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Trinnov Altitude 16 Review (AV Processor)

Matthew J Poes

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I didn’t mean to rain on this AVR’s parade, and if I did I apologize.

Is this units room correction on another level versus what Audyssey XT 32 can do, or is it just preference in your opinion?

Audyssey is coming out with a new room correction I understand.

This is a great looking, and functional unit there’s no doubt about that.
Same room correction, just new setup software.

Trinnov is quite a bit more advanced and capable in it's optimization capabilities and the sophistication of a system it can control. A lot of people don't need that and this would be a waste for them potentially.
 

Matthew J Poes

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Keep in mind the Topping D90 now costs more than $500 and you only get two channels. The Trinnov is no doubt much more expensive but the gap is probably a lot less than it appears when you consider one is a 2 channel DAC and the other is a full blown 16 channel AVP with the most expensive REQ.
It's actually a 20 channel processor with full and sophisticated DSP control of all 20 channels. The room eq and 3d remapping is part of the cost, but it also has DSP controls similar to a mini DSP for 20 channels. It can be used to control a fully active system without an external DSP crossover which helps simplify a system and reduce the need for either digital outs (which is uncommon) or redundant AD/DA conversion and loss of sound quality in a less than SOTA DSP. Most DSP processors would not measure up to ASR standards either (This actually measures quite well).
 
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What I've been told numerous times by the software engineers involved in coding the control software for these (and various other brands) is that the "mediocre" performance is largely coming from a balancing act they are playing. I am curious to test the SPDIF output of the Trinnov that was just activated with a SOTA DAC to see what happens. If it does what I think it will (no improvement in the measurement over factory DAC) it will show that the bottleneck is in fact in the software side of things.

The balancing act was described as a need to ensure that the DAC is operating in its most linear range over the widest range of input/output levels. Since this is a preamp/processor with DAC, it needs to perform its best when turned way down or all the way up. They have also indicated that simply including a lot of "things" in a package often negatively impacts its measured performance. Adding bluetooth, wifi, lots of computing, etc. etc. has a negative impact on performance. At least that is the claim. Is it true? I have no idea, I think we keep seeing more and more complex products that measure really well, just no surround processors.

Products are getting better every year, but no multichannel processor has yet measured the equal of a SOTA dac. The companies that design and manufacture these are aware of sites like this and have insisted such measured performance is not possible. Having said that, there certainly is a SINAD value that equals inaudible noise and distortion and 100 is about it. I would not call that mediocre. That is like calling a 3.5 second 0-60 time mediocre.

I’m sure it’s not an easy algorithm to pull off.

For me with Audyssey XT 32 it is kind of a love-hate relationship with me. I really liked what it did for my home theater in my prior home.

I just didn’t like how thin it sounded for two channel.

Maybe it was accurate, or maybe I like a little more bass.

I get to run it in my new home and room, so maybe I will like it.

I know that the trend now is to just run DSP and forget about all the reflections of the room, and I think that’s a mistake. Even in the reviews here, I don’t see a treatment on the wall anywhere, bear hardwood floors with the small rug in the middle, I don’t get that. There’s no way that it can sound as good as having some reflection points tamed, and then you can run the DSP to take a little strain off of the algorithm, so to speak.

Am I wrong in that thinking, can the room corrections take into account if the room is not treated? Or will it come up with a different formula every time?
 

Purité Audio

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Depends upon your loudspeakers, if they are constant directivity then treating first reflections with the usual 2’ foam with its commensurate absorption coefficient could actually make the sound worse.
Keith
 
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Same room correction, just new setup software.

Trinnov is quite a bit more advanced and capable in it's optimization capabilities and the sophistication of a system it can control. A lot of people don't need that and this would be a waste for them potentially.

I didn’t mean to come off harsh on here, I’m the newcomer LOL. I guess I expect more for the price, but if it’s got stellar room correction then that’s a big plus.

I’m almost ready, but I’m going wait a year or two, even if we can’t hear these measurements, I still want a well measuring AVR. I figure in the next year or two correction is going to be even better.

Look how long it took them to get away from XT32!
 
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Depends upon your loudspeakers, if they are constant directivity then treating first reflections with the usual 2’ foam with its commensurate absorption coefficient could actually make the sound worse.
Keith

Come on stop that! I’ve never found that to be true.

I’d have to see graphs and proof of that, since this is a science site… show me the money
 

Purité Audio

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It’s true, you would only use absorption if there was something specific in the off-axis that you wanted to adjust, if the off-axis is the same as the on then there would be no point.
Having said that the vast majority of traditional loudspeakers do not have the same on and off-axis response.
Keith
 
D

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I think this is part of the problem in my opinion, everybody’s getting away from treating their room, and that’s a mistake in my opinion.

I can almost guarantee with a reasonable amount of certainty, that every time you run room correction with no treatments anywhere, it’s going to come up with totally different measurements.

What happens to the perfect graphs as the music, or the movies change SPL?

I would have to actually see the data, just not the end result graph, and it would seem to me that there needs to be some kind of automatic correction. In fact I wouldn’t doubt if it’s already out there, or if it’s being designed now. Without treatments on the wall, ceiling, and the floor areas it’s a recipe for disaster in my opinion.

Unless you’re gonna tell me room correction gets the bass out of the corners of my room? Or in fact does my room only sound good at the MLP?

Are they designing speakers that don’t reflect off of walls now? So if it doesn’t reflect off the first reflection point where does it go? Lol it has to go somewhere.
 
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D

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It’s true, you would only use absorption if there was something specific in the off-axis that you wanted to adjust, if the off-axis is the same as the on then there would be no point.
Having said that the vast majority of traditional loudspeakers do not have the same on and off-axis response.
Keith

I understand what you’re saying, and I don’t want to argue the point. You guys are in the industry, and you should know what’s what.

Most of the people on here, manufacturer’s, major contributors, seem like very honest people, and I’m learning each day. But right now in my opinion the industry, 90% of the industry needs to regain the consumers trust. Even if our ears cannot hear any better, trying to sell a piece of gear that cost $10,000 or $15,000 and measures like it does should be against the law. Is it too much to ask to get a swinging golf panther for 15 grand? Excluding this preamp, because this one measures very respectively, and it’s got a lot going for it.

Look at some of the stuff trying to be passed off as state of the art, these guys are embarrassing the industry and themselves. That’s my point, most of it has barely surpassed the level of my nine-year-old preamp, except for Atmos, and for 4K.
 

Matthew J Poes

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It’s true, you would only use absorption if there was something specific in the off-axis that you wanted to adjust, if the off-axis is the same as the on then there would be no point.
Having said that the vast majority of traditional loudspeakers do not have the same on and off-axis response.
Keith
That is specific to addressing first reflections. Adding absorption isn't only about absorbing first reflections. Reflections, generally, can refer to the way in which sound is bouncing around the room. Many rooms decay too slowly and you would add absorption to address this. I agree that a good speaker shouldn't have absorption placed at first reflection points, but the room likely still needs absorption added. I have measured 100's of rooms and have just as many sent to me all the time. Many times the RT time is in excess of half a second, which is too long for home theater.
 

BDWoody

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I’m almost ready, but I’m going wait a year or two, even if we can’t hear these measurements, I still want a well measuring AVR. I figure in the next year or two correction is going to be even better.

I'm in the same waiting mode...quite happy with my old Integra pre/pro that gives me what I need at the moment. When I actually set up an atmos type theater, I'll see what's out there, but for now I'm good.

By the way, are you familiar with Floyd Toole's book, "Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms"?

It is pretty highly recommended reading around here, and you seem to be someone who wouldn't mind doing a little reading to jump up the learning curve.
 
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That is specific to addressing first reflections. Adding absorption isn't only about absorbing first reflections. Reflections, generally, can refer to the way in which sound is bouncing around the room. Many rooms decay too slowly and you would add absorption to address this. I agree that a good speaker shouldn't have absorption placed at first reflection points, but the room likely still needs absorption added. I have measured 100's of rooms and have just as many sent to me all the time. Many times the RT time is in excess of half a second, which is too long for home theater.

Thanks for not giving a blanket statement, and I appreciate you leaving that open for different approaches.

I’d be able to see a speaker that doesn’t cause any reflection at the first reflection point, or the traditional reflection points. But if you say they exist then you guys are to know, but like I said I appreciate it because there is no blanket statement in all of this. My speakers are 20-year-old Wilson audio speakers, and for me I’m not giving them up, because I think I would have to audition too many pairs of speakers in my room to get what I like, plus at 230 pounds apiece they are absolute bears, And I’m not moving them unless I have a good reason lol. Absolutely full range heart pounding bass from these speakers, and I can’t say that for many of them. But in my room they were not easy to set up, and I’ve tamed some of the reflection points at least the first couple, and without it, in a 16‘ x 26‘ room, the MLP is muddy with bass.
 
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I'm in the same waiting mode...quite happy with my old Integra pre/pro that gives me what I need at the moment. When I actually set up an atmos type theater, I'll see what's out there, but for now I'm good.

By the way, are you familiar with Floyd Toole's book, "Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms"?

It is pretty highly recommended reading around here, and you seem to be someone who wouldn't mind doing a little reading to jump up the learning curve.

I’m glad you’re happy with what you have, and that’s what I need to do right now, stop chasing my tail and listening to people that want me to spend more money lol.

I’ve been at this room for 14 months, and it’s that time to button it up.

I’ve read bits and pieces of his book… just enough to be dangerous LOL.

Part of my problem is my ceiling is only 7 foot high in my music room, but I’ve got a lot of the reflections tamed, there’s also a large stone fireplace, and by large I mean 10 feet of stone. I have some 4 inch treatments in front of that, and some 2 inch ones also. bass traps on the bottom half of the corners, I have bass traps to install so the corners will be fully trapped. I think that’s one of the biggest things that anyone can do for sound, because that just muddies everything up.

I understand it Woody, It’s time to sit back and enjoy the music.
 

Bugal1998

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I think this is part of the problem in my opinion, everybody’s getting away from treating their room, and that’s a mistake in my opinion.
I was actually under the impression that room treatment was only growing in popularity. Sure, some may use room correction as an alternative to treatment but I haven’t seen that as a trend in areas I frequent.

I’m actually doing a best-effort room treatment approach; ‘flexible’ walls for low frequency damping, front and rear walls and rear riser engineered for additional bass absorption, ray traced computer modeled acoustic treatments including absorption, reflection, and diffusion, etc. And I want the best room optimization I can find to add the final polish.

For me with Audyssey XT 32 it is kind of a love-hate relationship with me. I really liked what it did for my home theater in my prior home.

I just didn’t like how thin it sounded for two channel.

Maybe it was accurate, or maybe I like a little more bass.

My experience with XT32 is that it consistently sets the bass (subwoofers at least) about 1.5-2db below flat, which just sounds… awful. That means adding ~5db just to restore the typical +3db rise due to room response. I suspect a good number of folks running XT32 who believe they like their subs 6db hot, may in fact be simply restoring the typical room rise.

If a studio happened to EQ their room to flat, then flat sounds good. But if the mixing/mastering studio has the typical room rise, then mirroring a similar room rise at home is important.

Edit: There are many other poor recordings that need extra bass; my comments above are referring to well engineered music per the AES list of reference tracks.
 

RichB

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What I've been told numerous times by the software engineers involved in coding the control software for these (and various other brands) is that the "mediocre" performance is largely coming from a balancing act they are playing. I am curious to test the SPDIF output of the Trinnov that was just activated with a SOTA DAC to see what happens. If it does what I think it will (no improvement in the measurement over factory DAC) it will show that the bottleneck is in fact in the software side of things.

The balancing act was described as a need to ensure that the DAC is operating in its most linear range over the widest range of input/output levels. Since this is a preamp/processor with DAC, it needs to perform its best when turned way down or all the way up. They have also indicated that simply including a lot of "things" in a package often negatively impacts its measured performance. Adding bluetooth, wifi, lots of computing, etc. etc. has a negative impact on performance. At least that is the claim. Is it true? I have no idea, I think we keep seeing more and more complex products that measure really well, just no surround processors.

It seems reasonable that large channel count products must reserve digital headroom.
For example, a process may reserve up to 18dB digital headroom for REQ and bass management.

Wifi and Bluetooth are also problematic. I had to move the Sonica DAC (BT and Wifi) away from other components to rid the system of buzzing and popping noise.

Products are getting better every year, but no multichannel processor has yet measured the equal of a SOTA dac. The companies that design and manufacture these are aware of sites like this and have insisted such measured performance is not possible. Having said that, there certainly is a SINAD value that equals inaudible noise and distortion and 100 is about it. I would not call that mediocre. That is like calling a 3.5 second 0-60 time mediocre.

100 SINAD is pretty good and clearly not mediocre but has some system dependency. For example, highly efficient speakers paired with high-gain amplifier may require much less preamplification. On such a system, these processors may have SINAD closer to 70 or 80 which may not be enough to eliminate audible hiss. Measurements of SINAD versus gain are provided at ASR and useful for some.

Many kilo-buck processors/receivers and publish little or no performance specifications.
ASR SINAD and other measurements are a force for good providing some incentive to raise the bar, and hopefully, manufactures to will return to publishing performance specifications.

- Rich
 

hmt

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The Trinnov has a noise floor of -140 db. It is distortion which sets the SINAD value. I do not think noise will be a problem even in those settings. Plus in most cases high sensitivity speakers will mostly be employed in large rooms where people are sitting far away which then lowers audible noise from the seating position. For people with variable gain amplifiers or active speakers ist is no problem from the start.
 

sarumbear

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The Trinnov has a noise floor of -140 db. It is distortion which sets the SINAD value. I do not think noise will be a problem even in those settings. Plus in most cases high sensitivity speakers will mostly be employed in large rooms where people are sitting far away which then lowers audible noise from the seating position. For people with variable gain amplifiers or active speakers ist is no problem from the start.
I have a Trinnov Altitude 16 and I cannot hear any noise unless I put my ear next to JBL in wall speakers that have horns.

I paid good money but I like good things in life. I drive a top of tge range Range Rover, which is also expensive, but like the Trinnov, it delivers in form and performence. When I replaced a Denon AVR, there was so many little things that were better that the final overall result was much bigger. To me the difference is like being driven by an American limo and a Rolls Royce or Maybach.

I’m waiting their new 16-ch class D amplifier to arrive. It is just 3U heigh, which will mean I can get rid of my equipment rack.
 

Golfx

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I have a Trinnov Altitude 16 and I cannot hear any noise unless I put my ear next to JBL in wall speakers that have horns.

I paid good money but I like good things in life. I drive a top of tge range Range Rover, which is also expensive, but like the Trinnov, it delivers in form and performence. When I replaced a Denon AVR, there was so many little things that were better that the final overall result was much bigger. To me the difference is like being driven by an American limo and a Rolls Royce or Maybach.

I’m waiting their new 16-ch class D amplifier to arrive. It is just 3U heigh, which will mean I can get rid of my equipment rack.
The 16 ch amp looks amazing. I could bridge it for LCR and still have 10 channels left to run heights and surrounds.
 

sarumbear

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The 16 ch amp looks amazing. I could bridge it for LCR and still have 10 channels left to run heights and surrounds.
I will be running as fallows. Numbers are channels.

1. Left
2. Left Sub
3. Right
4. Right Sub
5 & 6 in bridge. Centre
7. Centre Sub
8 & 9. Sides
10 - 15. Heights
16. Spare
 

Dimifoot

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I will be running as fallows. Numbers are channels.

1. Left
2. Left Sub
3. Right
4. Right Sub
5 & 6 in bridge. Centre
7. Centre Sub
8 & 9. Sides
10 - 15. Heights
16. Spare
Are you using passive subs?
 
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