Recommend an AVR / AVP for Dirac ART

[peng]

The problem isn't SINAD - it's noise. The measurements here do not put the proper emphasis here - while SINAD is interesting to check how linear und great something works, noise from 13+ speakers is quickly annoying.

Your power amp amplifies every bit of noise from your preamp times 28 and adds it's own noise too. Lowering the power amp gain to 20dB and rise output of the preamp - and it amplifies preamp gain times 10. This helps. Always check your gain staging.

Of course noise is the issue, not distortions in such AVRs, no one has said noise is not an issue but we should look at the measurements before worrying about the facts that may or may not apple to the specific DUT.

SNR 90 dB is not ideal, but that's at 5 W output, at that level, your room noise would far exceed the AVR's noise. I have had an AVR-X4400H and AVR-X1800H, they were audibly silent even when the HVAC is off, during quiet to silent passages.

Imo, often enough people gut hung up on terms like noise is the issue, or distortions, or whatever, without considering the available, that I can't thank Amir enough for the abundance of useful information on ASR.

Now let's take a look of how the X3800H's compared to the much more expensive and heavily shielded/tons of copper used lol, XLR etc. AV8805:

If we look at the grass (noise) on the FFT, it seems that the AV8805 may need to be mowed sooner than the X3800H lol..
In terms of distortions then the AV8801 was better, though the Denon only lose on the 2nd harmonic, that apparently so people may not mind.