Onkyo PR-RZ5100 AV Processor Review

[geekosa]

Hello,

Why is SINAD 100 for Emotiva RMC here and is 92 in the Emotiva tests.
Did something change ?

 

[SC45]

I created an account to provide some real-life experience from someone who owns one of these Onkyo PR-RZ5100 units. Seems to me that the analysis from this site has got to be flawed since I own this Onkyo model and it is great! Maybe you reviewed a bad unit, or used voltages that are not designed for use with typical home theatre equipment?

I have a few very good DACs (Exasound e32 and Schiit Bifrost) and this unit is every bit as detailed and revealing as any AKM4490-based Schiit DAC (this Onkyo unit uses a AKM4490 DAC for just the front two channels). This Onkyo unit's DAC is super clean and tight and right up there in sound quality with my more expensive DACs. I use it with the fairly revealing M&K MP150 speakers. This Onkyo unit sold for $2,200USD new, that money went somewhere: high end Japanese parts. It sounds excellent.

There is a guy in Germany who runs Authentic Cinema that mods high end AV equipment, he thinks the Onkyo PR-RZ5100 is one of the best Pre/Pros available in stock form!: https://www.authentic-cinema.de/mod...hifi/vorstufen-av-und-stereo/onkyo-pr-rz5100/.

This unit actually contains a headphone amp as well, but that is the only weak point of this model: I'd recommend getting an external unit in that case.

Hope this helps people who might be looking at this unit.

 

[Sal1950]

I created an account to provide some real-life experience from someone who owns one of these Onkyo PR-RZ5100 units. Seems to me that the analysis from this site has got to be flawed since I own this Onkyo model and it is great! Maybe you reviewed a bad unit, or used voltages that are not designed for use with typical home theatre equipment?

Sorry that your feelings are getting hurt but there's no escaping the facts and there are no "flaws" in the measurements.
What was really "flawed" was the engineering and design of the RZ5100's.
Feel free to go on liking your unit but that gentleman's in Germany opinion is as "flawed" as the RZ5100's design.
Unsubstantiated opinions are basically without value, but detailed measurements are the connetion to reality.
We don't tell fairy-tales here my friend.
Cheers

 

[danzilla31]

I created an account to provide some real-life experience from someone who owns one of these Onkyo PR-RZ5100 units. Seems to me that the analysis from this site has got to be flawed since I own this Onkyo model and it is great! Maybe you reviewed a bad unit, or used voltages that are not designed for use with typical home theatre equipment?

I have a few very good DACs (Exasound e32 and Schiit Bifrost) and this unit is every bit as detailed and revealing as any AKM4490-based Schiit DAC (this Onkyo unit uses a AKM4490 DAC for just the front two channels). This Onkyo unit's DAC is super clean and tight and right up there in sound quality with my more expensive DACs. I use it with the fairly revealing M&K MP150 speakers. This Onkyo unit sold for $2,200USD new, that money went somewhere: high end Japanese parts. It sounds excellent.

There is a guy in Germany who runs Authentic Cinema that mods high end AV equipment, he thinks the Onkyo PR-RZ5100 is one of the best Pre/Pros available in stock form!: https://www.authentic-cinema.de/mod...hifi/vorstufen-av-und-stereo/onkyo-pr-rz5100/.

This unit actually contains a headphone amp as well, but that is the only weak point of this model: I'd recommend getting an external unit in that case.

Hope this helps people who might be looking at this unit.

Hey just to give you a heads up. Amir isn't measuring for audible. This site looks more for engineering and design excellence. And of course if you claim your state of the art in your measurements. Well then they should measure state of the art.
That doesn't mean it's going to sound terrible. I love the way Onkyo sounds but then again I've loved my Denon Anthem and now Yamaha equipment as well
And that's because most of these issues are not audible
Which is why this site beats them up on they're reviews. A lot of these companies know that these issues aren't audible so they just slap them together and assume we will never know.
Hopefully that stops because they really wouldn't eat that much in cost to design and engineer these at the level of SOA they claim they really are. Some of the fixes from what I've learned here are just basic engineering principles.. Beside the better something is designed the more reliable and longer it should last.
But I'm not surprised that you enjoy the way that Onkyo sounds. And in the long run that is all that matters that you love your gear.
P.S. lately all the gear that's been put out has not measured that well. But as you well know I don't believe things are made with the same quality that they were in the past. Much much more expensive gear then your Onkyo has gotten shredded on this site. And I don't think it's the site or the testing. For that many companies to have those types of measurements points to tha fact that they know. Too many companies and tests for that to be a coincidence. They just don't care

 

[Chrispy]

I created an account to provide some real-life experience from someone who owns one of these Onkyo PR-RZ5100 units. Seems to me that the analysis from this site has got to be flawed since I own this Onkyo model and it is great! Maybe you reviewed a bad unit, or used voltages that are not designed for use with typical home theatre equipment?

I have a few very good DACs (Exasound e32 and Schiit Bifrost) and this unit is every bit as detailed and revealing as any AKM4490-based Schiit DAC (this Onkyo unit uses a AKM4490 DAC for just the front two channels). This Onkyo unit's DAC is super clean and tight and right up there in sound quality with my more expensive DACs. I use it with the fairly revealing M&K MP150 speakers. This Onkyo unit sold for $2,200USD new, that money went somewhere: high end Japanese parts. It sounds excellent.

There is a guy in Germany who runs Authentic Cinema that mods high end AV equipment, he thinks the Onkyo PR-RZ5100 is one of the best Pre/Pros available in stock form!: https://www.authentic-cinema.de/mod...hifi/vorstufen-av-und-stereo/onkyo-pr-rz5100/.

This unit actually contains a headphone amp as well, but that is the only weak point of this model: I'd recommend getting an external unit in that case.

Hope this helps people who might be looking at this unit.

Keep in mind that the gear sent in by the owners is likely used without issue or complaint, at least until the review, now afterwards if they want something better in terms of the testing parameters that's something else (these reviews leaves most of the subjectivity aside except for some comments on basic functionality/ergonomics). Not always great to find your gear may not be the cleanest performing out there, but then again vinyl is popular, too

 

[peng]

Seems to me that the analysis from this site has got to be flawed since I own this Onkyo model and it is great! Maybe you reviewed a bad unit, or used voltages that are not designed for use with typical home theatre equipment?

Take a look of soundandvision.com's measurements then:
Onkyo PR-RZ5100 Surround Processor Review Test Bench | Sound & Vision (soundandvision.com)
"The analog THD+N was less than 0.008% at 1 kHz with a 100-millivolt input and the volume control set to 78." That's even higher than Amir's 0.0072% albeit S&V's used analog input.

Would you say S&V's were flawed too, I guess not..

As others mentioned, if it sounds good to you, then it sounds good to you, but it seems unfair to say ASR's measurements were flawed just because they shows poorer results (not just THD+N) than many other devices tested. Keep in mind many people think distortion levels don't correlate well to how well a device "sound" anyway, all else being equal. You may actually prefer gear that has even higher (e.g. >1%) distortions. A lot of people seem to love the much higher distortion of some tube gear.

 

[Sal1950]

That doesn't mean it's going to sound terrible. I love the way Onkyo sounds but then again I've loved my Denon Anthem and now Yamaha equipment as well
And that's because most of these issues are not audible

Just be careful how far you step out onto that "not audible" limb. Some of the weaknesses being revealed on Amir's bench could very well be audible with good equipment. Best to push for at least very good, easy to recommned products, and also populate your system with these products when possible. Personally I know I'll look to replace my Marantz AV7703 with something that looks a bit better on the bench "when that time comes". OTOH, I won't be tossing out this one any time soon.

 

[danzilla31]

Just be careful how far you step out onto that "not audible" limb. Some of the weaknesses being revealed on Amir's bench could very well be audible with good equipment. Best to push for at least very good, easy to recommned products, and also populate your system with these products when possible. Personally I know I'll look to replace my Marantz AV7703 with something that looks a bit better on the bench "when that time comes". OTOH, I won't be tossing out this one any time soon.

Agreed its why I said Most of these issues not all.
I just feel like as you point out with your 7703 that there's really not much out there to replace your gear with that's acceptable let alone good. These tests have been very revealing to me and I'm very grateful Amir takes the time to pull the cover off so to speak on what a lot of these companies are doing.
I finally found a stable product in my Yamaha CX-A5200 that works without a hitch and sounds great to me and according to Audioholics measures okay as well. Just like you I'm in no rush to change to anything else. Pickins are slim

 

[hwest]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Onkyo PR-RZ5100 Audio/Video Processor (AVP). It is on kind loan from a member. The PR-RZ5100 was announced (I think) around 2017 and seems to be discontinued. It cost US $2,300.

The outside enclosure certainly gives a "high-end" feel to the PR-RZ5100 with its extra tall front face and large volume knob:

View attachment 60732​

Unlike many modern AV processors, boot time is very fast.

The back panel shows the usual connector including XLR Outputs:

View attachment 60733​

The unit is reasonably heavy although peaking inside, the front half is mostly empty other than a transformer there.

For my testing, I focused on HDMI input and Pure Audio mode for all tests. Pure Audio shuts off the front display as is the case with some other units, making a bit annoying to operate.

The on-screen display was decent quality and easy to navigate. Oddly I could not find a factory reset option so set everything to neutral manually. I only tested the Left and Right channels. I believe a lower quality 8-channel AKM dac is used for the rest.

AV Processor HDMI Performance
As usual we rely on our dashboard of feeding the unit a 1 kHz tone and see what else it produces besides that one tone:

View attachment 60734

First, it was great to see the output nicely going to 4 volts and beyond. This is the Achilles heel of many AVR and even high-end AV Processors. Then again, SINAD of 82 dB is nothing to write home about:

View attachment 60735

As you see, a whole bunch of AVRs outperform it. The problem is not distortion as the highest spike there is at or below -100 dB. It is extra noise that piles on top of that and drags the combined score down. You will see this as a common theme throughout the measurements.

Seeing if better performance could be extracted at different output voltage, I ran a sweep to quantify that:

View attachment 60736

This test is tricky as it seems these AV products look at the volume control position and engage or disengage different gain settings/stages. Here, if I set the volume to 84.5, it naturally maxes out at 4 volts and shows the best performance at that output level. Reason is simple: noise dominates so the more output voltage you have, the better THD+N/SINAD becomes. To see if this continues I had to dial the volume control higher. The moment I did that (regardless of it was at Max or lower), performance drops across the board with increased noise (red line). I suggest getting an amplifier that produces its maximum power at 4 volts or lower so you don't given up even more noise performance.

Signal to noise ratio shows the high noise level and hence poor performance:

View attachment 60737

High noise floor kills intermodulation distortion+noise performance to well below that of a cheap phone dongle for most of the output level:

View attachment 60739

The high noise level kills linearity as well in addition to some other issues in there:
View attachment 60740

32-tone signal tells us what we already know: high noise floor and relative high distortion level:

View attachment 60741

Jitter performance looks good but this is partially due to high noise floor which is likely hiding some sins:

View attachment 60742

Fortunately the spikes are either very close to our main tone which means they will be perceptually masked, or too low/below noise level to be heard.

I ran into a very strange problem in the above test. Even though the output was set to 4 volts, as soon as I fed it the J-test signal it shot up to 8 volt and slightly clipping! Went back to a sine wave without changing anything and the output became 4 volts again. J-Test appears to be a 12 kHz tone but it is not. It is actually a square wave at 12 kHz but because the DAC output gets filtered, it becomes a sine wave as the rest of its harmonics are out of band. Seems like the AVR is examining the digital samples and deciding to switch gain for some odd reason.

Wide-band THD+N versus frequency again emphasize the high level of noise:

View attachment 60744

The dashed blue line is a $99 DAC board.

Finally, filter response shows the typical "DAC chip" somewhat lazy response but not as bad as some others (Marantz: I am looking at you):


View attachment 60743

Conclusions
Someone told a designer to slap higher output on this unit and don't worry about anything else. While I am happy to see the higher output level, clearly the rest of the unit is not well-engineered. There are flaws everywhere with the most egregious being high noise level likely due to improper "gain staging." The jump in level with j-test jitter signal shows a clear bug in the implementation. Overall this is one of the most broken AV Processors out there with respect to audio. Shocking then to see a review of it with this indication: https://www.soundandvision.com/content/onkyo-pr-rz5100-surround-processor-review

View attachment 60745

There is some utterly useless "bench test" at the end which explains why they did not see the large set of problems with this processor.

It seems that not only the companies are not paying attention to proper audio fidelity, neither is the press to keep them honest.

It goes without saying that I can NOT recommend the Onkyo PR-RZ5100. Spend your money elsewhere.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Hey, it is not easy to come up with lame jokes every day of the week. So today, I am going to be straight with you to ask you to donate what you can using : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

I bought this unit hoping it would sound better than my PRSC-5530 and it fell way short. This units marks a turn in Onkyo quality for the worst, my PRSC-5530 sounds better by far, I actually returned this unit due to how badly it sounded. No wonder they discontinued it, buyers were expecting better sound than that previous model processors and it fell way short and agree on the headless panther.

 

[TommyJr]

I purchased a B-stock at a good price about three years ago and have enjoyed it. I am disappointed in the quality of S&V's reporting based on Amir's data, but not totally surprised. I only came across this as I was curious whether I should get a DAC for stereo listening. Are any of the issues audible? I have no idea, but the data here motivates me more to get a DAC. I appreciate collecting data, like Gene over at Audioholics, to evaluate the engineering and performance of electronics. Thanks Amir!!!

 

[Dj7675]

This site's reviews are a bit controversial among the audiophile community, since Amir seems to have his favourite companies.

That is your takeaway? Or could it be some brands simply measure better than others? Are you implying that Amir!s measurements are not correct or accurate? He makes his project. Files available and have been corroborated countless times. Seems like a unsubstantiated conclusion to me.

 

[Sal1950]

This site's reviews are a bit controversial among the audiophile community, since Amir seems to have his favourite companies.

If you take the time to do some real homework, you'll find that really isn't the case.
Many companies with multiple product reviews here have received both good and not-so-good reviews.
Check out the Schitt Audio and Topping reviews for examples.
But yes there are some companies that usually excel at their engineering.
And some that just don't.