One thing worth noting is that the Marantz SR8015 (only those fitted with the original AKM DAC chip), Denon AVR-X8500H and the AVC-A110 have proved to AVR "haters" (don't mean it literally) such as our very
@TLS Guy who would likely quietly admit, that jamming a ton of power amps in one box can acheive audio performance that matches that of "separates".
One just have to switch to the objective camp for 20 minutes to read through the measurements of the Marantz SR8015 (Gene's Audioholics.com) and the AVR-X8500H (ASR) and understand there aren't many (if fact I cannot even recall 1 or 2) separate preamps that can output 4 Vrms while maintaining THD+N or less than 0.03% to 0.0007 (yes, 4th decimal place) from near 0 V to well over 3 Vrms, 0.004% at 20 kHz,imd level that matches many of the external dacs tested, very clean FFT, 110 dB DR, near perfect linearity, and so on...
On the internal power amp side, one can reference to the chart below that show multichannel driven test results that, again match many external real power amps:
Denon AVC-A110 (Test) (audiovision.de)
For the avr internal amp example, I used the AVC-A110 because it has a slightly larger power supply than the AVR-X8500H, the outputs are slightly higher accordingly, so the newest AVC-A1H can reasonably be expected to do even better yet, considering that the power transformer has gain more than 7 lbs, and block capacitors gain 50% capacity. In the way Audiovision.de measures, I would expect the A1H to breakthrough the 200 W mark, 4 Ohms, with 5 channel driven. We have not seen that kind of 5, 7 channel driven into 4 ohm outputs since Harmon Kardon's monster class HK7000 series.
The 277 W 4 ohm 2 channel driven output is nothing remarkable, but look at the 7 channel driven 4 Ohm results, 148 W!, and the 5 channel driven 4 Ohm's 198 W make it a somewhat real peer competitor with the popular heavy weight Monolith 7X200 Watts class AB amp, if not, I belive the A1H will in fact be able to give those Monolith amp a run for their money. Though as an AVR, such so call 4 ohm capability are not without caveat, no AVRs can really sustain that kind of output level into 4 ohm speakers, while it does generally mean that for real world usage, such AVRs can drive probably most popular 4 ohm speakers such as Revel's and KEF's. Just don't try that with the big B&W diamonds (I know
@AcuDefTechGuy said he had done so, though he didn't mention distance and spl he listened at..) unless you don't listen loud and don't sit from more than 4 meters.
In terms of long term reliability, the jury is still out, but it likely will remain out for a long time because people, even owners of the beast class AVRs tend to upgrade every 3 to 8 years (my educated guess).
Not trying to make much of a point here, just food for thought, for the open minded AVR haters, TLSGuy not included
!
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