This is a review and detailed measurements of the Sony STR-ZA1100ES Audio/Video Receiver. It is on kind loan from a local member. It costs US $999. It must have price protection as Amazon price is only $1 cheaper.
Being part of the ES series from Sony, one expects good look and feel and performance. The latter we will see in measurements. Overall, I say it has a more elegant look among the crowded AVR market:
Sorry about the dark picture. Took this at night. In person the display is nice and gives the unit a more formal look. There is a panel with magnets that hides all the buttons if you wanted. The volume control has good feel unlike the stiff one I have used.
The back panel is full of connectors as you can imagine:
For my testing, I focused on left and right channels of the amplifier. For DAC testing, I used Zone 2 output and S/PDIF input.
I did not test HDMI. It is a pain to route my PC output to it but if there is sufficient interest, I can test that.
Internal DAC Measurements
I connected the S/PDIF input to my audio analyzer and measured what came out of Zone 2 at full volume:
Nice to see nominal 2 volt output and near perfect channel matching. As we have learned, the internal DACs on these AVRs is not a match for external DACs and the situation repeats. Fortunately the STR-ZA1100ES is just good enough to straddle the third and fourth tier of all DACs tested:
So not embarrassing but nothing to match the ES sticker either.
Amplifier Audio Measurements
I started off by driving the unit to 5 watt into 4 ohm using 2-channel analog input:
This is pretty disappointing performance. Noise floor is quite high, causing the THD+N to climb high, hence degrading SINAD (signal to noise and distortion). Realizing this input may be digitized, I selected the "Direct" mode and that nicely lowered the noise floor:
Ah, this is much better! The FFT looks worse but that is because the noise floor has gone down, revealing more of the spikes. But otherwise, we gained a ton in SINAD to 87 dB which is pretty respectable for an amplifier:
We are above our media of 77.
Digital input produces the same performance since the DAC is better than the amplifier:
The Direct mode also widens the bandwidth substantially:
The analog to digital converter that is used on analog input suffers from higher noise then and sharp filtering. Note that if you are going to use the internal Room EQ, you would have to use the digital input/digitized analog.
Power into 8 ohm matches the spec and beats it on distortion:
Switching to 4 ohm load we get:
Some unhappiness before final clipping. And of course nowhere close to one of reference amplifiers based on Hypex NC400 module (in blue). Decent amount of power though at 140 watts with reasonable distortion figure.
We can compare that to Amazon Amp and SONOS:
Less power than SONOS but much lower noise. More power than Amazon and less distortion/noise. Not a bad showing.
Intermodulation distortion versus power also gives us comparison to Klipsch PowerGate amplifier:
Definitely better than the Klipsch.
Distortion relative to power and frequency shows good behavior:
Little odd that worst performance is at 2 kHz, not 20 kHz. And that unfortunately is where our hearing is most sensitive.
Conclusions
If you had any expectation of Sony STR-ZA1100ES beating separate components, that should be dashed by now. Another downer is the high noise floor of the internal analog to digital converter. Fortunately if you don't use the Room EQ, you can use the direct mode and get better performance. Speaking of room EQ, I did not have a chance to test the one on this unit. A few years back I tested it on another Sony AVR and results were very disappointing. Hopefully things have improved.
Operationally the unit operated well, never shutting down or getting too hot (despite using the flimsy heatsinks all AVR manufacturers use).
Overall, the STR-ZA1100ES gives me the impression of "good enough" performance and looks. Lowering my standards substantially, I am going to recommend it given how poor our other options have been in AVR land.
----------------------
Questions, comments, critique, etc. are welcome.
Guy is laying in bed with his wife. She turns to him and asks: "do you know what I am thinking?" He says, "if I said yes, do you still have to tell me???" What does that have to do with audio? Nothing. Just had to say something funny to then beg you for donations:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
Being part of the ES series from Sony, one expects good look and feel and performance. The latter we will see in measurements. Overall, I say it has a more elegant look among the crowded AVR market:
Sorry about the dark picture. Took this at night. In person the display is nice and gives the unit a more formal look. There is a panel with magnets that hides all the buttons if you wanted. The volume control has good feel unlike the stiff one I have used.
The back panel is full of connectors as you can imagine:
For my testing, I focused on left and right channels of the amplifier. For DAC testing, I used Zone 2 output and S/PDIF input.
I did not test HDMI. It is a pain to route my PC output to it but if there is sufficient interest, I can test that.
Internal DAC Measurements
I connected the S/PDIF input to my audio analyzer and measured what came out of Zone 2 at full volume:
Nice to see nominal 2 volt output and near perfect channel matching. As we have learned, the internal DACs on these AVRs is not a match for external DACs and the situation repeats. Fortunately the STR-ZA1100ES is just good enough to straddle the third and fourth tier of all DACs tested:
So not embarrassing but nothing to match the ES sticker either.
Amplifier Audio Measurements
I started off by driving the unit to 5 watt into 4 ohm using 2-channel analog input:
This is pretty disappointing performance. Noise floor is quite high, causing the THD+N to climb high, hence degrading SINAD (signal to noise and distortion). Realizing this input may be digitized, I selected the "Direct" mode and that nicely lowered the noise floor:
Ah, this is much better! The FFT looks worse but that is because the noise floor has gone down, revealing more of the spikes. But otherwise, we gained a ton in SINAD to 87 dB which is pretty respectable for an amplifier:
We are above our media of 77.
Digital input produces the same performance since the DAC is better than the amplifier:
The Direct mode also widens the bandwidth substantially:
The analog to digital converter that is used on analog input suffers from higher noise then and sharp filtering. Note that if you are going to use the internal Room EQ, you would have to use the digital input/digitized analog.
Power into 8 ohm matches the spec and beats it on distortion:
Switching to 4 ohm load we get:
Some unhappiness before final clipping. And of course nowhere close to one of reference amplifiers based on Hypex NC400 module (in blue). Decent amount of power though at 140 watts with reasonable distortion figure.
We can compare that to Amazon Amp and SONOS:
Less power than SONOS but much lower noise. More power than Amazon and less distortion/noise. Not a bad showing.
Intermodulation distortion versus power also gives us comparison to Klipsch PowerGate amplifier:
Definitely better than the Klipsch.
Distortion relative to power and frequency shows good behavior:
Little odd that worst performance is at 2 kHz, not 20 kHz. And that unfortunately is where our hearing is most sensitive.
Conclusions
If you had any expectation of Sony STR-ZA1100ES beating separate components, that should be dashed by now. Another downer is the high noise floor of the internal analog to digital converter. Fortunately if you don't use the Room EQ, you can use the direct mode and get better performance. Speaking of room EQ, I did not have a chance to test the one on this unit. A few years back I tested it on another Sony AVR and results were very disappointing. Hopefully things have improved.
Operationally the unit operated well, never shutting down or getting too hot (despite using the flimsy heatsinks all AVR manufacturers use).
Overall, the STR-ZA1100ES gives me the impression of "good enough" performance and looks. Lowering my standards substantially, I am going to recommend it given how poor our other options have been in AVR land.
----------------------
Questions, comments, critique, etc. are welcome.
Guy is laying in bed with his wife. She turns to him and asks: "do you know what I am thinking?" He says, "if I said yes, do you still have to tell me???" What does that have to do with audio? Nothing. Just had to say something funny to then beg you for donations:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).