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Yamaha RX-A3080 Review (AVR)

Rate this AVR

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 42 21.8%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 111 57.5%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 31 16.1%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 9 4.7%

  • Total voters
    193

Spkrdctr

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iu
Seriously, that would be the sweet spot for me (and likely many others)... going up to $16K on the other hand is not. But I would like Dirac as well as good amplification, and I'd be fine with only getting 7-9 channels as a compromise.
I agree. We do not need more than 7 channels. ASR needs a "Top Tier" rating for AVRs so manufacturers have something to shoot for. Now we have to have a talk with Amir and see what the measurements of a top tier AVR would look like. I'd like it to be front three channels driven at 100 watts/channel at 8 ohms and 200 at 4 ohms. Then the surround channels could all be at say 75/8 ohms 100/4ohms per channel. But it would be an interesting discussion! To earn the coveted top tier award I bet you that the manufacturers would start making product to get that designation. Just like the Audioholics Bassaholic ratings. Many sub makers, but not all of course, pay attention to those ratings and make subwoofers accordingly. Hmmm...... maybe I should get ahold of Amir and flesh this out. He would be advancing the state of the art for AVRs basic functions of DAC/pre amp section and amplification standards. The real fly in the ointment is that so few to almost no people use the AVR in the pure direct/straight mode. All of the other modes have some EQ stuff going on. So the problem in pure direct or straight mode is it would meet Amir's top tier rating, but in the every day "real use" scenario everyone is listening to surround sound music etc. and never really listening to the the ASR Top Tier standard. As usual, this stuff is much harder to implement than to think up. I once again tip my hat to ALL of our engineers who really try to deliver great product at a decent price. Our engineers are rock stars!
 
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Hipster Doofus

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Of late I am thinking a good 7 channel preamp with xar outputs and a bunch of PA5‘s. Or just one PA5 to start with on your front speakers. Many of us have a separate stereo system in the same room as the AVR system. Use it all as a hybrid system, playing stereo mode for music with dac input. So start hunting down those $4000.00 pre amps that seem obsolete and you can still find for a few hundred. You may have to run your video signal directly to the tv thereby losing you on screen menu . Maybe some here know more then me on hookups because that stuff make my feeble brain spin.
 

Anterantz

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Despite the noise, at least the wattage amount is indeed healthy.

I agree with @Anterantz that I would like to see 5ch wattage tested. Denon/Marantz usually does keep the promise of 70% in 5ch vs 2ch, so would be nice to see if Yamaha is similar.


Question when amir gives the power at 1% thd does it mean that it is the correct measurement in real life? For example, there are other pages like sound & vision that give values in 0.1% and 1%, the latter being higher since they offer more distortion.
 

Urib

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This is a review and measurements of the Yamaha RX-A3080 Audio/Video Receiver. It was kindly purchased by a member as a refurbished unit and sent to me.
View attachment 175862

This is last year's model and motivation for testing was that it shares the same amplification as this year's models which have very different interface. Current price for this unit is $1,999.

Here is the back side:
View attachment 175863

Like the inclusion of XLR inputs and outputs. Unit was factory reset before testing. The procedure is not in the menus and is quite obscure. Upon activation, it switched into Japanese :(, requiring some effort to figure out how turn it back into English. Why not make it easier to turn the unit into English? Vast majority of the world population can read the word English in an AV product so please, make it easy to set it to this language.

Peaking inside the unit, I see the usual cheap, bent spring steel for heatsinks rather than proper extruded aluminum. I expect the premier unit from Yamaha to do better here. This did reduce the weight some as I expected the unit to be heavier. And in my testing, it ran reasonably cool.

Yamaha RX-A3080 Measurements
As usual, I started to measure the DAC portion by using the pre-amp output, only to be punched in the face by the AVR going into protection mode. As far as I can tell, there is no way to shut off the amps so not only do they disturb the analog outputs, but also don't let you crank it up to full volume beyond what the internal amps can handle. What were they thinking? Have they fixed it in this year's model? Anyway, the motivation was the amplifier anyway so let's jump into that.

Here is our usual dashboard:
View attachment 175864

This type of performance lands the unit in the middle of the pack:

View attachment 175865

Distortion is actually better than this but we have a tall power supply (rectifier) induced spike at 120 Hz which is limiting SINAD. Signal to noise ratio is good actually:
View attachment 175866

My target is 96 dB at 5 watts and we are one bit short of that.

Frequency response is nice and flat given the non-switching amplifier:
View attachment 175867

Crosstalk was rather disappointing:
View attachment 175868

It is quite far from state of the art amplifier.

Multitone performance is good:

View attachment 175869

The bell of the ball in an AVR is amount of power it has so let's start with our usual 4 ohm load:
View attachment 175870

As you see, the curve is horizontal. It should usually slope down meaning as power increases, the ratio of output signal to residual noise improves. Here, the noise is scaling up which I am assuming is the aforementioned power supply noise at 120 Hz. So what starts at average to better than average performance, ends with almost tie with the worst measured.

Power level is healthy though and improves with higher allowance for distortion:

View attachment 175871

Switching to 8 ohm we see that we essentially get the company advertised power:
View attachment 175872

I was dismayed that I had to dial down the max power in the following test as the amp would go into protection mode at higher frequencies:

View attachment 175873

Conclusions
The weakness in the amplification stage of the RX-A3080 is actually its power supply generating rectification noise. Fortunately our threshold of hearing goes up at such a low frequency so audible performance would be better. Still, there was not much in these measurements to make me smile. You can do much better with Yamaha's competitors.

I can't recommend the Yamaha RX-A3080 as a whole or its for amplification.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Will connecting external power amp through the xlr pre out should improve the performance?
 

peng

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This is a review and measurements of the Yamaha RX-A3080 Audio/Video Receiver. It was kindly purchased by a member as a refurbished unit and sent to me.


Yamaha RX-A3080 Measurements
As usual, I started to measure the DAC portion by using the pre-amp output, only to be punched in the face by the AVR going into protection mode.

Did you try measuring the preout/DAC at lower output voltage such as 1.5 V so that it might not have shutdown on protection mode?
 

thorvat

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Here is our usual dashboard:
View attachment 175864

This type of performance lands the unit in the middle of the pack:

View attachment 175865

Distortion is actually better than this but we have a tall power supply (rectifier) induced spike at 120 Hz which is limiting SINAD.

I can't recommend the Yamaha RX-A3080 as a whole or its for amplification.

If the power supply of this AVR is a little quiter it's SINAD would be limited by THD and would be app 92, 93 or maybe even 94, so this AVR would become a new leader on the AVR SINAD list. In that case it would also be quite hard not to give it a recommendation, although audible perception of such power supply improvement would be 0 (null).

Long live SINAD!
 
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amper42

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@amirm - While you typically show Benchmark results with amp performance, in the case of measuring AVR's it would be helpful to add a another AVR for comparison in the results. Since the Yamaha 3080 and the Denon 4700 are the same retail price they would have been a good match. No AVR ever approaches Benchmark so while it's a nice reference it's not as helpful as a Denon 4700 comparison would have been.

There are many who prefer the sound of the Yamaha 3080 over the Denon 4700. I believe that is mostly related to a dislike of the default Audyssey EQ sound. It would be interesting to add a listening test to the Yamaha 3080 review.
 

beagleman

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Help!

I am trying to reconcile the measurements and conclusion of this review with the Audioholics review of the functionally similar RX-A6A, the model that succeeded the RX-A3080 in Yamaha's lineup:

https://www.audioholics.com/av-receiver-reviews/yamaha-rx-a6a

Any thoughts?
I just read that review and watched his entire Video review.

They seem to value measurements over there also, yet from that review, seems Gene concluded he likes it a lot...
 

sarumbear

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Four composite and two component video inputs! Either there is a big market for Yamaha where those analogue inputs are required and we have no idea or they are extremely clueless on what the market is using.
 

MerlinGS

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So does anyone make a surround sound processor without amplification? Latest Dolby whatever processor.
The Emotiva BasX MC1 and the Tonewinner AT 300 are substantially less and provide the options of 7.3.6 or 9.3.4. Although both units are likely made by the same manufacturer, the internals are not identical since, unlike Emotive, the Tonewinner includes XLR outputs (for all channels). Tonewinner seems to be pretty good about updating its firmware to address issues, but Emotiva has a history of poor service in that context. The former has gone up in price but it still retails for $1,395 in the USA, the latter lists for $999. To my knowledge, none of these units has been objectively measured by a third party. I offered to purchase the Tonewinner and have it shipped to Amir, but the dealer (summithifiusa) did not understand why I would purchase a unit and then send it to Amir to have it tested (I felt it was only fair I be honest with him about my reasons to have the unit shipped there), and he refused to ship directly to Amir if I purchased it, so I did not purchase one. Judging by the comments on AVS, the seller provides pretty good customer service and tries to help his customers in a timely fashion to address any issues.
 

mhardy6647

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Four composite and two component video inputs! Either there is a big market for Yamaha where those analogue inputs are required and we have no idea or they are extremely clueless on what the market is using.
Maybe they're usedful for cryptocurrency mining or something equally abstruse, arcane, and 21st Century... ;)
 

digicidal

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Maybe they're usedful for cryptocurrency mining or something equally abstruse, arcane, and 21st Century... ;)
I'm always amazed at those... a few years ago I tried (unsuccessfully) to watch some of my VHS promo videos I collected while working at Tower Records. Took less than a minute to determine that 480p is the absolute minimum I can view while keeping my lunch down.

My guess is it's for UFO, bigfoot, and ghost fanatics to view their "proof" videos in their native formats. Which seems to be less than Super8 quality even now, despite nearly everyone carrying 4K (or at least 720p) capable video cameras in their pockets - strange. :rolleyes:
 

Doodski

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I'm always amazed at those... a few years ago I tried (unsuccessfully) to watch some of my VHS promo videos I collected while working at Tower Records. Took less than a minute to determine that 480p is the absolute minimum I can view while keeping my lunch down.

My guess is it's for UFO, bigfoot, and ghost fanatics to view their "proof" videos in their native formats. Which seems to be less than Super8 quality even now, despite nearly everyone carrying 4K (or at least 720p) capable video cameras in their pockets - strange. :rolleyes:
I was thinking of this just the other day. I worked through the VHS Betamax battle and saw all the improvements to the video standards over the years. Now I don't think I could watch a VHS source for long before getting frustrated at the lack of detail. :D
 

digicidal

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I was thinking of this just the other day. I worked through the VHS Betamax battle and saw all the improvements to the video standards over the years. Now I don't think I could watch a VHS source for long before getting frustrated at the lack of detail. :D
Exactly... it has nothing to do with the format itself... I can't watch low resolution YT videos either - unless it's just a 30-second advertisement or something from the 80's. Longer than that and even nostalgia can't justify the constant feeling that I need to squint or clean my glasses.
 

peng

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mhardy6647

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I'm always amazed at those... a few years ago I tried (unsuccessfully) to watch some of my VHS promo videos I collected while working at Tower Records. Took less than a minute to determine that 480p is the absolute minimum I can view while keeping my lunch down.

My guess is it's for UFO, bigfoot, and ghost fanatics to view their "proof" videos in their native formats. Which seems to be less than Super8 quality even now, despite nearly everyone carrying 4K (or at least 720p) capable video cameras in their pockets - strange. :rolleyes:
Yeah, but - in fairness - I seem to have the same problem whenever there's a great bird in the yard, such as a pileated woodpecker (female) just this morning. Terrible weather & light conditions, and I made the most of 'em... i.e., my photography "leveraged" conditions... terribly. :(

 
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