Plus, presented with typical home theater content, the unit is transparent enough that you can hear all the crappy mastering decisions just fine (extra loud sound effects, extra soft speech) along with all the overblown bass effects. Content matters! No one has measured the SINAD of a Roku have they?
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Marantz NR1510 AVR Review
- Thread starter amirm
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Vacceo
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That is a poor excuse. If the source is bad it shouldn't matter, the system should not add or detract anything, no matter the source's quality.
The easiest explanation is that the products are different. We have two “flagship” slim line receivers with good measurements and one entry level slim line with poor, but meets Arcam levels of quality.
If we look at Audio.com.pl, which normally has really high THD+N measurements (maybe their test setup isn’t as good as the APx555), the NR1510 does worse than the older 1605. (Again the NR16xx is now the NR17xx).
NR1510
Versus the NR1605
By way of comparison, their Model 40n
And stereophiles Model 40n
Looks like there is one decimalplace difference beteeen Stereophile and the Polish site. Otherwise the 8 ohm results is quite similar between the Marantz units. The 4 ohm differs.
Yeah, and that would explain the poor showing by this unit. With 8 ohm speakers, the NR1510 probably is considerably better.
I don't trust that site's measurements. They measured a lot of gear, and those graphs typically look too similar, even between products that I expected more differences based on their specs and measurements by other sites. They also don't say much, if any, about how they tested (standards, methodology, test conditions etc.) and the instruments they used. Or they did provide such information, and I just didn't see them for some reasons.
That just means that their equipment is noisy (which affects the THD+N values at lower powers).
If you look at Audio.com.pl’s Accuphase P7300 measurements you can see the cliff where their test gear noise starts to get better. This is the measuring artifacts. You cannot read much into the first 10 watts for their measurmement and the horizontal line above 30W shows you the distortion limit of their analyzer.
So it’s not about trust. It’s just about making sure you have apple to apples comparisons. Even with Audio.com.pl’s lower quality test instrumentation, the 4 ohm performance of the 1510 is notably worse than the performance of their older 1605 they measured.
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This product was an effort of the accounting department. Sadly they left the engineers out.
On one hand we have the low quality brands like SMSL/miniDSP/Topping producing unreliable devices that measure well (the ones sent to Amir) with 0 features then we have products like Marantz NR 1510 with tons of features and poor measurements.
Luckily there are a few companies can do both - RME/UAD/MOTU/Antelope/
On one hand we have the low quality brands like SMSL/miniDSP/Topping producing unreliable devices that measure well (the ones sent to Amir) with 0 features then we have products like Marantz NR 1510 with tons of features and poor measurements.
Luckily there are a few companies can do both - RME/UAD/MOTU/Antelope/
Vacceo
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And none seems to be creating a good AVR.
Point taken, but really, same thing, call it what you want, if they don't say what they use, how they measure, what standard, protocol they follow then it is not trustworthy regardless. If you lower the bar, for example, only want to know roughly what the distortion is at output in the >20 W to rated output then okay the numbers may be trustworthy but I would have to spend some time looking at their measurements on a few devices and compare them carefully with other benches such as Audioholics, hometheathifi, and ASR's, before I can comment on that but I don't see the need to look at their test results at the moment.
Cerebral interface in VR. Get with the times, grandpa.
I now have started measuring my old Marantz slim-line model NR1506 pre-out using my tiny and ancient M-Audio Transit USB card. I had some other issues with my portable Macbook Pro (battery change and I also resoldered the VCore GPU due to LCD blackout - and the most irritating, to remake an bootable USB OSX on separate drive since OSX Catalina no longer supports the M-Audio card).
The loop-back of the Transit played from Audacity and recorded in REW. I get -99 dB THD.
Looped back through the NR1506, volume set to around 80. Auto and Pure direct was essentially the same.
As noted there is quite some mains noise, but THD is at the same level as my card, around -99.5 dB. So actual distortion of the analogue pre out is lower.
I've put my optical cable somewhere, but cannot find it at the moment so next test will be the optical in and analogue out to test the DAC. Perhaps tomorrow...
The THD seems however quite a bit lower than the later issue of this unit, NR1510, that Amir measured. I wonder why.
And here is the Toslink in - pre out result. I had to reduce volume here since my card clipped, so it is only 0.8 of 1.0 setting in Audacity and 75 on volume of the Marantz.
Somehow these settings increased noise floor and the mains noise. But THD stays around -100 dB, i.e. the same level as the M-Audio Transit sound card. Same result with auto as with pure direct. I do not see the 100 Hz jitter as seen on the 1510 and 1710. See
www.audiosciencereview.com
It seems that distortion increases with increased signal out Toslink; this is volume 0.95 from Audacity.
But conclusion is, THD stays quite low even with the DAC playing with the NR1506, as with the 1710, and 1608 shown previously in this tread.
Edit: Just to confirm, I remeasured my NR1710, using Toslink in-pre out, setting 1.0 volume out in Audyssey (below). THD is < -100 dB, but there is 100 Hz PSU jitter, as with the NR1510. Would be interesting to find out what it is that makes the jitter difference.
The loop-back of the Transit played from Audacity and recorded in REW. I get -99 dB THD.
Looped back through the NR1506, volume set to around 80. Auto and Pure direct was essentially the same.
As noted there is quite some mains noise, but THD is at the same level as my card, around -99.5 dB. So actual distortion of the analogue pre out is lower.
I've put my optical cable somewhere, but cannot find it at the moment so next test will be the optical in and analogue out to test the DAC. Perhaps tomorrow...
The THD seems however quite a bit lower than the later issue of this unit, NR1510, that Amir measured. I wonder why.
And here is the Toslink in - pre out result. I had to reduce volume here since my card clipped, so it is only 0.8 of 1.0 setting in Audacity and 75 on volume of the Marantz.
Somehow these settings increased noise floor and the mains noise. But THD stays around -100 dB, i.e. the same level as the M-Audio Transit sound card. Same result with auto as with pure direct. I do not see the 100 Hz jitter as seen on the 1510 and 1710. See
A few measurements of the Marantz NR1710 slim line AV amp (update jan 2024, power amp section)
An update of measurements in post 16. I just made some simple measurements via pre out of my slim line Marantz NR1710. Not having much advanced equipment but my 18 year old M-Audio Transit DAC and ADC was used to test it in various ways. It only supports 44,1/16 bit when used both ways...
www.audiosciencereview.com
It seems that distortion increases with increased signal out Toslink; this is volume 0.95 from Audacity.
But conclusion is, THD stays quite low even with the DAC playing with the NR1506, as with the 1710, and 1608 shown previously in this tread.
Edit: Just to confirm, I remeasured my NR1710, using Toslink in-pre out, setting 1.0 volume out in Audyssey (below). THD is < -100 dB, but there is 100 Hz PSU jitter, as with the NR1510. Would be interesting to find out what it is that makes the jitter difference.
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Very interesting results. Since Audio.com.pl has pretty noisy test gear *and* their 1510 measured worse at 4 ohms that the others, I am wondering if there is a bad generation of ICs or capacitors?
By any metric, the real question is how the Cinema 70s performs. It’s too bad they don’t wont make a slim version of the AV 10 (like the McIntosh MX100 - but with Audyssey app support).
The NR1710 which I measured show the same low THD as the NR1506. It shares the jitter with 1510 though. I thought the 1506 should behave the same on digitall but no. The 1608 show low THD as well.
So, Amirs result of THD is not typical for these units. Either the unit is broken or there is an error made during measurements. There are suprisingly few comments on this.
To me it looks more as clipping from Amirs measurements. I can get the same result when overdriving my sound card.
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Are there devices up to 100€ that would allow me to make the same measurement on a 1609 i have?
Have not seen anything similar to the Transit USB ADC/DAC. I bought mine for around 40€ 18 years ago. It has analogue in/out, optical in/out. Up to 96 kHz/24 bit one way and 48 kHz/24 bit both ways.
It would be interesting to see whether the WiFi card position affects jitter and if the 1609 also have 100 Hz jitter. 1609, 1710, 1510 have them in the middle above the main board. 1608 on the side. 1506 do not have it.
