Denon AVR-X3600H vs AVR-X4700H Measurement Report

[gene]

A website called AudioScienceReview (ASR) published a test report a few weeks back stating the Denon AVR-X4700H receiver has design problems and measured poorly. The reality was ASR's test setup produced an improper testing scenario via HDMI leading to some non-ideal results and conclusions.

Denon Engineering did a detailed test report comparing their older 3600H model to the new 4700H model showing the latter measures BETTER not worse in virtually every category.

This is why peer review is so important when publishing and interpreting technical measurements of component audio. I hope everyone finds this useful and feels confident that Denon knows what they are doing when it comes to engineering AV receivers.

Nobody is perfect of course and there is always room for improvement. But, fact checking and finding real issues to improve are of paramount importance in my opinion.

With that said, I commend ASR for being one of the few publications still measuring component performance. Fact checking before publishing goes a long way. Something I've learned early on when I created Audioholics.com.

See: Denon AVR-X3600H vs AVR-X4700H Measurement Report

 

[Grandzoltar]

If Denon was always transparent with their measurements that would really propel their brand. I hope they publish future product measurements seeing how people react to measurements audible or not it sells products. Look at what it did for the x3600.

 

[Trell]

Is the "See: Denon AVR-X3600H vs AVR-X4700H Measurement Report" supposed to be a link to something?

 

[highfigh]

Is the "See: Denon AVR-X3600H vs AVR-X4700H Measurement Report" supposed to be a link to something?

Denon AVR-X4700H 2020 AVR Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the newly announced Denon AVR-X4700H 9.2 channel AVR. It was kindly purchased by a member and drop shipped to me for testing. It costs US $1,700 on Amazon including Prime shipping. NOTE: post publication of this review, Denon Engineering kindly...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Hopefully, Amir will try to work with all the manufacturers - Yamaha, Denon/Marantz, Sony, Pioneer, Onkyo/Integra, Anthem, ATI, etc. - for future reviews.

 

[Pogre]

I hope Amir getting some egg on his face will encourage him to reach out to these companies and peer review before publishing. Especially if he continues using his hyperbolic review style.

 

[roadwarrior]

Hopefully, Amir will try to work with all the manufacturers - Yamaha, Denon/Marantz, Sony, Pioneer, Onkyo/Integra, Anthem, ATI, etc. - for future reviews.

He supposedly emailed Onkyo about a measurement issue with one of their products a while back and they ghosted him so there that in Denon's favor at least.

 

[roadwarrior]

Gene are you going to get and test the X4700H or any other 2020 non flagship Denon receiver anytime soon? I say non flagship because to me it's the middle tier X series that are the sweet spot for price/performance in the Denon line and the flagships should measure best. It would also be nice to have you articulate more why you don't do the other added measurements that ASR provides and your thoughts behind their importance or lack thereof in your mind for the consumer. Testing DAC jitter etc..

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

He supposedly emailed Onkyo about a measurement issue with one of their products a while back and they ghosted him so there that in Denon's favor at least.

If he gave Onkyo a chance to correct the issue and they ignored him, then they deserved to be blasted.

I hope that Amir's longterm goal is to become a major publication who works with the major AV manufacturers.

 

[PENG]

Hopefully, Amir will try to work with all the manufacturers - Yamaha, Denon/Marantz, Sony, Pioneer, Onkyo/Integra, Anthem, ATI, etc. - for future reviews.

If, in additional to Audioholics, ASR also work with those manufacturers that we, the consumers, will benefit greatly as the manufacturers will be able to have a lot of feedback and can improve their products on things that counts and prioritize their efforts accordingly. Should be a win win..

 

[roadwarrior]

If he gave Onkyo a chance to correct the issue and they ignored him, then they deserved to be blasted.

I hope that Amir's longterm goal is to become a major publication who works with the major AV manufacturers.

Agree but the narrative they still want to push over on ASR is that it was Denon's fault for the original bad measurements and subsequent public drubbing by their members due to the downmixing bug and not Amir's lack of review of his measurements before publishing. Someone even said his original review was right but it was just clouded by Denon's bug. Basically it was all Denon's fault. Reminds me of that Taylor Swift song "Look what you made me do!"

 

[PENG]

Denon AVR-X4700H 2020 AVR Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the newly announced Denon AVR-X4700H 9.2 channel AVR. It was kindly purchased by a member and drop shipped to me for testing. It costs US $1,700 on Amazon including Prime shipping. NOTE: post publication of this review, Denon Engineering kindly...

www.audiosciencereview.com

ASR updated review, and he said he would accepts flying eggs.

Denon AVR-X4700 AVR Review (Updated)

This is a second review of the Denon AVR-X4700 AVR. It was kindly purchased by a member and drop shipped to me. It costs US $1,700 from Amazon including free shipping. I will explain the reason for the revision in a bit. For now, I will cut and paste some of the information from the first...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Denon measurements (I assume that's what Gene tried to link but his link did not work for some reason).

http://downloads.denon.com/documentmaster/us/denon%20avr-x4700h%20and%20avr-x3600h%20bench%20test%20analysis_7th_%20july%202020_denon%20enginee.pdf

Fixed that for you..

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

If, in additional to Audioholics, ASR also work with those manufacturers that we, the consumers, will benefit greatly as the manufacturers will be able to have a lot of feedback and can improve their products on things that counts and prioritize their efforts accordingly. Should be a win win..

Absolutely. Perhaps it's heading that way.

Would love to see all the other manufacturers get involved. Let's get Yamaha on board. Can't let Denon be the only major manufacturer in this game.

But for now, who's not impressed with how Denon stepped up?

I still hate Emotiva's blue-cheese aesthetics and don't like the fact that after the warranty period expires, they won't even service their own products. But I was also impressed with how they responded to Amir's blasting.

 

[PENG]

Agree but the narrative they still want to push over on ASR is that it was Denon's fault for the original bad measurements and subsequent public drubbing by their members due to the downmixing bug and not Amir's lack of review of his measurements before publishing. Someone even said his original review was right but it was just clouded by Denon's bug. Basically it was all Denon's fault. Reminds me of that Taylor Swift song "Look what you made me do!"

Not so much Amir himself, but a few members..

In fact Amir did say a lot of good things about Denon, expressed thanks and willing to take eggs. He did try to make the point rather strongly that the what he considered as a potential bug that would increase noise thereby worsening THD+N (aka SINAD..), when hdmi input is used to send contents of more channels to the AVR than what the AVR was configured for. In the case of his problemmatic tests that started all this, he had the source configured for 8 channels but turned off all channels except the left and right, and the AVR configured for two channels only.

I thought it was you who pointed out earlier on the other thread, that it wasn't so much his measurement methodology was wrong, but for that one tests (yes that affected the SINAD of more than one test) for some reason even though he disabled all the other 6 channels but just left and right, somehow the silent channels still have effects on the receiving end. To avoid that, it was a simple procedure, and he said (I'll skip the link because it has been linked many times already):

"Fortunately the fix was simple. I simply turned on all the speakers for 7.1 configuration while still continuing to feed the AVR the same way I was before. With all channels configured, the stereo audio data was no longer changed since no mapping was required and performance shot way up. Since vast majority of you are using AVRs with multiple channels enabled anyway, the issue that caused the problem should not be something you see."

He also mentioned that Denon was investigating issue. It would have been nice if Denon mentions this particular "issue" and comment on whether it would be addressed in future FW update.

It is too bad that some members got fixated on this but then they have a case if they do downmix and can only configure their X4700H with just 2.1 and 5.1. Amir actually repeat the tests configuring 5.1, and SINAD only dropped 2 dB. So the severe degradation happens with 2.1, well may be 3.1 as well, I guess.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Agree but the narrative they still want to push over on ASR is that it was Denon's fault for the original bad measurements and subsequent public drubbing by their members due to the downmixing bug and not Amir's lack of review of his measurements before publishing. Someone even said his original review was right but it was just clouded by Denon's bug. Basically it was all Denon's fault. Reminds me of that Taylor Swift song "Look what you made me do!"

Yeah. If Amir were just some angry guy posting on a forum and using overdramatic hyperbolic remarks, that's understandable. Perhaps he started out this way.

But now with major manufacturers involved, surely he needs to change his tone and post like an "administrator" and not a regular mad user.

Time will tell.

 

[PENG]

Absolutely. Perhaps it's heading that way.

Would love to see all the other manufacturers get involved. Let's get Yamaha on board. Can't let Denon be the only major manufacturer in this game.

But for now, who's not impressed with how Denon stepped up?

I still hate Emotiva's blue-cheese aesthetics and don't like the fact that after the warranty period expires, they won't even service their own products. But I was also impressed with how they responded to Amir's blasting.

The "problem" is, so far out of the several (3, I think) Yamaha he tested recently, only one, the RX-A1080, did not make it to his recommended list so he doesn't have much to complain. I re-read that one and found no evidence it suffered from the same thing that the Denon did, in other words, no downmix bug in the RX-A1080.

Also the pre-out issue with the Yamaha isn't unexpected as Gene sort of found the same kind of limitation when he measured the slightly lower rank RX-A860.

Amir could barely measure the YamahaRX-A1080 with pre-out at 2 V:

"The unit though was at the verge of shutting down despite me leaving speaker terminals disconnected. If I just dialed up the volume 0.5 to 1 dB, it would shut down. So for the rest of the measurements I went with 0 dB volume level."

I thought Gene did work with Yamaha on the CX-A5200, hopefully he would press them on making their AVR pre-outs more robust too.

 

[roadwarrior]

Not so much Amir himself, but a few members..

That's who I was referring to. I actually give Amir credit for his response and attitude on dealing with Denon.

In fact Amir did say a lot of good things about Denon, expressed thanks and willing to take eggs. He did try to make the point rather strongly that the what he considered as a potential bug that would increase noise therefore worsening THD+N (aka SINAD..) when hdmi input is used to send more channels to the AVR if the AVR has fewer number of speakers confgured than the number of channels sent.

Yup, I saw that as well. Props to him for that.

I thought it was you who explained earlier on that it wasn't so much his measurement methodology was wrong, but for that one tests (yes that affected the SINAD of more than one test) for some reason even though he disabled all the other 6 channels but just left and right, somehow the silent channels still have effects on the receiving end. To avoid that, it was a simple procedure, and he said (I'll skip the link because it has been linked many times already):

What was wrong was and still is is his lack of oversight or peer review for his testing. It has been talked about before this bad review came up and I still don't see anything correcting or mitigating it going forward. He keeps adding more measurements though to his list so what can possibly go wrong there?

He also mentioned that Denon was investigating issue. It would have been nice if Denon mentions this particular "issue" and comment on whether it would be addressed in future FW update.

They probably dont have a handle yet on what the exact issue is would be my guess but yes some update on its progress would be nice.

It is too bad that some members got fixated on this but then they have a case if they do downmix and can only configure their X4700H with just 2.1 and 5.1. Amir actually repeat the tests configuring 5.1, and SINAD only dropped 2 dB. So the severe degradation happens with 2.1, well may be 3.1 as well, I guess.

I saw that. The overwhelming majority of HT setup are still basic 5.1 but they still need to fix the problem for those with fewer speakers and to be able to move on to other things because the need for bug fixes in AVR's almost never stops.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

The "problem" is, so far out of the several (3, I think) Yamaha he tested recently, only one, the RX-A1080, did not make it to his recommended list so he doesn't have much to complain. I re-read that one and found no evidence it suffered from the same thing that the Denon did, in other words, no downmix bug in the RX-A1080.

Also the pre-out issue with the Yamaha isn't unexpected as Gene sort of found the same kind of limitation when he measured the slightly lower rank RX-A860.

Amir could barely measure the YamahaRX-A1080 with pre-out at 2 V:

"The unit though was at the verge of shutting down despite me leaving speaker terminals disconnected. If I just dialed up the volume 0.5 to 1 dB, it would shut down. So for the rest of the measurements I went with 0 dB volume level."

I thought Gene did work with Yamaha on the CX-A5200, hopefully he would press them on making their AVR pre-outs more robust too.

I think most of us would like to hear Yamaha's rationale for keeping the pre-out voltage < 2V on the A1080 AVR and lower models.

Has Yamaha ever given Audioholics their rationale for the lower pre-out voltage on the A1080 and lower model AVRs?

Is it because most people who own AVRs don't use external amps?

Is it because having higher voltage on AVRs might reduce reliability?

So would be nice to get Yamaha's inputs.

I hope Amir will send Yamaha the request for their inputs regarding any CONCERNS.

 

[PENG]

I think most of us would like to hear Yamaha's rationale for keeping the pre-out voltage < 2V on the A1080 AVR and lower models.

Has Yamaha ever given Audioholics their rationale for the lower pre-out voltage on the A1080 and lower model AVRs?

Is it because most people who own AVRs don't use external amps?

Is it because having higher voltage on AVRs might reduce reliability?

So would be nice to get Yamaha's inputs.

I hope Amir will send Yamaha the request for their inputs regarding any CONCERNS.

We have to ask Gene, surely he knows who to talk to over there. My own speculation is that Yamaha is more keen on the "protective" scheme. So they want to shut you down as soon as they have the slightest indication that you are pushing the thing a little much. We should ask @M Code if that's one way they think they could keep the throne of "reliability king".

If they fix the pre out issue, I may try them out next time, as I think YPAO + manual PEW can do a good enough job for the 20-200 Hz range.

 

[roadwarrior]

Yeah. If Amir were just some angry guy posting on a forum and using overdramatic hyperbolic remarks, that's understandable. Perhaps he started out this way.

But now with major manufacturers involved, surely he needs to change his tone and post like an "administrator" and not a regular mad user.

Time will tell.

I think time has already spoken with him. I've read his posts over the years on several sites and what you see is what you get with him. He loves talking trash. Smart dude though. Problem is lots of this stuff happened when his first review hit on a multitude of home theater sites:

Guys, can anyone boil these results down a bit? It seems like it has more noise... Will I notice? I have one on order, and yes - the HDMI 2.1 is important to me, but not if it's going to sound bad... Help me out here!

EDIT: Switched my order to the previous generation. Darn. No HDMI 2.1 for me.

This is why newbs should not make purchasing decisions off of technical review sites alone. Most times they have almost no clue what they are even looking at and how to interpret them and even when they do there's the chance of error when there is no review process in place. He missed out on getting a receiver with full pre amp mode, HDMI 2.1 features other than added bandwidth and 2 slot switchable Audyssey settings for nothing really. Bet he wasn't the only one.