Another S&V shootout: 3 Mid-Price AVR

[PENG]

I guess they concur with Audioholics, the Yamaha won!

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.asp?section_id=3&article_id=1486

Surprisingly this time the Yamaha showed impressive multi-channel numbers: 5X121, 6X119 before clipping.

Nick, they did say the 3806 has strong power and superb audio performance whether they meant anything much at all. How do you like yours so far?

 

[mike c]

thanks for the link.

wow, the yammy sure put out good numbers.

 

[cam]

The way I read it, the Denon was a great performer and lost out because of the remote and ease of use, and the Yamaha won because of it's music and movie DSP's. What's this world coming to.

 

[Buckeyefan 1]

I just read the article yesterday in the mag. The bench tests are impressive with the Denon and Yammy, and disappointing on the Onkyo (Integra). I'm guessing the Integra DTR-7.6 is a big brother to the new Onkyo 803 - similar weight and spec ratings. If it wasn't for Denon's remote and not upscaling 480i video for HDMI output, I think it would have edged out a win.

Some quotes from the mag article:

Denon - Music Performance
"Stereo music converted to multichannel by its basic DPL IIx and DTS Neo:6 Music settings sounded great, and if forced to make a pick, I'd probably give this receiver the nod...for best multichannel sound quality among this trio."

Denon - Movie Performance
"The Denon seemed to have the most dynamic reserves of this group...the AVR-3806 delivered the DVD of the special-effects blockbuster War of the Worlds at truely awesome levels...And it produced equally impressive dynamic detail and realism."

Integra - Test Bench
"The Integra DTR-7.6 was excellent on most of our technical tests, although prolonged power tests... provoked a temporary shutdown at roughly half of full power output."

I know Gene is not a fan of the all channels driven test, but FWIW...

Denon AVR-3806 - Test Bench
"...aced every bench test I ran, with lots of power, near-perfect noise and linearity, and unuasually good performance in our 24-bit/96 kHz PCM tests. 5- and 6-channel power were also particularly impressive, measuring 108 watts for each channel before clipping."

Yamaha RX-V 2600 - Test Bench
"...delivered near-benchmark performance on every test, and set actual benchmarks in my experience for linearity... and PCM signal-to-noise ratio. Power was impressive for just about any common real-world speaker load, including all-channels power, where it measured more than 100 watts per channel."

 

[mtrycrafts]

I guess they concur with Audioholics, the Yamaha won!

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.asp?section_id=3&article_id=1486

Surprisingly this time the Yamaha showed impressive multi-channel numbers: 5X121, 6X119 before clipping.

Nick, they did say the 3806 has strong power and superb audio performance whether they meant anything much at all. How do you like yours so far?

Great, thanks
I think I let my subscription expire.

Either one of the Denon or Yam and only at $1K? Almost 200 watts in 1ch, 300 into 4 ohms, WOW. What more would anyone want? Operate by itself? Do some chores around the house?
Now if they only had amp inputs to accommodate an EQ.

 

[Nick250]

I guess they concur with Audioholics, the Yamaha won!

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.asp?section_id=3&article_id=1486

Surprisingly this time the Yamaha showed impressive multi-channel numbers: 5X121, 6X119 before clipping.

Nick, they did say the 3806 has strong power and superb audio performance whether they meant anything much at all. How do you like yours so far?

Peng, I love the 3806. The remote is a bit of a pain during setup, but after that for every day use it is absolutely fine. One real posative for the remote and interface is that I love being able to adjust sound levels on the fly (it's my favorite tinker) and that is really, really easy.

The above being said, once you have the 3806 dialed in the remote and interface are fine and dandy and easy to use.

While standing around Barns & Noble yesterday I read the S&V article and came away with the notion that it's hard to go wrong with any of the receivers in this price range. It seems to me the law of deminishing returns is starting to kick in.

The one thing that seperates the 3806 from the Integra and Yamaha is Audessey (sp?). I have not used it yet (I am going to) but it seems it has some real potential. I will post my experiance with it once I give it a solid test.

Bottom line. If I have all to do over again I would still choose the 3806. The Yamaha looks pretty nice too though....

BTW, I paid one G at my local B&M, an autorized Denon dealer, with no hassle. Tweeter would not budge off list.

Regards,

Nick

 

[PENG]

Thanks Nick, once you have a chance to play with the Audyssey circuit, please let us know the results.

 

[agarwalro]

Thanks Nick, once you have a chance to play with the Audyssey circuit, please let us know the results.

I am going to play around with the Audyssey stuff today too. Will post comments.

 

[gene]

The 2600 is a class leading product and is the best amp section Yamaha put into a receiver for under $2k since I could remember. I am glad they continually improve amp quality with each new generation and listen to criticisms in our reviews, other press and installers. This is a company that listens and is passionate about making better products.

The power#'s reported in the S&V report for all of the receivers tested are very inflated since they are MAX Instantaneous (NOT CONTINUOUS) CLIPPED POWER at 1kHz with the Line Voltage held constant. It is interested to note the difference in testing methodology they and most of the print magazines employ compared to our own. Their numbers look more impressive, but I'd rather see REAL WORLD, CLEAN wattage reports. In any case, its always good to get confirmation from multiple sources how well a product performs. S&V did a nice job comparing all of the receivers. Too bad they didn't tabulate the results between the 3 like I have seen them do in the past.

 

[PENG]

The power#'s reported in the S&V report for all of the receivers tested are very inflated since they are MAX Instantaneous (NOT CONTINUOUS) CLIPPED POWER at 1kHz with the Line Voltage held constant. It is interested to note the difference in testing methodology they and most of the print magazines employ compared to our own. Their numbers look more impressive, but I'd rather see REAL WORLD, CLEAN wattage reports. In any case, its always good to get confirmation from multiple sources how well a product performs. S&V did a nice job comparing all of the receivers. Too bad they didn't tabulate the results between the 3 like I have seen them do in the past.

Their numbers are inflated as you explained but at least they appear to be consistent in the way they tested them. As you also said, they did a nice job comparing all of the receivers. Readers can still be well served as long as they read those numbers in relative terms only.