This is a review and detailed measurements of the Trinnov Altitude 16 AV Processor. I received one sample from a kind member after which Trinnov also contacted me and sent me another with an improvement (see below). The Altitude costs US $17,000.
In contacting me Trinnov expressed that they had made an optimization to the DAC that resulted in better measured performance but not audibly. For this reason, they have not promoted this change. They plan to make a more substantial revision of the DAC to come out later that they will offer as upgrade to current customers. They have asked me if I would participate in testing that and of course I said yes.
The Altitude 16 does a great job of hiding the fact that it is built on a PC architecture with a beautiful front panel and controls just like any "appliance" version of the same:
The display has a very high resolution and elegant look that I liked. It is a bit to fully refresh but the interface was responsive. On start up there is a faint fan noise but it goes away once it boots. The back panel shows all the balanced I/O you would expect in a high-end AV Processor:
Now you can tell its PC guts given the standard I/O panel on bottom left. But again, you don't really notice that there is a PC in there.
The measurements you are about to see were reviewed by the company and were agreed upon as being representative. On that note, the company was exceptionally nice to work with and brought a constructive attitude which I much appreciated. Support is a big deal for such expensive purchases and it is good to see it be available from Trinnov.
Trinnov Altitude 16 Measurements (DAC)
As usual, our focus is the hygiene of the basic audio pipeline in these AV products. We feed it a digital signal and turn off all effects and processing and see what the DAC is capable of doing compared to other AV products (and desktop DACs):
As usual, I adjust the output to 4 volts which is the standard for desktop/stereo DACs (over balanced output). Performance here is competent and inline with other better AV processors I have tested:
Hopefully in the future we get performance in "blue" region of our performance buckets.
Sweeping the input we see that performance gets to where we measured and stays there for good bit until it clips above 6 volts:
Dynamic range is good:
DAC filter showed a strange but minor kink:
Trinnov has figured out the cause of this and is working on a fix. It was not important enough for me to hold up the review.
For the rest of these tests I used Toslink input as HDMI out of my measurement computer truncates to 16 bit. Let's start with IMD:
Here is our jitter test on both Toslink and HDMI:
Both show room for improvement although in the case of jitter it is not an audible concern due to very low levels that are below threshold of human hearing.
Linearity shows some inaccuracy:
So we get the magical 18 bits again.
Here is our THD+N versus frequency:
I could not run my multitone test because it has a 192 kHz sampling and Trinnov Altitude 16 is not able to play anything above 96 kHz. You have to move up to Altitude 32 to get the processing power it needs for that.
Conclusions
We have been waiting a long time to test any Trinnov processor as it is considered the pinnacle of high-end AV processors. It was great that it came to pass and I did not find anything broken in there. We have our answer that high-end AV processors as they exist today do not bring better measured performance in their basic DAC pipeline. Good news is that Trinnov is among just a couple of companies that has promised new generation of DACs to provide better performance. And that our testing has motivated that.
On the strength of excellent company support, future direction and good measurements, I am going to put the Trinnov Altitude 16 on my recommended list.
Time permitting, I plan to test the Room Optimizer in there which is the main reason behind the strong reputation of Trinnov processors.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
In contacting me Trinnov expressed that they had made an optimization to the DAC that resulted in better measured performance but not audibly. For this reason, they have not promoted this change. They plan to make a more substantial revision of the DAC to come out later that they will offer as upgrade to current customers. They have asked me if I would participate in testing that and of course I said yes.
The Altitude 16 does a great job of hiding the fact that it is built on a PC architecture with a beautiful front panel and controls just like any "appliance" version of the same:
The display has a very high resolution and elegant look that I liked. It is a bit to fully refresh but the interface was responsive. On start up there is a faint fan noise but it goes away once it boots. The back panel shows all the balanced I/O you would expect in a high-end AV Processor:
Now you can tell its PC guts given the standard I/O panel on bottom left. But again, you don't really notice that there is a PC in there.
The measurements you are about to see were reviewed by the company and were agreed upon as being representative. On that note, the company was exceptionally nice to work with and brought a constructive attitude which I much appreciated. Support is a big deal for such expensive purchases and it is good to see it be available from Trinnov.
Trinnov Altitude 16 Measurements (DAC)
As usual, our focus is the hygiene of the basic audio pipeline in these AV products. We feed it a digital signal and turn off all effects and processing and see what the DAC is capable of doing compared to other AV products (and desktop DACs):
As usual, I adjust the output to 4 volts which is the standard for desktop/stereo DACs (over balanced output). Performance here is competent and inline with other better AV processors I have tested:
Hopefully in the future we get performance in "blue" region of our performance buckets.
Sweeping the input we see that performance gets to where we measured and stays there for good bit until it clips above 6 volts:
Dynamic range is good:
DAC filter showed a strange but minor kink:
Trinnov has figured out the cause of this and is working on a fix. It was not important enough for me to hold up the review.
For the rest of these tests I used Toslink input as HDMI out of my measurement computer truncates to 16 bit. Let's start with IMD:
Here is our jitter test on both Toslink and HDMI:
Both show room for improvement although in the case of jitter it is not an audible concern due to very low levels that are below threshold of human hearing.
Linearity shows some inaccuracy:
So we get the magical 18 bits again.
Here is our THD+N versus frequency:
I could not run my multitone test because it has a 192 kHz sampling and Trinnov Altitude 16 is not able to play anything above 96 kHz. You have to move up to Altitude 32 to get the processing power it needs for that.
Conclusions
We have been waiting a long time to test any Trinnov processor as it is considered the pinnacle of high-end AV processors. It was great that it came to pass and I did not find anything broken in there. We have our answer that high-end AV processors as they exist today do not bring better measured performance in their basic DAC pipeline. Good news is that Trinnov is among just a couple of companies that has promised new generation of DACs to provide better performance. And that our testing has motivated that.
On the strength of excellent company support, future direction and good measurements, I am going to put the Trinnov Altitude 16 on my recommended list.
Time permitting, I plan to test the Room Optimizer in there which is the main reason behind the strong reputation of Trinnov processors.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
