Separates are rare because it adds another layer of complexity that the average joe doesn't care to introduce! Many of us here may be the "tech support" at home so we are handier than most but the general crowd skews more towards the Costco home theater in a box simplicity!
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JBL MA7100HP AV Receiver Review
- Thread starter amirm
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I'm the tech support and I still don't care to have a large number of separate boxes for my audio setup. Just because I can deal with it doesn't mean I want to deal with it.
The reason for pre-outs are not just to be able to add more boxes. It also let’s you connect active speakers.
Disappointing. I really don't understand why JBL spent the money to include a phono section when (a) I assume only a small percentage of users will hook up a turntable, and (b) decent and even excellent external phono preamps are now readily available at very reasonable prices. If only they had directed those resources to delivering higher performance in this AVR's primary functions...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 think the white looks better than the black, and I hate the JBL logo with no “white space” around it.
But it’s definitely playful
Volume says “safe to turn beyond 11”
And that slim appearance looks more modern than a lot of mainstream AVRs.
Compare it to Onkyo, Pioneer, Denon…
Of course, there is no comparison to vintage “built to last” aesthetics, but at least among modern <$1500 AVRs, pretty hard to find something nicer. The entry level models are just $600!
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Well $400 if you include the MA310. Which is playing in the same space as far as amplifier power and lack of HDMI 2.1 as the $1300 Anthem MRX SLM you mentioned above.
Well, I think that’s a good sign? If most people say it’s neutral or pleasant looking, and a minority thinks it’s looks cheap (in comparison to…?), it means they have some their job.
Hopefully this pushes other companies to start to get more creative with their designs and layouts.
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Well aesthetics are subjective, no way around it. I definitely think it looks much better than the current standard of Denon/Onkyo/Pioneer/Sony/Yamaha models.
Some of the complaints are weird, though. The underlighting? The color can be changed or turned off if it's not your thing (mine will probably be doing purple). I think restorer-john said something about the knobs being different sizes? You mean, like how almost all AVRs use different sized knobs for the input selector versus the volume control? I think Marantz is the only real exception with their three-circles-of-the-same-size aesthetic if you include the tiny porthole screen.
as far as I'm concerned, I'm not picky about performance when it comes to AVRs.
Often the audio, or rather the source, of my TV and my decoder are just sufficient, so I don't expect the performance of devices from a stereo audio system in a dedicated room that I want for my critical listening.
The important thing for me is that it is easy and convenient to set up (I have two Thetas and a Halcro SSP, old, practically used as ornaments because they are so complicated) and that it can have the modern connections that are used nowadays.
For the rest, it's fine like this, in fact, its appearance seems nice and tidy to me, far from the plastic devices with a thousand buttons that we normally see on AVRs, so for a living room and a "discrete" system it's fine.
Thanks Amir for the time and the test!
Often the audio, or rather the source, of my TV and my decoder are just sufficient, so I don't expect the performance of devices from a stereo audio system in a dedicated room that I want for my critical listening.
The important thing for me is that it is easy and convenient to set up (I have two Thetas and a Halcro SSP, old, practically used as ornaments because they are so complicated) and that it can have the modern connections that are used nowadays.
For the rest, it's fine like this, in fact, its appearance seems nice and tidy to me, far from the plastic devices with a thousand buttons that we normally see on AVRs, so for a living room and a "discrete" system it's fine.
Thanks Amir for the time and the test!
Agreed. Is it beautiful? Not really. In an absolute sense, no. In terms of aesthetics, if you are going for “modern”, these are all nicer looking
But within the price point and feature set, the JBL does a good job with aesthetics.
Waxx
Major Contributor
This could easely be better for minor extra costs i think. But it's not really bad neighter compared to what is sold at that priccbracket. But from a brand like JBL (and the Harman group) i would expect better.
The looks is great, i don't like the orange part of the display, but that is a minor issue. But i'm not into AV setups, so not for me anyway...
The looks is great, i don't like the orange part of the display, but that is a minor issue. But i'm not into AV setups, so not for me anyway...
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Wouldn't agree about that TAD box. Not attractive to my eyes. The Marantz looks nice, if a bit gaudy with the color. The Steinway box is pretty plain and just "fine" IMO. What the heck kinda electronic boxes is Steinway putting out, anyway?
I hope JBL comes out with a newer "high end" version for maybe $2500. They don;t need any more than 100 watts 8 ohm and 200/4 ohm, but if they can get those distortion numbers up to at least around 85 they would have a clear winner. Is that possible? Heck if I know. Maybe it would take $4000 to do it. But that defeats the "good for most people" price of the current version. I wish we had a JBL engineer on here who could give us some insight into how hard it is to get better performance. Many times it is harder than we imagine. But, I don't know any JBL engineers......oh well.
OP
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That's really cute and imaginative! Likely from the same great industrial designer.
Sokel
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It's actually steinway-lyngdorf (the purifi guy)
Yeah, eye in the beholder. The TAD is supposed to highlight the idea of dual mono. Emphasis on the technicality versus the aesthetics but very modern Grand Seiko/Japanese precision perspective rather than the romantic. The Marantz champagne is what I like even though people like black in the US.
Steinway Lyngdorf produces pretty great home theater and stereo products. They are the modern day closed system approach. Steinway Lyngdorf the premium version of Lyngdorf. While the baseline Lyngdorf stuff tested here hasn’t stood out, they are pioneers of room correction, investors in Purifi, etc.
It’s been around since 2005. Besides the name, I believe Steinway does finish the cabinets. The priority was dynamics and reproducing the sound of the Steinway Model D.
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