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JBL SDP-55 Audio/Video Processor Review

Noah Katz

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So sad that the "budget" category processors (Emotiva, Monoprice) are leading the class in performance - with performance that isn't stellar by any stretch at that. :confused:


IMO people are missing the forest for the trees.

The *measured* performance may be disappointing, but pretty much everyone who has the Monoprice and JBL/Arcam processors are extremely happy with the sound quality.
 

jhaider

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My question is how many buyers actually use 16 channels? As I've said before, give me clean, well engineered, industry leading 5.x channels and you'll have at least one new buyer.

With DLBC, a 7.1.4 channel system with 4 subwoofers will use 15 channels from the AVP.
A 5.1 channel system with 4 subs will use 9 channels.
 

Rja4000

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digicidal

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My question is how many buyers actually use 16 channels? As I've said before, give me clean, well engineered, industry leading 5.x channels and you'll have at least one new buyer.
At least 3... because I'd buy two of them. Actually, I'd love a nice 2.2 with Dirac for REQ and HDMI switching with minimal AV decoding, processing outside the room correction.

I've strongly considered the Bryston BDA 3.14 for this - unfortunately, by the time you add in something for REQ... you're already over the cost of both the HTP-1 or the XMC/RMC by a bit. So in that regard, better to just not use the extra channels and have everything in one box.

IMO people are missing the forest for the trees.

The *measured* performance may be disappointing, but pretty much everyone who has the Monoprice and JBL/Arcam processors are extremely happy with the sound quality.
Correct, I wasn't so much referring to the audio performance itself... more the performance of the unit and all functionality (UI, processing, etc).
I work in IT - so I've done many, many firmware updates over the past 25 years or so. What's baffling to me is how I can push a firmware update remotely over IPMI to an enterprise server with 100's of sensors, controllers, etc. - and not have more than a handful of scary moments (and zero bricked servers) in all that time. Either AV processing is truly rocket science (which I don't believe) or it's simply a case of the end users accepting a level of incompetence from manufacturers that would send them to bankruptcy in a different field. I firmly believe it's the latter case.
 

Vasr

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I completely agree with this, although if there is a defense to be made for Amir's selection on that one... it's that there weren't enough samples available at the time to easily conclude that it actually was a relatively great performer in it's class. No matter how much you see the diminishing returns of price and/or brand identity, it's still easy to tell yourself "surely you get something better for twice the price..." The reality seems to almost be the complete opposite in fact.

True, but having set that standard scale earlier, what in this unit justifies the second "participation award" panther when it doesn't appear to better the HTP-1 in any way. Quite worse in many aspects, in fact compared to something cheaper.

I am not going to push this inconsistency any more because it will start to look like a criticism of Amir and the potential circling of wagons will derail the thread. :) But there is an issue that somehow needs to be addressed in the subjective part of the review.
 
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Francis Vaughan

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The *measured* performance may be disappointing, but pretty much everyone who has the Monoprice and JBL/Arcam processors are extremely happy with the sound quality.
One suspects that the elephant in the room for home theatre is that for the most part the source material is way worse in quality than these AVRs. Movies do not aspire to ultimate audio quality. They have a very different remit. Moreover, most people only ever watch most movies once. Everyone has some favourites, but even then, the number of times they are watched is way lower than a favourite piece of music is listened to. People are just not as critical of movies. The experience in most commercial theatres is poor, and altogether too much in the way of modern movie sound is geared towards spectacle, not quality. This is a low bar for an AVR.
Now if you want, or expect, a high quality musical experience from your AVR, things have a long way to go. On just about every front. So far HT technology has made little useful progress in helping us recieve a quality immersive musical experience. Which is a great shame.
 

Vovgan

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I have the opposite impression: the multi-channel sound tracks in recent movies / animes are fantastic. Take Moanna & Coco by Disney, for example, this is sound engineering par excellence. Not on the compressed stream, but on 4K disk. They sound on my Denon 6500 way better than any Hi-Rez stream from Amazon HD routed via Chord Qutest, and by better I probably mean this extra immersiveness that extra channels give you.
 
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Vasr

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One suspects that the elephant in the room for home theatre is that for the most part the source material is way worse in quality than these AVRs. Movies do not aspire to ultimate audio quality. They have a very different remit. Moreover, most people only ever watch most movies once. Everyone has some favourites, but even then, the number of times they are watched is way lower than a favourite piece of music is listened to. People are just not as critical of movies. The experience in most commercial theatres is poor, and altogether too much in the way of modern movie sound is geared towards spectacle, not quality. This is a low bar for an AVR.

This is just "audiosplaining" at its worst. It is like men who have to mansplain to women as to what the latter like or aspire to. :rolleyes:

I wish people who had no serious experience with setting up HT in their homes or were serious fans of movies in home theater (not equating this to just people who have dedicated movie rooms etc) or movies would restrain from explaining what home theater fans like or don't like or what is important. None of the above has been true since the days after DVDs.

Never mind the ridiculous assertion that your expectation of what something should sound like is dependent on how many times you listen to it or watch it.

The worst post I have read since I have been here.
 

digicidal

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I have the opposite impression: the multi-channel sound tracks on recent movies / animes is fantastic. Take Moanna & Coco by Disney, for example, this is sound engineering par excellence. Not on the compressed stream, but on 4K disk. They sound on my Denon 6500 way better than any Hi-Rez stream from Amazon HD routed via Chord Qutest, and by better I probably mean this extra immersiveness that extra channels give you.

Well that correlates with Toole's (and others) research and commentary regarding multichannel. Where I think the problem lies is that (at least with most systems I've heard) matrix processing of a stereo source is quite a different animal than sources which were mastered as separate channels to begin with. Although I think many of us are lucky enough to have multiple systems where one can enjoy both in their most optimal (within reason I suppose) settings - the holy grail would be a single system and expense which provided the very best experience regardless of the number of channels present in the source.

Now we just have to figure out how to get the companies to produce the thing that will eliminate any need/desire for future purchases from them - which is basically impossible. Even if such a thing were possible, it would never be allowed to leave the engineering lab (likely all samples would be destroyed and an iron-clad gag order issued against the engineers involved).

One suspects that the elephant in the room for home theatre is that for the most part the source material is way worse in quality than these AVRs. Movies do not aspire to ultimate audio quality. They have a very different remit. Moreover, most people only ever watch most movies once. Everyone has some favourites, but even then, the number of times they are watched is way lower than a favourite piece of music is listened to. People are just not as critical of movies. The experience in most commercial theatres is poor, and altogether too much in the way of modern movie sound is geared towards spectacle, not quality. This is a low bar for an AVR.
Now if you want, or expect, a high quality musical experience from your AVR, things have a long way to go. On just about every front. So far HT technology has made little useful progress in helping us recieve a quality immersive musical experience. Which is a great shame.

While I would agree with the listening frequency aspect of your position - I would strongly disagree with the rest. In general cinema audio (especially recent HD & 4K productions) are engineered to a much higher level than music... in every aspect. There is more dynamic range - both used and available via the media itself naturally, but there is also a greater "quest for excellence" in my opinion which is often lacking in music production.

Certainly there are exceptions in either case (great 2ch recordings and horrible MCH soundtracks) but I do not think they are representative of the mean either. If for no other reason that the original source recordings are almost always SOTA for movies and often legacy masters for music invalidates the other side. Whether listened to once or dozens of times... our auditory memory is too short for that to make all that much of a difference - while the quality of the recording and mastering devices (and processes) most certainly does make a difference.

Though I would also agree that AVR manufacturers could do much better than they have, I don't think that is because HT users care less on the whole than anyone else... they simply have no other choices at the moment unless their budgets are well in the 5-figure range.
 
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Francis Vaughan

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The worst post I have read since I have been here.
Why thank you.
I think you really missed my point. All of them. Don’t assume I don’t know about setting up a dedicated home theatre or have not done so.
Im not talking about what home theatre enthusiasts aspire to. I’m talking about what movie producers aspire to. And commercial theatre aspire to. They are the limiting case.
 

Francis Vaughan

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There is more dynamic range - both used and available via the media itself naturally, but there is also a greater "quest for excellence" in my opinion which is often lacking in music production.
I don’t dispute there is a quest for excellence in movie production. I am always amazed by the extraordinary levels of dedication and technical ability one sees. But they are directed at a different goal. Massive dynamic range is fine, but isn’t an end goal. Nor does it guarantee a reasonable final distortion free result. For music the dynamic range is what is natural. It can be huge, and live music can have extraordinary dynamic range. Usually never captured in available recordings
I attend a lot of live music. Even under lockdown two concerts this weekend. In a few minutes a world class string quartet in one of the best venues in existence for chamber music. There is no sound system on the planet that can get close. Still.
My point is that movie production technology is not directed at this, and other immersive technologies that might have helped have been stillborn.
This leaves a gap in requirements for AVRs.
 

jhaider

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One suspects that the elephant in the room for home theatre is that for the most part the source material is way worse in quality than these AVRs.

I don't think that's true. However, music is audio-only, but with movies sight dominates. So in that respect I see your general point.

Now if you want, or expect, a high quality musical experience from your AVR, things have a long way to go.

In practice, most AVR/Ps will actually provide a higher quality musical experience from a given program than most elite 2-channel electronics. The reasons are bass management and room correction. Those benefits matter more for realism, envelopment, and spaciousness than numbers on a SINAD chart. There are exceptions in expensive two channel, such as Lyngdorf, but they just that: exceptions.
 

Sancus

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One suspects that the elephant in the room for home theatre is that for the most part the source material is way worse in quality than these AVRs. Movies do not aspire to ultimate audio quality.

What are you talking about? The surround mixes of music in many films shame their own soundtracks because stereo can never be as good as surround no matter how it is produced.

The highest quality music releases available anywhere are Blurays with Atmos/Auro3D recordings such as those produced by Morten Lindberg's 2L(whether or not you enjoy the genre, the recording and production is unmatched).
 

ririt

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It seems that Denon did a much better job to design their AVR that Arcam/JBL with their extremely expensive processors. It sounds like the Dirac is the main marketing value proposition of the JBL/Arcam offer at the expense of a proper engineering.
 
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My question is how many buyers actually use 16 channels? As I've said before, give me clean, well engineered, industry leading 5.x channels and you'll have at least one new buyer.

Bryston sp3

but $15600 MSRP in australia

no op amps.Fully balanced. Class A topology . no room correction . No wifi . No Roon . No Netflix . Just focused on sound quality. NO one complaining on the owners thread at Avs . But like many things Bryston , it looks like a tool box for spanners.
apparently it’s one of the few processors, if one can believe what one reads, that does true 96kHz Processing.

but then again the only movie I have that was mastered true 96 khz Audio was Robert Harris’ My Fair Lady blu Ray
 

Tks

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Some people think I relish in seeing poor measurements but I have to tell you it is the opposite: it is depressing to see a device fail so much both operationally and from performance of point of view.


I relish in seeing ineptitude of a company being exposed for the long-standing superstitious beliefs ascribed upon it by legions on deluded people thinking their experiences are the end-all, be-all. Especially when it's contributory toward some pervading belief about some elite status the company gets from aforementioned beliefs that get perpetuated by the user base.

So when you say:

They said that they test using a portable HDMI signal generator that is operated on batteries. Naturally that device is generating a cleaner source than my PC. I explained to them that consumers don't use portable HDMI generators as their source and that they need to design their equipment so that it is immune to vagaries of HDMI. They did not respond. And here we are with the JBL version doing exactly the same thing.

I enjoy people seeing that, in the same way I enjoy fraudulent behavior being exposed with the brightest spotlight.

But as for seeing poor performing gear intrinsically, it's depressing as you say. But hopefully only temporary as companies either wake the heck up (seemingly occurring more these days for some) while for others (like Devialet) they continue to ignore and proceed as if nothing is wrong.
 

TimoJ

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The Monoprice HTP-1 subjective evaluation really looks unfair compared to this.
Yes, the HTP-1 sure got a raw deal here. One should also notice that with 2.7V output, the HTP-1 has 102dB SINAD (and even better below 2.7V). Almost all power amplifiers have input sensitivity way below 2.7V voltage. The HTP-1 has an adjustment for max output voltage, so you can calibrate 0dB volume scale to your desired voltage/level.

Since there is talk about Denons etc. you should notice one thing about AVRs: since many are using also their build-in power amps, you should not look just what the preamp's SINAD is and instead also look HDMI -> power amp measurements. There is a major SINAD difference when you compare that to what you get with an AVP with 102dB SINAD combined with, for example, Purifi 1ET400A based power amplifiers.
 
OP
amirm

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Yes, the HTP-1 sure got a raw deal here.
HTP-1 has serious difficulty as far as output level. It could barely get to 4 volts and above that would distort heavily. The SDP-55 is far superior on that front going up to 8 volts out.
 

johnnyx

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Arcam's response to this was that I had created a "ground loop" with my HTPC. Never mind that there is no mains frequency peak that would indicate a ground loop. The noise is broadband and encompasses a range up to a few hundred hertz. They said that they test using a portable HDMI signal generator that is operated on batteries. Naturally that device is generating a cleaner source than my PC
With DACs, DSP and computer, a ground loop produced a low-level whistle of a few kilohertz in my system. It was cured by separating the mains earth from the DC output of a power supply. Protective earth remains intact, but no longer forms a loop. I use optical interconnects to the DACs, but the whistle still entered through the PSU ground. The high frequency of the whistle remains a mystery.
 
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