Review and Measurements of Sony STR-ZA1100ES AVR

[Sal1950]

I see two benefits to this information: It would be interesting to me, since some movies offer both an LPCM and a lossless encoded track,

Many multich music discs do the same and it's always made me scratch my head.
Why would you bother with the encoded track when the pure LPCM track is right there?
If they sound different either something about the encoded track or your AV is wrong.

 

[amirm]

I see two benefits to this information: It would be interesting to me, since some movies offer both an LPCM and a lossless encoded track, and if the AVR performs better with one over the other, I could choose that option. And since lossless codecs are the only way to get access to Atmos or X immersive content, I think it's worthwhile to see how the AVRs are performing.

The logistics of this are quite complicated. Encoders for TrueHD and such are considered "professional products" which means they cost a fortune. I have not seen a consumer encoder.

Without the encoder, we would have to find a pre-encoded track. I did a quick search and nothing showed on the first page of results. Some discs have video test signals. I wonder if there are any with audio tones? If so, we could try to extract one of those.

Then there is the matter of getting the bits to the AVR. Finding a player and audio pipeline that can do this in such a limited manner may not be easy.

Audio Precision simplifies all of this by selling an HDMI option for my analyzer. It can generate all the signals we need and simplify my testing by allowing me to run other tests through HDMI. Problem? It costs US $6,500. Is it worth it to spend so much money on it?

 

[tktran303]

“Why would you bother with the encoded track when the pure LPCM track is right there?”

Here’s the legacy of lossless compressed audio on optical discs...

DVD has Dolby Digital 5.1 audio

In the days when HD-DVD (& DVD-Audio) players were being developed, somehow a lossless compression algorithm called MLP got itself into mandated into the spec for Dolby TrueHD audio, as well as the decoder for HDDVD player.

The lossless compressed audio was MLP is short for Meridian Lossless Audio, from none other than Bob Stuart of Meridian Audio Ltd!
I think there must have been some insider connections/marketing to get it into the spec for HD-DVD/DVD Audio/Dolby True HD... because technically it’s wasnt great.

For in real life audio signals it offered quite minimal compression rates- usually about 20-30% smaller only, (compared with up to 50% for the likes of .flac). I guess people thought it was a good idea, and at least better than 0% data reduction, particularly if you’re dealing with up to 8 channels of surround audio.

Luckily, it never gained traction because BluRay and DTS Master Audio won that race and HD-DVD and it’s Dolby TrueHD lost out.

The same Bob Stuart/Meridian two decades started pushing MQA and it’s supposed benefits.

I’m hoping MQA goes the way of the dodo too...

 

[amirm]

Luckily, it never gained traction because BluRay and DTS Master Audio won that race and HD-DVD and it’s Dolby TrueHD lost out.

You only have the fragments of that story right. The above is one of the wrong parts.

I was on DVD Forum steering committee that voted for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD-MA lossless formats. The proposal for them was from the studios, with Warner taking the lead. The consumer electronics companies hated it as they don't want to give a cent to non-CE companies when it comes to technology. We backed the studios as we wanted to see a lossless format in there. Wound up with two lossless formats (Dolby and DTS) for political reasons.

Meanwhile the BDA was dead set against changing their format to include any lossless audio. Their format was based on Blu-ray recorders they had created for Japan market and did not want to break compatibility with them. Those recorders only accepted lossy Dolby and PCM.

The format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD raged on with HD DVD having the advantage on lossless audio. And support of studios who wanted it. This eventually resulted in BDA adopting Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA-HD. They also took the lead from HD DVD, adopting VC-1 (developed in my team) and H.264 video codecs in addition to MPEG-2.

Put another way, if it were not for HD DVD, Blu-ray format would have had only an MPEG-2 video codec and lossy audio.

It is true that Dolby TrueHD is based on Meridian MLP technology. Meridian created it, Dolby used its might with the studios to get it adopted and is the licensing agent for it.

As an aside, both Dolby and DTS lost the licensing battle as apparently they had stipulated in their lossy codec licenses that follow on versions of the codecs would be free. So both TrueHD and DTS-HD-MA became free if the licensee already had a Dolby/DTS license. Screw up on both of their parts.

Dolby TrueHD is quite popular as an audio format in Blu-ray discs. So I don't know what you are saying as far as it going away. That is not remotely true. It is DTS-HD-MA that struggles to get parity with TrueHD. Here is a random example of a movie I just watched:

See, there is no DTS track in there. Just TrueHD.

Dolby is just so much stronger when it comes to working with studios to get adoption of its technology than DTS.

 

[astr0b0y]

DTS-HD MA - 8188 titles
TrueHD - 1532 titles
Source - www.blu-raystats.com

 

[amirm]

DTS-HD MA - 8188 titles
TrueHD - 1532 titles
Source - www.blu-raystats.com

I don't trust their stats. Here are the first five review on bd.com:

That is one out of five that is DTS-HD-MA. The rest are all TrueHD.

 

[Vovgan]

Audio Precision simplifies all of this by selling an HDMI option for my analyzer. It can generate all the signals we need and simplify my testing by allowing me to run other tests through HDMI. Problem? It costs US $6,500. Is it worth it to spend so much money on it?

In the fullness of time your blog will certainly generate extra demand for AP’s analyzers from HiFi manufacturers. Might AP be interested in giving you this $6500 option to pull demand for their products from home cinema manufacturers? Besides, you’ve doing a lot of PR for them already. Might be worth asking.

 

[amirm]

In the fullness of time your blog will certainly generate extra demand for AP’s analyzers from HiFi manufacturers. Might AP be interested in giving you this $6500 option to pull demand for their products from home cinema manufacturers? Besides, you’ve doing a lot of PR for them already. Might be worth asking.

It is exceptionally difficult to get any discount from Audio Precision regardless of one's cause. I have a good relationship with them so may be able to get a few cents off but ultimately, it will still be thousands of dollars.

I may have to bite the bullet and do it at some point given how much HDMI testing I am starting to do and inconvenience of them with my current setup.... Sometimes I wish money did grow on trees.

 

[JJB70]

When did Sony decide to throw the hard won kudos of the ES label in the trash can by sticking it on anything? At one time the ES logo told you that you were getting something engineered to extraordinary standards, then Sony threw that reputation away. Sad.

 

[Sal1950]

I don't trust their stats. Here are the first five review on bd.com:

Seems in general that from the beginning of BD that DTS was the majority leader.
That is till Atmos and the immersive revolution, since then Dolby has once more taken control.
You are hard pressed to find any DTS-X discs being released.

All this still leaves me wondering why so many multich discs bother to include both lossless DTS and LPCM soundtracks?

 

[astr0b0y]

I don't trust their stats. Here are the first five review on bd.com:

.....

That is one out of five that is DTS-HD-MA. The rest are all TrueHD.

You’ve cherry picked the data there with the latest titles.

 

[tktran303]

Thank you Amin for providing inside information regarding DolbyTrueHD and DTS Master Audio.

The spirit of my reply was to explain the dual developments of lossless compressed audio in
the era of the physical disc, as it relates to the end-user/consumer, and its purported advantages. My view is that was some space savings to be gained, but technically MLP offers such little space reduction, why did Dolby bother?

I believe that in a movie/sound effect heavy content, Lossy compressed audio makes much more sense, as does lossy compressed video eg. VC-1, which aims to be perceptually transparent, and offers excellent data reduction.

Do you know how MLP was “chosen” by Dolby?

 

[GXAlan]

Just for documentation's sake, the STR-ZA5000ES appears to have the same DAC/performance as the STR-ZA1100ES. The E1DA Cosmos isn't quite as clean as the APx555 and I was having a hard time getting to full volume. The spikes you see at 40 kHz are when you have the processing turned on.

With PURE Direct, the numbers don't look as good although it may simply be the volume difference.

 

[mareclodaniel]

I think the 'eyes' predominate, usually. In other words, AV sound does not have to measure-up to pure audio standards. If it does, that is a bonus.

 

[redjr]

Picked up one of these today at a second hand store for $10. I've always been a little partial towards Sony's ES line. So I thought, what the heck. It looked clean enough, and I wasn't even sure if it worked! So I gambled $10 and won. Got it home, cleaned it up a bit. Dust was minimal. Hooked up a pair of my little test speakers I use on my bench, and used a small IanCanada PurePi DAC rig as the source. Put it in stereo mode and fired it up. In direct mode (which I've used on other AVRs over the yrs - almost exclusively when listening to music), and was super surprised by the sound. The sound was very clean, clear and articulate. Most of that I credit to the DAC. But the Sony didn't seem to color the sound - that I could hear. I was playing back some DSD tracks from Steely Dan, and Michael Jackson's Thriller CD. The sound did not disappoint. I actually only bought it for stereo music use, despite it having HDMI support with Dolby Atmos, IMAX, IMAX/Enhanced, and DTS, DTS/X. A great find for the money.

 

[GXAlan]

Picked up one of these today at a second hand store for $10.

Definitely the best $10 DAC out there! Finding the stereo microphone is a bit hard, but DDAC room correction is nice.

 

[redjr]

Picked up one of these today at a second hand store for $10. I've always been a little partial towards Sony's ES line. So I thought, what the heck. It looked clean enough, and I wasn't even sure if it worked! So I gambled $10 and won. Got it home, cleaned it up a bit. Dust was minimal. Hooked up a pair of my little test speakers I use on my bench, and used a small IanCanada PurePi DAC rig as the source. Put it in stereo mode and fired it up. In direct mode (which I've used on other AVRs over the yrs - almost exclusively when listening to music), and was super surprised by the sound. The sound was very clean, clear and articulate. Most of that I credit to the DAC. But the Sony didn't seem to color the sound - that I could hear. I was playing back some DSD tracks from Steely Dan, and Michael Jackson's Thriller CD. The sound did not disappoint. I actually only bought it for stereo music use, despite it having HDMI support with Dolby Atmos, IMAX, IMAX/Enhanced, and DTS, DTS/X. A great find for the money.

Clarification: I meant to say "credit to my DAC", and not "credit to the DAC". I did not test or listen to the DAC in the AVR.

 

[nAnd_Flash]

Hi everyone! First post.

I just picked one of these up off Facebook marketplace and want to know if it's safe to drive 4 ohm speakers to it. I don't need to push above like -9dB absolute max. I've got two in wall speakers at 4ohm and two at 8ohm hooked up. Not worried about the degraded sound quality (sounds good enough to me since I don't know what I'm missing) just wanna make sure I don't blow anything up.

 

[Sal1950]

Hi everyone! First post.

I just picked one of these up off Facebook marketplace and want to know if it's safe to drive 4 ohm speakers to it. I don't need to push above like -9dB absolute max. I've got two in wall speakers at 4ohm and two at 8ohm hooked up. Not worried about the degraded sound quality (sounds good enough to me since I don't know what I'm missing) just wanna make sure I don't blow anything up.

Welcome to ASR Flash.
You should be just fine running only the single stereo 4ohm speakers, but don't try running 8 ohm ones at the same time. That will be a recipe for seeing the smoke coming out.
Good Luck,
Sal

 

[nAnd_Flash]

Thanks for the quick response! I'd rather like to be able to drive both, do you have any suggestions for how to set it up? The two in front (the 4-ohms) are my left and right and the two behind are the surrounds. Is this the type of thing I can get away with at low volume levels (I can hear it from three floors up at -11dB) or do I need to invest in some 4ohm surrounds?

Edit: I plan on using the sont calibration to even out speaker volumes so that I'm not sending the 4-ohms to the moon.