Why are modern AV Receivers so terrible?

[xr100]

In an ideal world we shouldn't have these things encoded in proprietary formats - they should all be open standards and open source.

Depends on whether something of proprietary value is brought to the table or not. I think there's a good argument for Dolby Atmos in a theatrical environment. (Quality control etc., cost of Atmos processor not a problem c.f. total system cost inc. installation.) In the consumer space, a lot of attempts at "land grabs" are underway.

Of course, many "industry standards" are patent-encumbered, too.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

User effort, Quality, Price - you can choose only two simultaneously.
If you want good and cheap be prepared to invest time and effort.
One can try getting I2S or spdif out of receiver digital board and then take it from there (multiple dacs, super amps, crossovers, multiamping, megaspeakers, etc)
Or get Denon X3600/X4500 and feed a bunch of good amps from pre-outs.

 

[xr100]

User effort, Quality, Price - you can choose only two simultaneously.
If you want good and cheap be prepared to invest time and effort.

Exactly. Unfortunately I'm the "do it as near to perfection as possible or don't bother" type. That means a lot of "user effort"! No Atmos here yet. :-(

Too bad there isn't the mass demand for "doing it right" and manufacturers keep churning out revised versions of the same products every year.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Exactly. Unfortunately I'm the "do it as near to perfection as possible or don't bother" type. That means a lot of "user effort"! No Atmos here yet. :-(

You can get a Denon with Atmos and get out either digital or analog out from the receiver.

 

[capt.s]

I have an X4400H, and although they all look the same at a glance, it's build quality is significantly different than the X3500H I had previously that didn't fair well in Amirs review. I made the switch because the X4400 in 11.1 mode physically disconnects the L & R pre-outs from the internal amps freeing them up for AMOS duties. It's claimed that makes it a cleaner preamp for stereo listening and I hope it gets tested one day to see if that's the case. I can say I found it to sound much cleaner than the X3500H driving a Parasound A21.

 

[xr100]

AMOS duties.

Amous, you mean? (Sorry, couldn't resist. )

 

[xr100]

You can get a Denon with Atmos and get out either digital or analog out from the receiver.

Thanks, I'll have to look into that.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

I have an X4400H, and although they all look the same at a glance, it's build quality is significantly different than the X3500H I had previously that didn't fair well in Amirs review. I made the switch because the X4400 in 11.1 mode physically disconnects the L & R pre-outs from the internal amps freeing them up for AMOS duties. It's claimed that makes it a cleaner preamp for stereo listening and I hope it gets tested one day to see if that's the case. I can say I found it to sound much cleaner than the X3500H driving a Parasound A21.

X3600 can disconnect as well. But no doubt X4500 should be better.

Thanks, I'll have to look into that.

A nice gentleman in another thread here posted this link: https://www.nubert-forum.de/nuforum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=36789
Although it is in german it is quite clear on how to extract output or feed internal amps on many receivers.

 

[capt.s]

Yes, I believe that was a nice upgrade from the X3500. The only issue is that even though the amps are disconnected they remain powered and you can fry an egg on the chassis when it's basically doing nothing power wise. Eco mode, which cuts rail voltage, doesn't seem to improve the idle heat either.

 

[direstraitsfan98]

In some ways, you can blame Dolby Atmos. By increasing the number of channels, these companies have had to cut more corners to keep prices the same. It was bad enough to stuff 5 amps in one box. Now they do 9, 11 or whatever? The retail channel is brutal in demanding most number of channels and logos so these companies are in survival mode.

I also think many of these products are sold at a loss at the end of the day. So hard for them to invest even more in engineering and design quality.

Oppo was a rare exception in this field and they pulled out.

Oppo didn't make AVR's. They made bluray players.

 

[Sancus]

Oppo didn't make AVR's. They made bluray players.

Sure, but Oppo BluRay players, aside from being renowned as high quality with excellent engineering, also provided discrete outputs for surround channels and decoded surround formats, which makes them basically prepros as well.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Yes, I believe that was a nice upgrade from the X3500. The only issue is that even though the amps are disconnected they remain powered and you can fry an egg on the chassis when it's basically doing nothing power wise. Eco mode, which cuts rail voltage, doesn't seem to improve the idle heat either.

If this really grinds your gears maybe you can simply disconnect power inside the chassis going to amps, unless it actually triggers some sort of protection (which probably can be also disabled )

 

[Cahudson42]

It is sooo much easier to setup a great headphone system for serious listening, and not fight all the additional issues with a room/amp/speaker system for that.

I am very comfortable relegating room/speakers to kids/wife/ me movies ',Home Theater' etc. using a 'terrible' AVR.. ,(Onkyo TX-RZ720) and it's primitive room EQ.

Who really needs a great Home Theater setup for wife to watch General Hospital?

When I want to listen to a great Beethoven 7th, it's my Liquid Spark and HE400i, and LG V20 streamer/dac...

 

[Dimifoot]

Sure, but Oppo BluRay players, aside from being reknowned as high quality with excellent engineering, also provided discrete outputs for surround channels and decoded surround formats, which makes them basically prepros as well.

No Room eq though. And no XLRs (-05 models had L-R XLRs)

 

[Bear123]

Are there any companies that still produce quality equipment? I don't want, when I have the funds, to spend a lot of money an KEF speakers and then have crappy equipment drive them. I would be happy with five channels, and even then it would take some time for me to saturate them with equipment.

Get a Denon AVR like the 3500 or 3600. Although measurements might show that it does not have SOTA measured performance, it has plenty of power to drive the KEF speakers you are looking at, and it will provide a signal with distortion and noise below any audible threshold you can detect in the real world and a flat, accurate response.....certainly orders of magnitude lower than the distortion your speakers will produce.

It will also give you very good eq below Schroeder that is required for high fidelity with any speakers in a room, and it does an excellent job eq'ing dual subs...also critical for high fidelity sound.

Do you think you can hear the .006% distortion in the signal a Denon 3500 sends to your speakers that probably have 20 or 100 times higher distortion depending on listening level?

It's certainly a worthy objective to attempt to get manufactures to provide equipment with better measured performance if doing so is not exorbitantly expensive and merely requires a bit of effort on the design and engineering side.

But to think that the world is ending because a $600 AVR is "only" providing a signal with .005% distortion is ludicrous. Can it be improved? Surely. Should it be improved? Maybe so. Will it sound any different? Many will surely imagine so.

 

[bobbooo]

They will mirror each other. Acoustics of a room behaves as a LTI system.

As I understood, speakers are not perfect LTI systems, so the measurements could differ from the predictions.

See the Audyssey thread(s) at AVSforum.com. Plenty of measurements.

I did already look there but couldn't see a direct comparison of post-EQ graphs between MultEQ XT and XT32 of the same speakers in the same room. Do you have a link to any such comparisons?

 

[bobbooo]

I mean, you may not hear a thing by reversing the polarity of both your 2 speakers

Not even this is certain for everyone. Some people can indeed hear absolute phase - I happen to be one of them (I pass this blind test every time).

 

[xr100]

As I understood, speakers are not perfect LTI systems

Not LTI since they have non-linearities. But obviously LTI signal processing can be used to improve their performance.

 

[bobbooo]

But obviously LTI signal processing can be used to improve their performance.

That I don't doubt. But the predicted post-EQ graphs will not necessarily be completely accurate as these non-linearities are not taken into account. Only actual measurements will show definitively how much better MultEQ XT32 is compared to XT, which I have not yet seen. @amirm maybe this could be an interesting test for you to do using the Klippel NFS?

 

[amirm]

That I don't doubt. But the predicted post-EQ graphs will not necessarily be completely accurate as these non-linearities are not taken into account. Only actual measurements will show definitively how much better MultEQ XT32 is compared to XT, which I have not yet seen. @amirm maybe this could be an interesting test for you to do using the Klippel NFS?

How?