Yamaha RX-A3080 Review (AVR)

[digicidal]

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...

That's one I was looking at as well - especially because both it and it's clone (Pioneer Elite LX505) now use Dirac Live as their ARC. Sadly however, I think neither will fit the bill for me due to rather poorly spec'd internal amplification and disappointing preamp levels as well. Of course, published specs have been shown to be inaccurate countless times in Amir's reviews - but only very rarely are they worse than the test results (usually far more optimistic than reality).

The internal amplification would probably be adequate for my needs, provided it was only running the ceiling speakers and one pair of surrounds... but (despite conveniently omitting the main channel preamp output levels) they state the subwoofer outputs are 1V and the Zone2 are 200mV. Based on Amir's review of the predecessor's output... it might be as "high" as ~1.5V - but the omission from the specifications definitely doesn't inspire confidence.

Not the end of the world, but it might make amp selection a bit more challenging - especially if it has similar problems to the Yamaha in that regard.

 

[PacketofCrisps]

I don't know what to make of this really, I know measurements are important, But I just don't understand people writing off a product based of measurements alone, they are not enough to tell you whether ultimately you'll enjoy the sound or not, how big the soundstage is, the imaging, the timbre/tonality etc.

Based off these measurements people say "Denon is the only option", but to assume that without an audition? how can these measurements alone tell you if you'll enjoy the sound? I say this as I personally auditioned Denon and Yamaha av-receivers recently and I preferred the Yamaha every time, and this was with the knowledge of Amir's impressive measurements of the Denon lingering in my mind, the Denon is 'technically' better, but I much preferred how the Yamaha sounded, to my ears Denon sounded quite flat in comparison and lost pace in surround sound duties, and had considerably less depth in the soundstage, with the Yamaha I felt the sound was coming from beyond the TV.

I guess much as advertising has it's psychoacoustics effects I imagine impressive measurements could play a big part in the persons perception of sound also, I mean it has to sound good based off the stellar measurements right? We used to think it was essential to audition equipment before purchasing it, but now there are a subset of people out there that have already decided based off the measurements alone that it sounds amazing.

Don't take me wrong, I do find Amir's measurements interesting, and I think they are important in terms of keeping manufactures on their toes, I guess my issue is I'm not sure if they should be used 'alone' to decide whether a product is any good, especially when the soul purpose of these products is listening to them.

 

[Nwickliff]

@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.

I wonder how those feelings might change now that the new Audyssey MultiEQ windows application is available. My biggest complaint with Audyssey was the inability to add a room curve. Everything always came out WAAAAAY too bright! and it always screwed up my sub alignment. With manual control over everything, it is a new ballgame. That and Apple TV with lossless (albeit not super high bitrate or sample rate) music and atmos over HDMI is pretty amazing.

 

[amirm]

I wonder how those feelings might change now that the new Audyssey MultiEQ windows application is available.

I didn't realize they had released a Windows app. Is this working with all the current generation of AVRs?

 

[capslock]

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.

I missed that part. Did you see this in the 3080? I don't think your starting post said anything about this. Or was it some other AVR.

I am with some other posters that SINAD is maybe not the best single figure of merit for amps with strange problems like rectifier pickup.

Will there be measurements of the digital and HDMI ins?

 

[amirm]

Did you see this in the 3080?

Yes, I noted it in the review:

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.

 

[capslock]

Thanks, I did miss that. So what kind of voltage did you get before the amps cut out?

Was this what kept you from evaluating the D/A section? Maybe you can do this at a lower voltage level just to see if the usual flaws in the HDMI engine are there. Since SINAD will be degraded due to lower level, Yamaha will be miffed by more sub-optimal test data

 

[beagleman]

I don't know what to make of this really, I know measurements are important, But I just don't understand people writing off a product based of measurements alone, they are not enough to tell you whether ultimately you'll enjoy the sound or not, how big the soundstage is, the imaging, the timbre/tonality etc.

Don't take me wrong, I do find Amir's measurements interesting, and I think they are important in terms of keeping manufactures on their toes, I guess my issue is I'm not sure if they should be used 'alone' to decide whether a product is any good, especially when the soul purpose of these products is listening to them.

Totally agree.
Honestly, I came to this forum expecting to LOVE seeing mostly measurements. I still do love seeing them!

And I appreciate all his work and time measuring stuff (mostly speakers honestly) but now feel slightly confused/unsure......

I have heard a few of the Yamahas and actually own Two of them! One is entry level, the Other an Aventage Model from a few years back.

I very much expected the Aventage to measure quite good, as it sounds great in all ways, even with demanding 2 channel music!
And frankly it seems to sound easily as good, in fact possibly better than other brands of AVRs I have listened to......

Now I feel like after seeing the less than stellar measurements, there is some huge disconnect, in that Me, and everyone else that raves about the Aventage great sound, must either all be wrong, or, there is not a direct connection between okay, good, great, measurements in relation to actual sound quality.

@amirm I DO TOTALLY understand your reply back to me a bit further up in the thread. I really do. I agree in a way, but at the same time, feel maybe there is something we are missing or not taking into account as to how it can sound great, yet measure mediocre...??

 

[lewdish]

Yamaha should have more than the means to build better hardware, but it looks like in recent every step forward they take in terms of features they fall behind on thoroughness of completion & implementation.

I was pretty excited to see how the new YPAO would be... but with folks stating bugs with the latest AxA series (along w/ Gene's measurements at Audioholics) and seeing the measurements of this previous flagship, it feels like Yamaha is selling a lot of inconsistent products while they keep touting the lowest return rates~

I'll hope that future Yamaha takes notice and goes on to make better & more finished products, but I'll be looking for another product in the meantime.

 

[mhardy6647]

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

You know... I might even buy the feet thing if they weren't injection-molded plastic (or so it appears from the image in the aforementioned post).

 

[Ataraxia]

I understand holding marketing accountable, and I dislike charlatans and dishonest salesmen... But I will be another voice of reason in this thread because my A2080 has been nothing but excellent for the last 3 years playing 2 channel music - R3's, running Tidal via mconnect upnp.

Put an A1080, 2080, 3080 on the floor in an acoustically solid room with only a chair and your preferred L/R speakers, you will be very very happy.

 

[JRiggs]

I understand holding marketing accountable, and I dislike charlatans and dishonest salesmen... But I will be another voice of reason in this thread because my A2080 has been nothing but excellent for the last 3 years playing 2 channel music - R3's, running Tidal via mconnect upnp.

Put an A1080, 2080, 3080 on the floor in an acoustically solid room with only a chair and your preferred L/R speakers, you will be very very happy.

Got to say I agree with this. None of the flaws found in these tests can be heard in actual listening.

 

[pma]

There might be a slight hum with ear close to the bass driver membrane. All else would be probably inaudible. There is a nice decay of higher order distortion components.

 

[EEE272]

Hi,

this is my first post but I have been reading along for a while.
Of course, as an owner of the 3080, I was very curious to see the results.
I know that some time ago another user posted SINAD results on this website that they measured at home, which were a bit better.
Unfortunately, I cannot find the link. If someone else remembers, please let me know. It was a comment in another thread (about a year ago - just the SINAD values). It might obviously have been a measurement mistake but it would be nice to compare and if I understood correctly, Gene measured a SINAD of 100dB on the newer one. There might be a few more elements that might be worth testing because - as is custom for Yamaha - it has tons of configuration options...


@amirm First off, thank you for this great site and all the effort that went into it.
Regarding this review, I was wondering about a few things that might impact the results - but please let me know if I am mistaken. I do not claim to be a Yamaha expert!

1) The receiver offers several DACs. By default, the worst one (according to Gene) called "short latency" is activated. What happens when choosing "sharp" (the best according to Gene)?
Does it make a change in the results when you switch it?

2) The Yamaha also offers jitter control, which can be configured with 3 levels - per default, the jitter is set to the worst performance (level 1).

3) I think the amps cannot be deactivated but what happens to the measurements via pre-out when using ECO mode - it seems unnecessary to run the amplifier at full power in this case and if the main problem really stems from the power supply, this might be a way to reduce its effect - although it might shut down even earlier (?!)

4) I admit that I don't know enough about the measurement protocols and apologize in advance, but I thought I would also point out that Yamaha seems to suggest using the Audio 2 and not Audio 1 line-in for music in their appendix of the instruction manual. Nevertheless, I assume that the test signal was provided digitally anyway.

It would be great to see if these elements have any effect. It would probably be minuscule but then again, so are the values that we are dealing with...
If there is a way for me to measure it myself, I am happy to do so with my 3080, but I do not have any special test equipment, other than a good external soundcard (Behringer) and a umik mic.

Of course, I am curiosity driven, as most people on this forum.
With my listening room having a background noise of >30dB, I have no illusions that whatever I am missing (or whatever noise this amplifier might add) will not be audible in my environment anyway... even if I had golden ears...
Thanks again!

 

[capslock]

Well, the analog amps' performance is adequate. The service manual of the 3080 isn't online yet, but the 3070's is.

Yamaha RX-A3070 Network AV Receiver Manual | HiFi Engine

www.hifiengine.com

The digital section seems to be the same for the 1070, 2070, 3070. The only differentiation I could see was that the 3070 uses a ESS9026PRO 8-channel DAC whereas the smaller models only get a 9006. Interesting also that there are three digital interface receivers. It would be really nice to see the digital and line-out performance since it could be better than the usual AVR fare.

The power amp board can be found on page 134 of the pdf. The circuit is simple but avoids major mistakes. The input long tailed pair has a current source so should have good power supply rejection, hence the 120 Hz noise is likely picked up. It has no emitter degeneration, but a current mirror. The VAS is a Darlington VAS. The output stage is a simple EF2 with integrated Sanken STD05N and P. Those integrated Darlintons have rather poor gain linearity and bandwidth. I would much prefer an EF3 configuration, i.e. another complementary emitter follower stage for greater current gain and less nonlinear load on the VAS. A discrete Darlington would also be nice. However, this is a high feedback design that takes care of the worst shortcomings of the output stage.

 

[peng]

@amirm I DO TOTALLY understand your reply back to me a bit further up in the thread. I really do. I agree in a way, but at the same time, feel maybe there is something we are missing or not taking into account as to how it can sound great, yet measure mediocre...??

Good question and I would like to hear back from Amir. For me, there is at least one thing missing/not taking into account. That is, if you are not (not sure if you were) comparing apples to apples. As has been posted so many times, if you are comparing the preamp, preamp/DAC, or the amp section, then you have to follow certain procedures and do the comparison in the so called DBT protocol, or at least SBT (single blind). If you are comparing the unit as whole, and with DSP in use such as EQ, REQ, DEQ, DV, enhanced mode or whatever gadget each models have then it would get so complicated that I am not sure if there are good ways to do a fair comparison.

In the end, if you hear a clear difference in a real apples to apples test in pure direct mode, and even if only analog inputs are used, then perhaps you have exceptional hearing (based on the very decent specs and measurement results of the A6A and a comparable Denon or Marantz), but that would only prove that you happen to prefer the "sound signature" of one, (put in quote because I don't think that does not exist in this case) and that also would mean others may have a different preference.

By the way, I highly doubt the design team of Yamaha or Denon (Denon says they do, but...) would design their product based on feedback from listening tests, pretty sure they rely on specs and test results before finalizing. One famous design engineer, Peter Walker had said he could design his amp without any listening test and would do it at the end just to see if there is anything obvious. It wouldn't be logical otherwise, simply because everyone may have different preference so which "sound signature" would the engineers aim for, wouldn't it be more logical to sim for accuracy and leave the sound signature to the individual owners via EQ, REQ etc..?

May be its time to revisit the following interview again:

https://geocities.restorativland.org/ResearchTriangle/Lab/6722/pwint1.txt

I am sure he's not the only designer/engineer who don't rely on listening tests or let such tests influence their final design, PW probably might have been too honest.

TAA: How do you rate the merits of listening tests to instrument tests?

PW: We designed our valve (tube) amplifier, manufactured it, and put it on the
market, and never actually listened to it. In fact, the same applies to the 303 and
the 405. People say, "Well that's disgusting, you ought to have listened to it."
However, we do a certain amount of listening tests, but they are for specific
things. We listen to the differential distortion - does a certain thing matter?
You've got to have a listening test to sort out whether it matters. You've got to do
tests to sort out whether rumble is likely to overload pickup inputs, or whether
very high frequency stuff coming out of the pickup due to record scratch is going
to disturb the control unit. But we aren't sitting down listening to Beethoven's
Fifth and saying, "That amplifier sounds better, let's change a resistor or two. Oh
yes, that's now better still." We never sit down and listen to a music record
through an amplifier in the design stage. We listen to funny noises, funny
distortions, and see whether these things are going to matter, to get a subjective
assessment. But we don't actually listen to program material at all.

 

[EEE272]

Hi,
As indicated, I am no expert but I really do remember someone posting a different result some time ago, so I wanted to see if I could provide the measurements of my own amplifier.
This is a first attempt and probably I am doing something wrong, so please don't hesitate to correct me!

I used a Behringer U-Control UCA222 external sound card.
I tried first a loopback to see if the precision is sufficient and its noise floor was clearly below what would be needed to detect this 120Hz peak.
I then set the amplifier to pure direct mode with all channels active (hdmi provides 7.1).
The amplifier was set in the advanced menu to the 8 Ohm setting.
I did not have the courage to turn on the amplifier to the maximum and left it around -5 dB.
Nevertheless, I did observe the expected behavior - higher volume=more distance to the noise floor and distortions.

I then connected the preout of the left speaker to the line in of the Behringer.
I then used REW, launched the RTA analyzer and played a test tone of -2dB (I did not know if it would clip).
The result is attached in the screenshot.
The peaks remained below 97dB (but attention, the reference sound is around -5dB), thus we have something like 92dB difference (assuming some imprecision due to the Behringer device, let's make it 90).
While I do see a spike at 120Hz (and 60, 30, as well as the next harmonic), it is far less pronounced.

Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks in advance and my apologies if I made a mistake somewhere - I am also here to learn.

 

[EEE272]

Btw. I forgot to mention that the higher noise floor is probably due to the Behringer because its noise floor is the same order of magnitude.

 

[peng]

but it would be nice to compare and if I understood correctly, Gene measured a SINAD of 100dB on the newer one.

If you are talking about Gene's review on the RX-A6A, that 100 dB SINAD cannot be compared to Amir's because Amir did not do the same test.

Gene's 100 dB SINAD (0.001%) was obtained at the pre amp output at +1 dBV, that is 1 Volt rms, using analog input in pure direct mode. I agree that is good result, but it is not an apple to apple comparison with Amir's 81.8 dB SINAD was measured at the power amp output at 5 W, not the same tests at all. Also, as you already know, the two devices are different. If Gene measured the 3080, I suspect he would have gotten results similar to ASR's.

Yamaha RX-A6A 9.2CH 8K AV Receiver Bench Test Results!

We bench tested the Yamaha RX-A6A 9.2CH 8K 150watt/ch Atmos/DTS:X Receiver to gauge power output and uncover performance issues we discovered. We discuss the proper settings for best power delivery.

www.audioholics.com

 

[krabapple]

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

Huh?