Struggle replacing Old AVR - tried RZ50, 4800h, and Cinema 70 - what now?

[pogo]

Some people will always argue that there are things not measured, but logic tells us if there are something that can make one sounds audibly better, reviewers such as Amir would have been measuring those things. And there is no reasons for Marantz to do things that will sacrifice sq.

Then we should start with continuous reactive load tests or make power cubes available, ...

 

[GXAlan]

For the most part, any 2 amps that measure similar and are near or beyond the thresholds of hearing under normal listening conditions feeding well behaved speakers will be indistinguishable in a double-blind test.

I agree with what you have written, but the only well-behaved speaker are Magnepan’s which are largely a resistive load. Many of the speakers that are good (Revel F228Be) have challenging impedance curves.

In a way, this also explains why premium active speakers sound great despite having low-cost ADC/DACs and low-cost amplification. Once you know stuff like driver compression, thermal overload, impedance curves, you can program the DSP to adapt to a lot of that…

 

[DonR]

I agree with what you have written, but the only well-behaved speaker are Magnepan’s which are largely a resistive load. Many of the speakers that are good (Revel F228Be) have challenging impedance curves.

In a way, this also explains why premium active speakers sound great despite having low-cost ADC/DACs and low-cost amplification. Once you know stuff like driver compression, thermal overload, impedance curves, you can program the DSP to adapt to a lot of that…

I suppose it is a relative thing. Any speaker that doesn't dip below 4-ohm impedance or shift impedance more than an order of magnitude within an octave I would consider well-behaved. Most well-designed amplifiers should be able to drive these in a controlled manner. Of course, the caveat "normal listening conditions" probably breaks that for many.

 

[Times]

Then we should start with continuous reactive load tests or make power cubes available, ...

Since you’re the one who thinks that this is an absolute necessity for everyone who wants to buy a new amp and doesn’t get tired of posting it in every other thread:

How about buying the equipment to do that and providing that info by yourself?

Or what do you mean when you say „we should“?

 

[Times]

you are absolutely wrong if you think all amps sound same. They simply dont. ANyone who has ever listened more then one on a same set of decent revealing speakers will confirm this.

As @peng has already correctly pointed out, nobody claims that all amplifiers sound the same. Intentional sounding, poor design, the cheapest components, age, etc. can certainly result in audible differences.

It's about the order of magnitude and the resulting questions of whether the differences are audible (and reliably identifiable) or not.
If a reasonably designed amp has a linear frequency response, such as here...

...and measurements at the listening position show only minimal differences (all of which could also lie within the range of measurement inaccuracy) between several amps with a linear FR as shown above:

Where is the margin for the so often proclaimed, clearly audible differences?

 

[antcollinet]

position in room

You seem to be thinking of speakers.

Sure amps can sound different. But most modern well designed amps - which have flat frequency response, and distortion below the level of audibility AND low output impdeance - any differences are inaudble, or if in the unlikely case you can hear them, then so subtle as to make no practical difference.

Obviously this may not apply to old amps with worn out capacitors, or badly designed amps (or amps designed to "have a sound" ie badly designed), or obsolete designs such as distorting tube amps, with high output impedance.

 

[pogo]

How about buying the equipment to do that and providing that info by yourself?

Or what do you mean when you say „we should“?

The equipment already exists, but is not used by amirm for each amplifier test.

 

[EWL5]

I'm not old enough to have owned them but would tube amps be audibly identifiable from modern amps?

 

[Times]

[…] would tube amps be audibly identifiable from modern amps?

It depends, but definitely more likely than reliably identifying one of two solid state amps in an ABX test.

 

[techsamurai]

As @peng has already correctly pointed out, nobody claims that all amplifiers sound the same. Intentional sounding, poor design, the cheapest components, age, etc. can certainly result in audible differences.

It's about the order of magnitude and the resulting questions of whether the differences are audible (and reliably identifiable) or not.
If a reasonably designed amp has a linear frequency response, such as here...

...and measurements at the listening position show only minimal differences (all of which could also lie within the range of measurement inaccuracy) between several amps with a linear FR as shown above:

Where is the margin for the so often proclaimed, clearly audible differences?

But what about the review I shared of the person who owned so many Marantz vintage receivers and then switched to Sansui trying almost the entire lineup before settling on the 8080/9090? Clearly he and his partner are not delusional, he's using the same speakers, same turntables and he came to the conclusion that the Sansui 8080/9090 has the best sound.

I've listened to the 8080/9090 - it made me an audiophile at a young age because I could tell the sound was amazing just anyone watching Federer play tennis knows he's a great player even if you have never watched competitive tennis.

I still get goosebumps of how it played Kitaro's Mangekyou. I'm not religious but listening to that song on the Sansui was something special. It wasn't just music, it definitely surpassed that.

 

[techsamurai]

It depends, but definitely more likely than reliably identifying one of two solid state amps in an ABX test.

How do tube amps affect the frequency range?

 

[BDWoody]

Clearly he and his partner are not delusional

Depends on how you define delusional.

The brain fills in blanks that we don't even know are there. Do these chess pieces look like they are the same color at the top and bottom? Are you delusional if you believe they are different?

Given that these buyers are human, they are subject to bias. There is no way to avoid it, outhink it or disregard its influence on pretty much every part of our lives.

The only way to get beyond all of that, is to isolate the ears with controlled subjective testing, otherwise you won't really know if you subconsciously just liked that it was bigger/heavier/glowier(?)/more expensive/more exclusive/louder/fill in the endless blanks.

 

[Times]

But what about the review I shared of the person who owned so many Marantz vintage receivers and then switched to Sansui trying almost the entire lineup before settling on the 8080/9090? Clearly he and his partner are not delusional, he's using the same speakers, same turntables and he came to the conclusion that the Sansui 8080/9090 has the best sound.

The one and only answer is: We don't know and never will.

Did the Sansui 8080/9090 really sound better than all the Marantz models?
What does better mean anyway?
Has the awesome feeling of finally finding the receiver they've been looking for, had an influence on their expectation and therefore listening experience?
How did they compare all the receivers?
Did they match the volume level with a mulitmeter?
Were all the receivers really in good condition, despite their age?
Did they have the technical knowledge to find possible flaws?

There are so many questions unanswered, that their story, albeit very touching and pleasant to read, has absolutely no scientific value at all.

What if I buy a couple of vintage receivers, test them however I want to and publish touching story about my journey, with the conclusion, that the Marantz 2285B is the best of them all, even better than the Sansui 9090? Who would be right then? They? Why?

Does that make them delusional? No, of course not. Because it's their subjective experience and therefore real / true for them.
Does that make it real / true for everybody. No.

---

I just don't believe that you're not able to understand the difference between subjective impressions and objective, measurable facst. Especially after almost 20 pages and 400 posts, discussing the same things over and over.

Would be great if you'd just admit now that you've been trolling us the whole time, so we all can have a good laugh about it and go on with our lives.

 

[voodooless]

I can come up with a very similar story about power cables, and come to the same conclusion:

Clearly he and his partner are not delusional

 

[GXAlan]

View attachment 331676

Depends on how you define delusional.

The brain fills in blanks that we don't even know are there. Do these chess pieces look like they are the same color at the top and bottom? Are you delusional if you believe they are different?

Given that these buyers are human, they are subject to bias. There is no way to avoid it, outhink it or disregard its influence on pretty much every part of our lives.

+1. Those chess pieces are the same color if you block out all of the surrounding distractions.

Thinking about this from a "consistent with science" and "consistent with techsamurai's claims" standpoint, if the old MultEQ really only hit the biggest room nodes in the bass and the newer stuff is trying harder to correct full-range, and his speakers don't have optimal directivity for EQ, then it's consistent with the science that full range EQ without anechoic data can make things sound worse, and what he needs to do is to just correct to the transition frequency potentially.

The nice thing about MultEQ and YPAO is that they do correct above the transition frequency but they're very mild corrections to tonality which lets them claim it's full range, but also shows in measurements to not go after a lot the small squiggles.

 

[techsamurai]

If you like the SR8002, it means you prefer the less intrusive room EQ. I have shown with my Bose 901 that the factory EQ and Dirac EQ are generally similar. To my ears, Dirac widens the phantom center while the factory EQ keeps the center more focused.

XT32 and Dirac are superior to MultEQ but maybe you have a “lucky” room where less is more.

Having owned Marantz, Denon, Sony, Yamaha, Arcam, and Monolith… I would tell you to try using the Audyssey iOS app to limit your room correction of your X4800H to 500Hz only, or get a Yamaha RX-A8A.

Yamaha’s approach to room EQ is similar to MultEQ in that it isn’t too aggressive by default, even though it does full bandwidth correction, it is conservative with its correction about the transition frequency. The A8A has plenty of power, and as I pointed out in the Marantz AV10 review, the CX-A5100 still beats the AV10 in SINAD below 0.5V which is 25-50W of power (8 vs 4 ohm) for a standard 29 dB gain amplifier

The other thing that’s good about Yamaha is that the DSP (“SciFi”) does enough trickery to make your speakers disappear.

What speakers do you have? Maybe they don’t have the ideal directivity so over aggressive EQ from calibration worsens the sound.

That's possible I think Steve Dallas also talked about the high frequencies being adversely affected by XT32 possibly so I'll definitely play with the range there and limit to 500hz and 1,000.

The Cinema 70 also had MultEq but I don't think it was identical to the 8002 being that it's 15 years newer.

I also noticed that the Pure Direct REW measurments of higher frequencies on the MultEq looked closer to the Audyssey settings on the MultEq AVRs.

In the past, I did have bad calibrations with the 8002 which I disliked and that is how I came up with the flat outdoor pillow support and few short positions close to the MLP for measurements to avoid massive variance and give more weight to the MLP. This time I was more liberal with the positions and used a tripod in an effort to be more professional. I have bought and read parts of the secrets of Audyssey manual.

I'll run measurements the old way I like and then limit the range and test but that'll have to wait a bit.

My speakers are older B&W 700s with the rounded curve and someone said the B&W speakers don't play nice with measurements but I don't know enough about it.

 

[techsamurai]

The one and only answer is: We don't know and never will.

Did the Sansui 8080/9090 really sound better than all the Marantz models?
What does better mean anyway?
Has the awesome feeling of finally finding the receiver they've been looking for, had an influence on their expectation and therefore listening experience?
How did they compare all the receivers?
Did they match the volume level with a mulitmeter?
Were all the receivers really in good condition, despite their age?
Did they have the technical knowledge to find possible flaws?

There are so many questions unanswered, that their story, albeit very touching and pleasant to read, has absolutely no scientific value at all.

What if I buy a couple of vintage receivers, test them however I want to and publish touching story about my journey, with the conclusion, that the Marantz 2285B is the best of them all, even better than the Sansui 9090? Who would be right then? They? Why?

Does that make them delusional? No, of course not. Because it's their subjective experience and therefore real / true for them.
Does that make it real / true for everybody. No.

---

I just don't believe that you're not able to understand the difference between subjective impressions and objective, measurable facst. Especially after almost 20 pages and 400 posts, discussing the same things over and over.

Would be great if you'd just admit now that you've been trolling us the whole time, so we all can have a good laugh about it and go on with our lives.

But having owned so many Marantz vintage receivers, would their bias not have been towards Marantz? Why would their bias lead to debunk their own theory and why would they both be in agreement?

 

[techsamurai]

View attachment 331676

Depends on how you define delusional.

The brain fills in blanks that we don't even know are there. Do these chess pieces look like they are the same color at the top and bottom? Are you delusional if you believe they are different?

Given that these buyers are human, they are subject to bias. There is no way to avoid it, outhink it or disregard its influence on pretty much every part of our lives.

The only way to get beyond all of that, is to isolate the ears with controlled subjective testing, otherwise you won't really know if you subconsciously just liked that it was bigger/heavier/glowier(?)/more expensive/more exclusive/louder/fill in the endless blanks.

Take the backgrounds away - what do they look like to you? Surely with every piece of background, the chess pieces would not look different. In fact, they look different with just this background?

 

[CapMan]

Yet revealing with the 8002? Unlikely.

My daughter played a song by a singer and pointed out that the 4800h sounded cloudy.

Did you possibly influence her in any way, you’ve been on this thread for weeks, so perhaps introduced bias into her views also. Or perhaps she was humouring her old man

 

[techsamurai]

Did you possibly influence her in any way, you’ve been on this thread for weeks, so perhaps introduced bias into her views also. Or perhaps she was humouring her old man

I may have but here are 2 Piano recordings (Piano A is a bit louder so adjust down or up a bit). They are horrible but these are very different sounds - not subjectively, but objectively especially if you hear them here.

Piano Samples - I apologize for the compression and distortion but it's with my phone. You also have to turn up the volume a bit. Next time, I'll get a bit closer or turn up the volume on my system.

Which one do you like better and can you tell the Marantz from the Denon?

Piano A
Piano B

What's your opinion of each? Here's the original