This is a review and detailed measurements of the Pioneer Elite VSX-LX303 Audio/Video Receiver (AVR). It was an impulse buy when it went on sale on Amazon a couple of weeks ago for US $369 including Prime shipping. It is currently US $399. I needed a replacement for my current Pioneer Elite AVR that is connected to our living room TV which is limited to 1080p.
From the outside, not much is changed compared to my Pioneer Elite:
The only improvement is the input selector dial on the left. On mine, it is very stiff. Here is loose and a bit easier to manage. The knobs are large but tactile feedback is poor. I guess they assume you are going to use the remote anyway. Still, I miss the large knobs on audio gear of the 1970s and 1980s.
When I purchased the VSX-LX303, I assumed it had an efficient class D amp like my current Elite. Alas, it does not. This is an issue for me as my current AVR is in a closed cabinet with not a whole lot of circulation (fortunately it is a large cabinet). I assumed all Elite AVRs have class D amp. Turns out only four high-end models do and they are much more expensive. I think the cheapest one is $600.
It was strange to still see analog component input and AM/FM tuners. I suspect Pioneer loses money on each one of these so I am surprised to see these features left in there given how little use they get.
My application is stereo and that is how I tested this AVR.
DAC Audio Measurements
There is no line output so I resorted to using Zone 2 output to test the DAC. There is a USB input but it is for playing files from a thumb drive. So I tested the DAC using S/PDIF input and Zone 2 out:
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Yuck. Look at all those harmonic and spurious tones in the FFT. They naturally limit the THD+N and hence SINAD to really poor score of 74 dB. This places the VSX-LX303 pretty close to the bottom of the pile of DACs tested:
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Jitter tones shows fair bit of spurious tones as well:
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The highest tones are almost as loud as -80 dB. Fortunately they hug the main tone and hence perceptually are masked.
The noise floor is good 20 to 30 dB higher than the best DACs so that is not good either.
Intermodulation distortion is very poor:
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We start off with nearly 15 dB higher noise/IMD but things go to hell at -10 dB with sudden rise of distortion. Not sure if this is digital saturation or analog. Either way it is a broken design.
This issue haunts the linearity test as well:
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On top of that, most of the graph is below 0 dB for some reason showing some kind of offset error. Fortunately the error stays small until about -110 dB. So oddly, this DAC is better for low level detail than high.
I could not run the multitone test since the unit would not lock to 192 kHz sampling of this test track using S/PDIF.
Power Amplifier Audio Measurements
Here is our 5 watt dashboard using RCA input:
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THD+N is well below average for amplifiers we have tested:
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Signal to noise ratio is decent though:
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Bad news was waiting for me when I tried to measure the power level of this "100 watt/channel" receiver:
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That is the first graph in blue. As soon as the unit got warm which was just a few seconds, it would limit the output, causing severe clipping. This was at 20 watts using 8 ohm load, and around 33 watts using 4 ohm. Setting the speaker configuration to "4 ohm" would aggravate it more. Note that this happened even when driving a single channel! I literally had to get a little fan out to cool the unit long enough to get the second graph which shows very good power level at over 138 watts into 8 ohm no less.
You can see the problem in action here by setting the output to 77 watts or so:
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At 38 seconds or so, distortion rises massively indicating clipping. Once the unit clips, it is hard to get it out of this mode. I often had to cycle it on and off. It uses some complex logic to figure out when to force this mode. More or less though, you better not use the unit above 20 to 30 watts for more than a few seconds or it will go into this protective mode.
Despite being a traditional class AB amplifier with fancy talk about bias tracking in the face of thermal changes, the IMD distortion is nothing to write home about:
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I don't know how we can bad-mouth class D amps anymore when class AB ones have slid backward so much in performance.
Frequency response is excellent for audible band but a sharp drop indicates that it is being digitized:
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Sample rate is high though so not a concern other than whatever distortions are added due to ADC. Good news is that if I am right, then the room EQ will work for analog input as well if you use an external DAC for example.
Conclusions
On one hand it is hard to get upset when for $369 you get every feature under the sun with so many channels of amplifications. I don't know how to get this box with no electronics from China to hear and make money for that price let alone all the features it has. On the other hand, that is Pioneer's problem, not mine.
My problem is that I want an efficient and reliable AVR that doesn't decide to shut down by itself. And a DAC that doesn't go into saturation early, showing even small amount of design verification was not performed.
Eu pretendo conectá-lo ao nosso sistema de TV da sala de estar e ouvir. Talvez em uso real o corte térmico não ocorra. Se assim for, eu poderia mantê-lo. Caso contrário, provavelmente vou devolvê-lo.
Escusado será dizer que não posso recomendar o Pioneer VSX-LX303 Elite AVR para uso audiófilo como amplificador, DAC ou combinação.
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Putting my Oppo Bdp 105 to send Sacd signal via HDMI as DSD to my Pioneer VSX LX 503, it do not support the format as described on its documentation. I have to select PCM to work. Also, even in PCM mode, it does not send signals to preout.
