DTS soundtracks or handling all the video input/output I need unfortunately. I'd need 2 stereo amps plus monoblock just for my basic 5.1 system, and I'd already be at the cost of this AVR even with today's great performance per dollar ratio. Then I'd still need a pre/pro, which would cost at least twice what this AVR costs and aren't known for their amazing DAC performance anyways. Then the mess of cabling to connect them all...
AVRs just make sense for a living room setup for most people.
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True. Still, I am not convinced of the quality of most 5.1 or 7.1 soundtracks on movies, and I chose 2.1 after experimenting with 5.1 for a few years with ProAc speakers and NAD preamp/decoder and S250 power amp. The 5.1 mix often did sound artificial and unpleasant.
This makes me wish we had a voting option in between 'poor' and 'not terrible'.
The RZ50 is interesting at the current price of $800. As a preamp, it might be better but with all processing turned on, the SINAD is no better.
The big difference is clipping and power. That matters much more than SINAD (just look at tubes). That’s where the JBL actually shines.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
Scratch that. The picture above is for a different unit. This one has more channels.
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Also supports UPnP.
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That's a bit unfair. These results are soundly in typical AVR terroritory, and actually a bit better in many respects than most of the Onkyo/Pioneer competition. And it doesn't have undocumented power limiting modes. Or compare it to NAD's more expensive attempts at the AVR category. We were really just hoping these would be pushing the category upwards in performance rather than just being more of the same but with a nice aesthetic and class D amps. It's still certainly above soundbar territory.
And Wiim doesn't really compete in this category (rather wish they did, could probably build a killer AVR for a reasonable price). If I was just setting up a 2.0 or 2.1 system for music, a Wiim Amp or Wiim Pro/Ultra plus standalone stereo amp would absolutely be at the top of the list.
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Dang, they got the looks down.Conclusions
JBL has made massive strides in look and feel of the MA7100HP leaving its competition -- including its own -- in the dust. It is absolutely gorgeous to look at and for the most part, to use. Their target was lower performance levels and sadly, that is what they deliver. Performance is not terrible but nothing an enthusiast can get excited over. I hope they take this outside design and upgrade the internals at least one step. Then they would have a winner on their hand. As it is, I would use this AVR in a living room where looks are very important.
It is with heavy heart that I can't recommend the JBL MA7100HP AVR. Its beauty is sadly skin deep.
Then dropped the ball.
I am severely disappointed by this.
On the other hand, it is inexpensive as far as AVR's go.
Proof again of:
While you 'may' not get what you pay for, you are 'highly not likely' to get what you don't pay for.
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The MA series receivers appear to have replaced the SDR-35 and SDR-38 in the JBL line-up. The SDR-35 got quite a pasting in these pages (63% "poor") largely because the line output distorted below 2V. Taken end-to-end, it was the fourth best AVR ever tested, as you can see in the comparison chart right above. The MA7100 might have an SMPS and class D amplifier and is rather cheaper, but it performs much worse in so many ways, yet it's only 37% "poor". Is this what we come to expect from AVRs these days?This is a review and detailed measurements of the JBL MA7100HP 7.2/5.2.2 home theater AVR with support for 8K over HDMI. It was kindly drop shipped by a member and costs US $1,200.
View attachment 394132
The industrial design is absolutely stunning! JBL goes from mundane to top of the heap with a massive gap between it and #2! The front has sheet of glass (or is it plastic?) and is even lit with orange color that shines below. Unlike models below it, it has a large color display. It is easy to use but it does have some problem. The input control spins faster than the graphics can keep up. It is usable but either having a stiffer input selector or faster CPU response would have been nice. Volume level sadly is tiny as you see. There is plenty of space for it to be much, much larger.
Another annoying thing is that it applies processing to the inputs to convert to surround. You can defeat this but as soon as you power cycle it, it goes back to default! Many times I would get no sound, only to realize it had gone from "Native" back to the surround mode.
I always upgrade the firmware before testing these devices. To my disappointed, even though the unit was on the network, it only gave me the option of USB firmware upgrade! I could not believe it but went about my business. About 10 minutes later, I look at the display and it is downloading an update and proceeding to reboot and such! All on its own. Worse yet, the upgrade takes a long time, probably 15 to 25 minutes. Pretty bad experience for a first time user who might get the family around the new gear, start playing a movie and have it go through this cycle unannounced.
The OSD (on screen display) is primitive black and white in low resolution but doesn't matter as it is just duplicating what is on the front panel. There are not that many settings to mess with which is fine with me.
The back side shows simplicity as it should be in a modern AVR:
View attachment 394134
Few need more inputs than this. We get ease of connectivity as you don't have spend time reading the labels in the back and possibly hooking up things to the wrong jacks. They could have done away with Zone 2 as well as in this day and age, people are not relying on that for sound in other rooms. Notice the pretty white remote.
Another major deviation here is use of both switching power supply and class D amplification. As a result, while not paper light, the MA7100 weighs much less than typical AVR.
Dirac room EQ is optional which is nice to have. Note that I have heard that two sub outputs are connected to each other and not independent.
NOTE: I am founder of Madrona Digital which in its custom integration business (non-retail) is a dealer for Harman products which includes JBL line (although I am not sure if we can source this specific line). Please keep this in mind as you read my subjective comments.
Due to lack of pre-out, I focused on testing the unit as all in one with speaker output as the sole means of measuring the output.
JBL MA7100HP AVR Measurements
I couldn't wait to bring up the dashboard to see how the unit performs:
View attachment 394137
While not horrible, this is below average for all amplifiers tested and AVRs for that matter:
View attachment 394138
The lackluster performance is due to both noise and distortion. You can see the contributions from the former:
View attachment 394140
We can't even do 16 bit dynamic range (96 dB) at max power?
Multitone test shows the contributions on distortion front:
View attachment 394142
And noise with elevated floor of the graph.
Frequency response test shows multiple things:
View attachment 394143
We see the classic roll off at 4 ohm due to load dependency of Class D amplifier design in the unit. It also shows a sharp cut off, indicating that input is always resampled to 44.1 or 48 kHz. This "helps" reduce the frequency dependency as it truncates the continued potential peaking at 8 ohm. Analog input is likewise digitized to same manner.
There is healthy amount of power:
View attachment 394145
Comparing to its higher-end sibling (Arcam), there is no noise but also earlier rise in distortion.
The amplifier has internal limiter, not allowing it to clip. You can keep cranking up the volume and it doesn't matter. Because of this, the max power is the same as what we see above, more or less:
View attachment 394148
I have a new measurement for you that kind of follows FTC rule. I measure max power at 1% at 1 kHz, and then sweep 20 kHz to 20 Hz to see if the amplifier can maintain that:
View attachment 394149
As you see, the amplifier went into protection at 63 Hz. I was surprised at this since at 1 kHz, it was very robust. While not much of a problem in practice, in testing with dummy load the amplifier created mechanical noise corresponding to input signal that was the loudest I have heard. Even wearing IEMs at 1 meter I could hear it singing! In real use the sound coming out of the speaker would mask it but still, this is excessive. While some switching amplifiers do this, they usually do it at or near max power. The JBL did this even at 5 watts from what I call (of course not as loud).
We have good bit of power at 8 ohm:
View attachment 394151
Spec is 125 watts which likely includes a bit of clipping I excluded.
The high level of noise masks some levels of distortion leaving us with a picture that is still not something to be super proud of:
View attachment 394152
Amplifier was stable on power up:
View attachment 394153
The top of the enclosure is far from the heatsinks so you can't judge the internal temperature by touching it (which was just warm). So let's peer into it using our thermal camera:
View attachment 394155
20 degree rise is not bad given how much I pushed the AVR during testing.
JBL MA7100HP Phono Stage Measurements
Here is the dashboard but please keep in mind that I normally don't include an amplifier for phono stage testing:
View attachment 394156
Looking at right side of the signal in FFT, we see flattening of the curve indicating that the amplifier is adding noise to phono stage. Wonderful showing in frequency response test though:
View attachment 394157
Conclusions
JBL has made massive strides in look and feel of the MA7100HP leaving its competition -- including its own -- in the dust. It is absolutely gorgeous to look at and for the most part, to use. Their target was lower performance levels and sadly, that is what they deliver. Performance is not terrible but nothing an enthusiast can get excited over. I hope they take this outside design and upgrade the internals at least one step. Then they would have a winner on their hand. As it is, I would use this AVR in a living room where looks are very important.
It is with heavy heart that I can't recommend the JBL MA7100HP AVR. Its beauty is sadly skin deep.
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I almost bought one a month ago. There was a sale on centers and surrounds for my TV-room speakers. I thought about moving to a 5.0 or 5.1 setup. I really liked the look of the receiver and it is not that expensive. I decided to wait for a review with measurements as I had a suspicion it would not perform near what is easily possible in 2024. I hope they can do better in the next revision.
DSJR
Major Contributor
I disagree...
Would this device be used by two-channel music lovers? No, I don't think it would!
Devil's advocate reasoning below -
Research has shown, I gather, that once visuals are introduced, our brains use 70% or so of our processing on the picture and NOT the sound. There's plenty of power here by the looks of things, the phono stage isn't a total disaster (would people *really* have a record player with a box like this?) but could easily be left out, as many not expensive players have the RIAA stage built in these days.
For the AV task at hand, I think it's great, with more than acceptable performance once the video side is in use and nice and seemingly simple-looking layout inside, relatively speaking, compared to the mess of boards, wires, ribbon connectors and so on of other AV amps.
So no, not 'junk' at all in any sense, as it's for AV use, just not for audio-gear-hobbyists.
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For the inside crowd in the audio world, this is not very impressive.
However, for the average civilian, with regular middle-of-the-road speakers, this is perfectly acceptable performance. (This device won't be the limiting factor for fidelity..)
For me this is some sense also a form of good engineering: balancing real-world requirements at an acceptable price level. (I can tell you this is often more challenging than over-engineering things with a ballooning budget)
However, for the average civilian, with regular middle-of-the-road speakers, this is perfectly acceptable performance. (This device won't be the limiting factor for fidelity..)
For me this is some sense also a form of good engineering: balancing real-world requirements at an acceptable price level. (I can tell you this is often more challenging than over-engineering things with a ballooning budget
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