I hear what you're saying but when you're paying this amount of money, the equipment should be quiet. I have asked multibel people and I have got the same answer from every one of them. They said it is possible to make a pre-amplifier or amplifier quiet but they don't want to put in the parts that is necessary to do so. I am not against manufacturers earning money, but when you pay this amount of money for equipment, our standards should be much higher we should not just say it's OK.
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Marantz AV10 AV Processor Review
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
That could be, but it depends. If SINAD is already at >100, like the AV10, then chances are much greater than hiss is due to other things including your extreme example of ear to tweeter. Back to the AV10's 107 dB SINAD, let's say even just 103 dB, worse case, you might hear hiss with again, "ear to tweeter" (almost touching) and room noise is exceptionally low that is rarely the case. But then, which AVP out there can do better than the AV10 in that sense?
One of the most expensive AVP ASR has measured is the $17,000 Trinnov, and the AV10 is better in both SINAD and DR, in fact even a Denon AVR did better. In my opinion, the AV10, or any available AVP regardless of price is not going to be totally silent under any environment (speaker sensitivity, ambient noise, volume at idling, ears super sensitive to hiss and other electronics related noise), but the AV10 is among the best in class, or even regardless of price, in terms of noise currently one can buy.
Just to clarify - the hiss is in my second HT that has old-er Denon 6700H with AMD DACs. Should be sufficiently transparent so I blame the hiss primarily on Klipsch RP speakers and then possibly on Parasound for the part.
AV10 system is dead silent but I live in the city so noise floor is never below 30-ish dB. Perhaps if I lived out in the wild, I could be hearing some hiss even from the AV10 system.
AV10 system is dead silent but I live in the city so noise floor is never below 30-ish dB. Perhaps if I lived out in the wild, I could be hearing some hiss even from the AV10 system.
Yes, RP 8000 and RP 5000. Klipsch bills them as close to 100dB, but most consider them as lower than 95dB. So yes, quite efficient. But I either got a bad batch or the whole series is designed that way. Anyway, I still enjoyed their bass for years and they served well as the second HT speakers.
LR in AV10 system are 93dB sensitivity but no hiss at all - but admittedly cost more for a pair than all the Klipsch speakers together.
I agree with that, but our standards needs to be much higher or else manufacturers will simply not care.
Fully agreed, that's why I consider myself one of the SINAD chaser, yet I know I am sure SINAD of 90 or 110 dB would make no difference for me.
Fully agreed, that's why I consider myself one of the SINAD chaser, yet I know I am sure SINAD of 90 or 110 dB would make no difference for me.
You know, that SINAD of 100 with a 1kHz soundwave is not necessarily the SINAD with content right.
It is likely worse.
If you accept that possibility, also accept that these devices are not tested with processing in the signal path.
The have been more than one case where the SINAD looked bad, and the correction was to disable processing.
Then if you accept that processing can have an impact, then so does the channel count and bass management.
The solution is to attenuate to get headroom.
It is likely that good implementations provide greater gain on the subwoofer outputs to compensate, which is subwoofer outputs are dedicated (I imagine).
SIDAD is headroom for all of the above, since we do not listen to Pure/Direct 1 kHz sine waves.
- Rich
Good solutions do absolutely nothing to provide higher gains on the sub outputs. It really depends how you measure your sub output when calibrating.
We all suspect that with RC engaged, there will be a hit to SINAD, and possibly dynamic range, but then we have nothing but some theory behind it.
Headroom will really depend on your settings and likely RC system. For example, when I engage +12dB ART shelf for the low end my volume is limited to +5dB to reference, which is convenient for the neighbourhood as well as the listening room, as even at reference the SPL is overwhelming. In that respect, the headroom acts a bit like reality check for home systems as they are not PA systems that need to drive 130dB or more.
Again, I’m a SINAD chaser already, no need to convince me.
I am attracted by the Tide 16, and hope Amir will get one soon.
By the way I also don’t based my decision on single point SINAD so I value ASR’s measurements a lot.
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Its typically a gain matching issue between pre/power and as you shift the S/N window up or down, you truncate some of your S/N and end up raising the noise level resulting in hiss....
In terms of users reviews/comparisons, surely there are some, maybe try some AI search on this and you will find them quicker. I have seen/read a couple on forums such as AVSforum iirc, but I don't think you will find more than a few, and they are all highly subjective anyway. I only read those because the posts were there for me to read, not that I would take any of those being of value. Objectively, it would be easy to compare as they are facts based on tests and measurements.
I contacted Marantz asked them about AV 10 and AV 20 and I got a fantastic answer back. I wish every manufacturer would do this.
My name is Jim. I am the tier 2 Technical Support Lead for Marantz. I understand there has been some confusion over a couple of pre-sales questions that you have about our AV10 and AV20 pre-processors.
I understand how frustrating that can be and will do everything that I can to assist.
Gengsly's email about the signal-to-noise ratio did contain links to the correct part of the manual to answer your question and then for some reason it seems that he accidentally pointed to the wrong statistics. In the Audio Section, under Analog, there is a part labeled S/N which is the signal to noise ratio. For both models it is 105dB.
If you notice it mentions the unit being in Direct mode when tested. This is important because it leads into your next question about XLR and the internal vs external DAC. Yes, it is true that with most of our units even with XLR carrying an analog signal, the internal DAC on the pre-processor does normally convert the signal to digital because for signal processing purposes the signal has to be digital.
So, the incoming signal would be analog, it would get converted for processing purposes, things like surround processing, room correction, bass management, and crossovers to the subwoofer(s) and then get converted back to analog and sent to the amplifier and then on to the speakers.
But, if you are not interested in any of the above singal processing being done you can simply set the sound mode for the pre-processor to Direct and this will prevent any of that processing from occuring. The signal will then not be converted to digital. It will come in analog and go out analog without being converted or altered.
However just to be clear, whether the Marantz DAC is activated or not, has no bearing on whether your external DAC is used. In the case where the signal is converted, both the external DAC and the internal Marantz DAC would be used. In the case where the incoming signal is analog and you use Direct as the sound mode, only the external DAC would be used.
My name is Jim. I am the tier 2 Technical Support Lead for Marantz. I understand there has been some confusion over a couple of pre-sales questions that you have about our AV10 and AV20 pre-processors.
I understand how frustrating that can be and will do everything that I can to assist.
Gengsly's email about the signal-to-noise ratio did contain links to the correct part of the manual to answer your question and then for some reason it seems that he accidentally pointed to the wrong statistics. In the Audio Section, under Analog, there is a part labeled S/N which is the signal to noise ratio. For both models it is 105dB.
If you notice it mentions the unit being in Direct mode when tested. This is important because it leads into your next question about XLR and the internal vs external DAC. Yes, it is true that with most of our units even with XLR carrying an analog signal, the internal DAC on the pre-processor does normally convert the signal to digital because for signal processing purposes the signal has to be digital.
So, the incoming signal would be analog, it would get converted for processing purposes, things like surround processing, room correction, bass management, and crossovers to the subwoofer(s) and then get converted back to analog and sent to the amplifier and then on to the speakers.
But, if you are not interested in any of the above singal processing being done you can simply set the sound mode for the pre-processor to Direct and this will prevent any of that processing from occuring. The signal will then not be converted to digital. It will come in analog and go out analog without being converted or altered.
However just to be clear, whether the Marantz DAC is activated or not, has no bearing on whether your external DAC is used. In the case where the signal is converted, both the external DAC and the internal Marantz DAC would be used. In the case where the incoming signal is analog and you use Direct as the sound mode, only the external DAC would be used.
Yes, and I wish they would always refer technical questions to the "tier 2" support personnel, though in this case, even tier 1 should be able to answer correctly as the fact that analog input+direct mode = no A to D conversion is a common knowledge to experienced D+M AVR/AVP users, let alone customer support agents.
There is a less known "fact" that I bet a lot of D+M users may not know is that even in Stereo mode, that is without using direct mode, you can avoid double conversion if you don't use any bass management functions, I believe this is an undocumented feature that @amirm told us in at least one of his tests of an older model, so we don't know if it is the same for the later models.
Denon AVR-X3700H AVR Review
This is a review and detailed measurements of Denon AVR-X3700H 9.2 channel 8K Home Theater AV Receiver (AVR). It is kindly loaned to me by a local member and costs US $1,199. Visually, if you have seen one AVR, you have seen the look of the AVR-X3700H: The input selector is plastic and...
www.audiosciencereview.com
He commented that "I have been testing Denon AVR amplifiers using CD input which I have found to not be digitized allowing us to see the true performance the amplifier rather than any processing blocks. Question has been raised as to what happens when you turn on signal processing such as bass management. Here is the answer:"
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We have had this discussion before.Yes, and I wish they would always refer technical questions to the "tier 2" support personnel, though in this case, even tier 1 should be able to answer correctly as the fact that analog input+direct mode = no A to D conversion is a common knowledge to experienced D+M AVR/AVP users, let alone customer support agents.
There is a less known "fact" that I bet a lot of D+M users may not know is that even in Stereo mode, that is without using direct mode, you can avoid double conversion if you don't use any bass management functions, I believe this is an undocumented feature that @amirm told us in at least one of his tests of an older model, so we don't know if it is the same for the later models.
Denon AVR-X3700H AVR Review
This is a review and detailed measurements of Denon AVR-X3700H 9.2 channel 8K Home Theater AV Receiver (AVR). It is kindly loaned to me by a local member and costs US $1,199. Visually, if you have seen one AVR, you have seen the look of the AVR-X3700H: The input selector is plastic and...
He commented that "I have been testing Denon AVR amplifiers using CD input which I have found to not be digitized allowing us to see the true performance the amplifier rather than any processing blocks. Question has been raised as to what happens when you turn on signal processing such as bass management. Here is the answer:"
View attachment 546459
It seems reasonable that any bass-management or similar processing requires DSP.
There are settings that are still ambiguous, double-bass, even bi-amp settings that *likely* use DSP.
These features operate in Direct mode, possibly even in Pure-Direct mode.
If this is indeed the case, this explains the reticence to clearly explain when the signals are digitized in the manual.
I posit that Marantz does not want to open this kimono
- Rich
We certainly did.
Again, discussed this before, and I remember posting Gene's finding that at last in the case of one of the Ex Denon flagship AVR, the basic bass management (crossovers) would work, because it has some analog alternate means to do it, something like that, and therefore would work when in direct mode.
In theory, even for the latest upper midrange models, the basic management such as the so called small/large (they don't use those terms any more, and cross over might/could still work under some conditions in direct mode, potentially using some sort of switching (electronically) to route, a copy of the input signal, (or iow, split the signal) to the ACD/DSP/DAC so in that case the main left/right channel will bypass the ADC, but the subwoofers, in selected to "yes/on" in the 2 ch stereo menu, would have the basic bass management feature. This of course is 100% speculative on my part.
Note: I have some service manuals and could not identify such arrangement in the schematics, though it is clearly possible if D+M chose to do it, giving that they do use quite a few multichannel electronic switches, and relays for signal routing. Also, only the AVR-X4000H series and SR7000 series offer the 2ch stereo menu, (so presumably the X4800H, C40, C30 likely do have the feature as well).
Agreed, but they have been somewhat clearer on the questions related to the basic bass management features that include distance, crossovers when using analog inputs and listening in direct mode, for 2 channel listening use obviously as they don't offer multichannel stereo inputs.
I also reported that when I contacted Marantz customer support a few years ago about why the small/large/crossover would still work when I had the AV8801 in direct, they gave me a very wishy/washy answer at the same, alluding to some sort of secondary routing that would do the distance/XO kind of deal.If this is indeed the case, this explains the reticence to clearly explain when the signals are digitized in the manual.
I posit that Marantz does not want to open this kimono
- Rich
When the AV10 arrived, I contacted them for the same questions, and got the following response that I think I was posted, but here it is again as it might be worth repeating. Still no explanation of how it is done, hence my speculated rational on the use of electronic routing above.
Marantz customer support:
Response to my questions on Dec 4, 2023:
What we can see from this measurement is the speaker size is the result of digitization and that occurs in Direct mode, but not in Pure Direct mode.
In the past, Marantz supported Double-bass and Bi-Amp in pure direct.
This answer could be found using a signal analyzer and that would be great if @Amir wants to try them on the next Denon/Marantz review.
The simple approach, would be to override the pureness and directness when these options are selected.
Emotiva did not and folks found that the bi-amp duplicate channels were generated by the DSP and the orignal fronts were direct.
For analog inputs, this resulted in a delay on the duplicated channels.
This is low use case, so the choices are to secretly use DSP or not support these modes.
From the above, Marantz may be not supporting them in Pure mode but using DSP and supporting them in Direct mode.
- Rich
I never use double bass and bi-amp features so no comments on those. If D+M has not been clear about those, they should, if they expect people to use those features.
PS There is a typo on that graph, it would be better if Amir fixes it, though it looks so obvious that people most likely would know what it should be.
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