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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

Larry B. Larabee

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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. :(

The pileated woodpeckers up here in the north are usually walking around upside down on a tree looking for dinner.

Should anyone on the forum who equates decent sound reproduction with any avr be taken seriously? I have a yamaha avr and wouldn't consider it even mid-fi and mine didn't cost 2k for basically the same specs.
 

amper42

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Would it be possible to keep the Yamaha RX-A3080 Review thread comments on topic? :D
 
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amirm

amirm

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Would it be possible to keep the Yamaha RX-A3080 Review thread comments on topic? :D
You have to remember that some of these members were naughty and not nice and didn't get anything for Christmas. So asking them to not talk about anything but the review is nigh impossible! :D
 

tktran303

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The problem is that most readers here are not experienced movie or music enthusiasts.

Music and movies is highly dynamic in nature, so delivering 100-200WPC RMS across all 7 channels is never needed. Same thing about the heatsink. Why need extruded aluminium when the thinner and lighter metal still allows the unit to run sufficiently cool (and reduces unit shipping costs)

If I bought a 9 channel home theatre AVR in 2022 that supplied 9x200W RMS continuous (class A/B) it would be a truly dumb design, or truly expensive design.

Also, the Anglo centric view is very clear. Why does it default to Japanese? Maybe because the company is Japanese, and the language is set at the factory before shipping destination? A consumer probably never needs to set the language.

Did you know that in many Asian markets, new European cars come with silver disc (CD) players and BlueTooth/USB and 3.5mm aux but also tape decks?! Thanks

Some markets value flexibility and legacy support.

Hence the (s)video and component support.
 
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amirm

amirm

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Why does it default to Japanese? Maybe because the company is Japanese, and the language is set at the factory before shipping destination
This is a US product so a factory reset must keep it in English. I have reset tons of products and none have switched languages like this.This is a bug as it first switched submenues to Japanese and gradually flipped all of them into the same.

My comment wasn't this anyway. It was about the catch 22 that they all have when you select the wrong language. You then can't read what let's you undo it. So I thought one solution would be to always she the language selection in English in addition to selected one.
 

Roland

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This reluctance to keep the discussion on track could be because it appears to contradict the experience of many forum members who own this receiver, i.e. it sounds great and measures poorly.
 

tktran303

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Of course it sounds great. Show me any speaker that has distortion lower than 80dB down... at any frequency, at any SPL.... I mean how are you going to heard that SINAD of 80dB when plugged into a speaker that had distortion of about -50dB, 60dB at best, and modern music typically has a dynamic range of the equivalent of about 12 bits or less...

There's a natural affinity to get into the weeds and complain. Me included. For 2022 I'm trying to stop doing that, and make more constructive posts. Maybe Amir is right, we didn't get our Christmas presents, or even if we did, we'll all had 2 crappy Christmases....
 

charleski

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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?
As @peng said, they're measuring the preamp outs for their initial graphs, whereas amir is measuring the power amp as well. If you look down at the power seeps they're getting ~0.03% THD+N at 10W, which is -70dB, worse than the number amir got (oddly they get inferior measurements with only 2 channels driven).
 

peng

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Of course it sounds great. Show me any speaker that has distortion lower than 80dB down... at any frequency, at any SPL.... I mean how are you going to heard that SINAD of 80dB when plugged into a speaker that had distortion of about -50dB, 60dB at best, and modern music typically has a dynamic range of the equivalent of about 12 bits or less...

There's a natural affinity to get into the weeds and complain. Me included. For 2022 I'm trying to stop doing that, and make more constructive posts. Maybe Amir is right, we didn't get our Christmas presents, or even if we did, we'll all had 2 crappy Christmases....

I agree that it can sound great, but by your own argument, it is also another example of how people can hear the so called "better sound quality" in many different ways that they would describe as the difference between the "sound" of their Yamaha vs Denon, Marantz or others, need to be taken as opinions. Quite often those posters would use wording as though they were making statements of facts. It is a well known fact that people often make claims about how they heard all kinds of better sound quality in terms of soundstage, authoritative control of their speakers, made them opening up, musical, warm, crisp, punchy bass, silky smooth highs, on and on...) all just by going from one brand to another. That's all fine but unfortunately many readers might take such subjective opinions seriously and acted accordingly... Me, I find subjective reviews highly entertaining especially the well written multi page ones that would make me stopped in the middle, made myself another cup of coffee and tea and then continued.:)

By the way, I was very impressed with Hegel's H90 (might have been the original version) paired with the LS50 (also the original version). So impressed that I bought them, and now demoted them (only the speakers) to my desktop mainly because I ran out of room for them in my two channel systems. Note: I mentioned the Hegel because it also measured "bad" by Amir's standard, but could also sound very good under many conditions, not based on my subjective opinion, but by Amir's bench test results.
 

beagleman

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I've seen many good reviews of the ONKYO TX-RZ50, where one reviwer even said that it is better than the DENON AVR-X3700H, but I would like to see the measurements before purchasing it, which unfortunately is also sold out everywhere...

I get a feeling many are taking measurements to be some Holy Grail as a direct correlation as to how one will perceive and enjoy sound.

Many measurements are simply an academic exercise, UNLESS they produce audible differences with NORMAL sound material at normally used loudness levels.

Where one can truly begin to HEAR an audible difference under controlled conditions is more meaningful that simply claiming one thing measures 10 or 20db better or worse than another, so therefore it will "Sound better"

I came here for one reason. TO AVOID all the silly subjective type stuff, and see something more meaningful.

But finding just the opposite in many forum posters ideas.......................

If it measures less than Stellar, it must sound bad. Instant "Write off" of many fairly popular components, based on ZERO actual listening, but just on numbers.

The Yamaha Aventage line is quite well reviewed on many other Audio and home theatre forums, by people that actually have heard or compared them.
 

Dj7675

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Music and movies is highly dynamic in nature, so delivering 100-200WPC RMS across all 7 channels is never needed
I actually don’t think it would be dumb at all to hit 100w across all channels.. We all know the LCR do require a large percentage of activity in multichanel movies. But there are times in some movies where surrounds and even atmos his these levels. There are also 2 other consideration...
1-Often times, in larger rooms the surrounds/atmos speakers could be pretty far away. This distance requires more power.
2-Often times people will use smaller, less efficient speakers than their mains. Many bookshelf/surround/ceiling speakers can be 3 to 5 dB’s less sensitive than the main speakers. As a result they require more power.
As a result I would not want 60w of power in surround/atmos channels.
Plus, in 2022, manufacturers shouldn’t even be using class a/b IMO. Class D would be ideal for receivers... measure fine, enough power, less heat, and lighter.
 

iraweiss

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As @peng said, they're measuring the preamp outs for their initial graphs, whereas amir is measuring the power amp as well. If you look down at the power seeps they're getting ~0.03% THD+N at 10W, which is -70dB, worse than the number amir got (oddly they get inferior measurements with only 2 channels driven).
Thanks for the explanation.

BTW, compare the distortion measurements of recent Audioholics review of the amp sections of the RX-A6A https://www.audioholics.com/av-receiver-reviews/yamaha-rx-a6a to their measurements of the much older RX-A3000 https://www.audioholics.com/av-receiver-reviews/rx-a3000

Yamaha has done better. With some prompting they can do so again. I miss my now deceased RX-A3000!
 

peng

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I get a feeling many are taking measurements to be some Holy Grail as a direct correlation as to how one will perceive and enjoy sound.

Many measurements are simply an academic exercise, UNLESS they produce audible differences with NORMAL sound material at normally used loudness levels.

I don't get that impression here on ASR, I might have missed some posts that reflected your sentiment but I think those were the minority. You get those kind of posts on every forum I supposed, but overall I think most here can separate the less than "stellar" or "SOTA" measurements that are not audible, to really poor measurements that likely would result in audibly not so good performance.

I came here for one reason. TO AVOID all the silly subjective type stuff, and see something more meaningful.

You came to the right place, but it may be unrealistic to expect 100%, may be 65 to 70%?

But finding just the opposite in many forum posters ideas.......................

If it measures less than Stellar, it must sound bad. Instant "Write off" of many fairly popular components, based on ZERO actual listening, but just on numbers.

Again, to me the majority of the posters are quite objective, compared to some other forums such as AVFxxxxx:D Amir did often call the results of many products he reviewed "poor" or even worse, but he typically also included caveats such as "not audible, not likely audible... etc..".

Many posters do complain about the poor engineering aspects when they see results that are less than stellar or below average, that part is true, but again, most can separate issues. One recent I can use is that more than one posters might have complained about Denon substituted the AK4458 DAC with apparently one that has much poorly specs, but they still bought them anyway.
 

capslock

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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!

I was thinking the same thing. Aside from that 120 Hz peak, it does better than a great many class AB amps, no matter if AVR or regular amp. I suspect the tricky thing is that unlike distortion, this rectifier noise will not fall relative to the signal as level is reduced. Depending on where it gets picked up, it may well be there no matter what the volume control is set to. Only by lucky coincidence, might it be attenuated by the volume control, but then it would still result in an poor S/N ratio if the input is not on the hot side.

Is this true analog performance or is there an A/D and D/A conversion in between?

Didn't AVR reviews use to include measurements on HDMI and SPDIF inputs? Wasn't that where most AVRs screwed up royally rather than with analog in?
 
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Anterantz

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I actually don’t think it would be dumb at all to hit 100w across all channels.. We all know the LCR do require a large percentage of activity in multichanel movies. But there are times in some movies where surrounds and even atmos his these levels. There are also 2 other consideration...
1-Often times, in larger rooms the surrounds/atmos speakers could be pretty far away. This distance requires more power.
2-Often times people will use smaller, less efficient speakers than their mains. Many bookshelf/surround/ceiling speakers can be 3 to 5 dB’s less sensitive than the main speakers. As a result they require more power.
As a result I would not want 60w of power in surround/atmos channels.
Plus, in 2022, manufacturers shouldn’t even be using class a/b IMO. Class D would be ideal for receivers... measure fine, enough power, less heat, and lighter.
I can be with you in class d, but not everyone likes that sound! I tried a nad t778 and ncore hypex amp and found the sound too neutral / analytical.
 

Anterantz

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I actually don’t think it would be dumb at all to hit 100w across all channels.. We all know the LCR do require a large percentage of activity in multichanel movies. But there are times in some movies where surrounds and even atmos his these levels. There are also 2 other consideration...
1-Often times, in larger rooms the surrounds/atmos speakers could be pretty far away. This distance requires more power.
2-Often times people will use smaller, less efficient speakers than their mains. Many bookshelf/surround/ceiling speakers can be 3 to 5 dB’s less sensitive than the main speakers. As a result they require more power.
As a result I would not want 60w of power in surround/atmos channels.
Plus, in 2022, manufacturers shouldn’t even be using class a/b IMO. Class D would be ideal for receivers... measure fine, enough power, less heat, and lighter.
I have had the best avr measured to date which was the denon 8500h and now I have an arcam avr20 that is surely one of the worst measured, but I prefer the sound of the arcam to that of the denon.

The only thing that is less than denon is the power
extra that I had and have 13 channels in a single box..with the arcam I have had to invest in external stages which I hate to do.

Why be always thinking of the sinad to think that an avr will sound better or worse?

I've had a 3700 denon
in my hands and still not sounding bad it has nothing to do with my 8500h ... The 8500h when sinad has given the best is using it as a previous one, if it is used as a single box its sinad does not differ much from any other avr of its brand ... who would spend 3k
with 13 channels to not use any channel?


The sinad is one more value, and hopefully in 2023 they will manufacture 10x200w avr for which we have more demanding boxes.


We are guided a lot by the power but an avr that of 100w and another that of 140w for
channel, the final spl of those 40w with the same boxes in your listening point is not even 1db more .... why fight for 30 / 40w that we would not notice?
 
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amirm

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I get a feeling many are taking measurements to be some Holy Grail as a direct correlation as to how one will perceive and enjoy sound.
Measurements *are* the holy grail of whether your perception of a product is correct or not. Vast majority of people buying a high-end AVR like this buy it on the notion that it sounds better than something else. Maybe they associate Yamaha with Piano and music. Maybe with fond early memories of using one. Or believing the marketing literature:

1641172074115.png


They even talk about the kind of feet the thing has to improve fidelity!

foundational-design-rev-image_b8060911d947a3baa1e6863dc91cfb4a.jpg


Measurements bust through all of this and tell you the truth about performance of this unit. That messing with the footer wasn't the right thing to do for better performance but better optimization of power supply rectifier noise was.

Maybe you want to be left alone to believe in this bit:

1641172206455.png


I am not. I want them to focus on what is clearly disturbing the audio signal and fix that, than chasing audiophile nonsense like above. Better engineering will not cost you anything. And we are only going to get there with measurements. So in that sense, they are absolutely the holy grail of bringing sanity to audio engineering. This industry has fallen in a ditch and lost its way for decades now. It is time that we right that ship and not make excuses with "oh, maybe no one hears these distortions and noise." You can't prove that, nor should you give a free pass to any company for it when the above is what they are spending their resources on.
 
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amirm

amirm

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And let's remember the totally broken architecture here where internal amps are allowed to suck power, clip and shut down the unit when you are trying to use an external amplifier. It is measurement and kind of testing I do that brings such deficiencies up.
 
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