New Denon, Marantz & Definitive Technology 2023 Products Show Report

[Hobbit]

Reviews of Def Techs seem to waiver back and forth between great and ehhh since I can remember.

I had a 5.1 system with them, BP-x's, in the lat 90's-early 2ks. I actually really liked them for the home theater application. I would consider going with these if I was to make a dedicated HT system.

Conversely, they were a bit of a struggle for music. I could never get great imaging out of them no matter how hard I tried placing them. The imaging would wander about a little bit. Perhaps the Adjustable Bipolar addresses this to some degree? Or maybe Mirage had the right idea with the switch to turn off the rear speakers when you don't want them on?

 

[TLS Guy]

Review of Def Techs seem to waiver back and forth between great and ehhh since I can remember.

I had a 5.1 system with them, BP-x's, in the lat 90's-early 2ks. I actually really liked them for the home theater application. I would consider going with these if I was to make a dedicated HT system.

Conversely, they were a bit of a struggle for music. I could never get great imaging out of them no matter how hard I tried placing them. The imaging would wander about a little bit. Perhaps the Adjustable Bipolar addresses this to some degree? Or maybe Mirage had the right idea with the switch to turn off the rear speakers when you don't want them on?

Well, that is damning them with faint praise. Speakers should not get to pick and choose. Excellent speakers are good on all media. We play everything in this theater.

 

[Hobbit]

Well, that is damning them with faint praise. Speakers should not get to pick and choose. Excellent speakers are good on all media. We play everything in this theater.

In the last thread I posted in asking why no love for electrostatics, the response was they aren't good for HT. You just can't win around here

Still DT clearly added in Adjustable BP and other new features to resolve weaknesses. The article, and DT in general, gives me the impression they're putting a lot of focus on HT. The store that carried the Mirages (it's been 25 years, so it may be another BP design brand) said the switch to turn off the rear firing speaker was for music vs HT(bp).

I agree excellent speakers should be able to do it all. There's probably a price point where that's true.

 

[TLS Guy]

In the last thread I posted in asking why no love for electrostatics, the response was they aren't good for HT. You just can't win around here

Still DT clearly added in Adjustable BP and other new features to resolve weaknesses. The article, and DT in general, gives me the impression they're putting a lot of focus on HT. The store that carried the Mirages (it's been 25 years, so it may be another BP design brand) said the switch to turn off the rear firing speaker was for music vs HT(bp).

I agree excellent speakers should be able to do it all. There's probably a price point where that's true.

I don't recall your last thread, but you could use electrostatics in HT, but you should not use a center speaker. Electrostatics do tend to be power limited. The Quad ESLs are limited to 100 watts max, and to be safe 70 watts. So yes, they are not ideal in the HT environment.

Personally I don't think firing speakers at a close wall is optimal under any circumstances, no matter what you are playing. I can assure you that is not a route to accurate reproduction.

 

[ryanosaur]

I was really stoked for the steps DT took with the Demand Series. On paper, they looked like legitimately good Speakers; a little low Sensitivity for HT, though.

When I saw them going back to this BP format, I kinda feel let down. *shrugs

I get that they are popular with the Best Buy/Magnolia crowd. And maybe DT will be more honest about the capabilities. I’m hesitant to look too close, though. *sighs

 

[Danzilla31]

I was really stoked for the steps DT took with the Demand Series. On paper, they looked like legitimately good Speakers; a little low Sensitivity for HT, though.

When I saw them going back to this BP format, I kinda feel let down. *shrugs

I get that they are popular with the Best Buy/Magnolia crowd. And maybe DT will be more honest about the capabilities. I’m hesitant to look too close, though. *sighs

I owned the older bp9000 line. They are a lot of fun for movies. Just ok for music. You lose a lot of imaging to get that wider spacious Soundstage. I always wished for DefTech you could have a switch to turn the back speakers off. I was hoping they would have that for this new lineup. Then I'd be a lot more interested.

 

[Hobbit]

I owned the older bp9000 line. They are a lot of fun for movies. Just ok for music. You lose a lot of imaging to get that wider spacious Soundstage. I always wished for DefTech you could have a switch to turn the back speakers off. I was hoping they would have that for this new lineup. Then I'd be a lot more interested.

That's how I felt about the BP-xx's I owned. It looks like they somewhat addressed that with Adjustable BP array and the Forward Focus mode. I can't tell how this is implemented in the article and if it's user friendly?

 

[ryanosaur]

D@mnit. I'm getting sucked in to this. I'm gonna have to look at the marketing BS and everything now. *grumps noisily
When I had two different auditions of the BPs, 9060 and 9080 IIRC, they were atrocious sounding. Nothing natural about the SQ, and especially in the bass region. It was like old diet soda... stupidly artificial sweet with a nasty aftertaste. One of the auditions had a B&W 600 series tower that I also listened to... and of course that had anti-bass properties so when the guy switched from one to the other it was even more dramatic of a change.
Fortunately there were some other Speakers that behaved as they should, and even though not ideally set up, I was able to quickly rule both the BP and B&W out.

My gawd... please don't let me find that DT is still calling the powered bass section "Subwoofers." ...I will go all Johnny Storm on their a$$es.

 

[ryanosaur]

I shouldn't have looked.

I will stop myself from saying anything more than this:

At least they listed a more believable F3 and F10 and are not claiming infrasonic output...

 

[VonMagnum]

Always fun to watch people put their ignorance and personal biases on display as if they were facts instead of opinions. Def Tech isn't my favorite brand, but there is nothing wrong with bipolar designs for increased ambience (Mirage was successfully doing it long before Def Tech) or room loading bass to reduce standing waves (exactly what next gen DIRAC will take advantage of).

I use ribbon dipoles in my stereo room upstairs. They definitely have a "musician in the room with you" advantage with studio type material that doesn't include real room ambience in the recording.

For live stuff and home theater I prefer a dead room with loads of speakers to reproduce the out of phase ambience stored on real recordings (Auromatic does a good job on lower settings of bringing them out in lower speaker count recordings while Atmos can take advantage of up to 32 speakers for increased spatial resolution.

I'm up to 21 speakers in a 12'x24' room at this point with arrays set for Auro-3D and stereo options and it's pure bliss. Suggesting 11 channels is enough for everyone reminds me of Bill Gates with the 640k Ram thing in the 1990s (My Amiga 3000 had 18MB of Ram in 1992).

 

[Trebdp83]

 

[Gary Eickmeier]

Terrific interview by Matthew! These DT guys are getting scarily close to some right answers about loudspeaker design. Just a few corrections, or hints, to all of them, including Philip Jones:

1. Most of the pictures in the article show the speakers either positioned wrong or aimed wrong. It looks like they have them too close to the front wall and aimed straight fore/aft. They need to be 1/4 of the room width in from the side walls and the same distance out from the front wall. This will provide perfectly even spacing among all real and virtual (reflected) speakers. Then they need to be aimed 30° inward toward the listeners to get more correct angles for time/ intensity trading for a stable center and more importantly to strengthen the corner secondary reflections that bounce off the front and then side walls and come out as deep and wide as possible. I have tried to send DT an email on this, with a Powerpoint set of pictures that show why their owner manual recommendations are wrong.

2. I'm glad they have discovered the bipole radiation with adjustable pattern, but they still have it backwards. You need about 6 dB greater gain from the rear than the front, because the reflected sound has to travel twice as far as the direct.

It is NOT correct that the reflected sound messes up imaging! The early reflected sound focuses too, if you just know how to position speakers and/or make a drawing of the image model of the total horizontal pattern of direct and reflected sound that you are hearing.

Gary Eickmeier
Lakeland, Florida

 

[gene]

Marantz Pop-Up, 70th Anniversary NYC Showcase

Marantz hosted a Pop-up 70th Anniversary Celebration in downtown Manhattan at the Spring Studio, and included multiple experiences to celebrate the important milestone in Marantz's audio history.

www.audioholics.com

 

[Bobby Bass]

Who pissed in your corn flakes? LOL

I didn't make this trip actually. Been tending to my terminally ill mom so these cross country trips are out for me this year.

Nothing wrong with having the ability to add more channels in a properly sized room and when all other parameters are optimized. I agree Class D would be ideal in products with high channel counts like these. However, proper class D that is as good or better than linear costs more to implement, hence why it's reserved for their 16CH dedicated amplifier. These AVR's employ a multi-rail power supply so at lower power they operate on the low rail to improve efficiency. The fact that the 15CH Denon can hit 70% of 2CH rated power with up to 9CH driven is impressive. Can't wait to bench test this sucker.

Sorry to hear about your Mom. Hope she finds peace.

 

[Bobby Bass]

I couldn't agree less with this statement. Active speakers aren't bad, but most people aren't building a room from scratch. This means power outlets aren't scattered across a room in the proper locations that speakers will be placed and there is a good chance that they won't be. Plus, wire must be run to get the audio signal to the speakers no matter what. So, instead of a single wire solution, it's now a two wire solution. As well, we are adding a second point of failure to the speaker itself. This is extremely problematic in my experience. If one of the powered components in the speaker fails, then the entire speaker is useless until it is repaired. Maybe that requires sending the entire speaker out for repair, which is time consuming and a much larger task than sending out, or replacing an amplifier. I've had any number of times over the years, when the fix for speakers not working was to drop in a replacement amplifier for a couple of weeks while a high-end amplifier went out for repair. They got to enjoy their full system and I didn't have to pack up and ship any speakers, just a single amplifier.

I'm not saying this is for everyone, but I do think that the powered speaker model is not at all the future. They've been around for decades and decades and despite the Bluetooth speaker being a huge thing, the AV receivers of today still don't have preouts as a standard feature on the vast majority of products. This is consistent with the vast majority of buyers not being all that interested in them in a proper AVR.

I'm not against the concept of active wireless speakers. Surround speakers especially can make good use of this, but it's not like WISA has come out as an affordable standard across a ton of products, so what we have for wireless isn't really great, and if I'm already running wiring, then I'd rather just do it with a speaker cable. If I need more power to drive my speakers, I can always add more power to the equipment location which is way easier than putting a bunch of new power outlets around my entire room.

At the high end, I get how active speakers may seem to make sense. But, still, if I'm at the high end, I'm going to remote locate my gear, and I can put as much power in place at the rack as my equipment needs. So, it isn't better, but it's not worse at that point.

Agree that powered speakers are great for the multiple reasons shared. The challenge in my experience is the amps need replacing or servicing and that can be a a costly and difficult process if you can’t or don’t want to do the work yourself. Have never had an external amp quit or needed to repair a passive speaker. Opposite experience with powered speakers. Will know manufacturers have solved the longevity issue when the warranty on the electronics is the same as the warranty on the rest of the speaker.

 

[Steezyryder]

I came to talk about the def techs and had to sift through all the marantz and denon chatter, when neither are to my liking. I really wish ppl would stop saying bi-polar speakers don’t work with atmos home theater. I built a 7.2.4 home theater with a NAD 7 channel driving mains and surround and an older Onkyo flagship powering the heights. LRC def tech bp-10s, and surround/height flush mount JBL two-ways with 8” woofers. Subs are Jbl as well. It is all calibrated with Dirac live and it’s been incredible for the price. The NAD puts out 120 watts ALL CHANNELS DRIVEN and pair with the def techs are great for movies and music in stereo or Spatial Audio from Apple Music. Wide sound stage and deep imaging when the speakers are toed in. Bp-10 come automatically damped in the rears to help with imaging. When you calibrate bipolars you don’t want the rears bouncing around bc the distance will be off, so cover the back of the speakers with a heavy fluffy comforter during calibration. For the money you cannot beat def tech, and even for more money in a lot of cases. They aren’t B&W 803s, but they are superior to Martin and Logan’s for sure. I doubt I will ever buy another brand, but since I sold that house with the home theater and equipment, I’m checking out the newer def tech stuff. The bp-10s didn’t have powered subwoofer on them like the new flagships and getting a plug in the right spot can be a choir, but I’m curious how these new line of speakers compare to some of the older ones. The bp2000 have a 15” woofer, albeit a heavily distorted one at lowest frequencies, but Dirac can take care of that too, but you shouldn’t rely on any equipment to do all the work for you. Read about speaker position for stereo imaging, room treatments, etc to give yourself a leg up. I highly recommend Dirac, NAD, and def tech. I’m looking at arcane and anthem as a replacement with 4 channel bass control as NAD has yet to include it, but hopefully they could have another amp soon?

 

[TLS Guy]

I came to talk about the def techs and had to sift through all the marantz and denon chatter, when neither are to my liking. I really wish ppl would stop saying bi-polar speakers don’t work with atmos home theater. I built a 7.2.4 home theater with a NAD 7 channel driving mains and surround and an older Onkyo flagship powering the heights. LRC def tech bp-10s, and surround/height flush mount JBL two-ways with 8” woofers. Subs are Jbl as well. It is all calibrated with Dirac live and it’s been incredible for the price. The NAD puts out 120 watts ALL CHANNELS DRIVEN and pair with the def techs are great for movies and music in stereo or Spatial Audio from Apple Music. Wide sound stage and deep imaging when the speakers are toed in. Bp-10 come automatically damped in the rears to help with imaging. When you calibrate bipolars you don’t want the rears bouncing around bc the distance will be off, so cover the back of the speakers with a heavy fluffy comforter during calibration. For the money you cannot beat def tech, and even for more money in a lot of cases. They aren’t B&W 803s, but they are superior to Martin and Logan’s for sure. I doubt I will ever buy another brand, but since I sold that house with the home theater and equipment, I’m checking out the newer def tech stuff. The bp-10s didn’t have powered subwoofer on them like the new flagships and getting a plug in the right spot can be a choir, but I’m curious how these new line of speakers compare to some of the older ones. The bp2000 have a 15” woofer, albeit a heavily distorted one at lowest frequencies, but Dirac can take care of that too, but you shouldn’t rely on any equipment to do all the work for you. Read about speaker position for stereo imaging, room treatments, etc to give yourself a leg up. I highly recommend Dirac, NAD, and def tech. I’m looking at arcane and anthem as a replacement with 4 channel bass control as NAD has yet to include it, but hopefully they could have another amp soon?

I don't think we have many Def Tech owners here now, but we used to. I think members learned the error of their ways. In addition there were way too many amp failures powering that not very good sub section.

Lastly I would challenge anyone to show me why a speaker with speakers in the back is a remotely good idea. It is not the same as a di-polar radiation pattern like a Quad ESL for instance. Even then these excellent Quad ESLs require careful placement. They have the classic figure of 8 radiation pattern with a total null at the sides.

The big problem with Bi-polar boxed speakers is that the speakers are separated by a physical distance and therefore time. Instruments are not Bi-polar radiators. Some instruments like stringed instruments are omni-directional. Others like the winds are very much unidirectional radiators. So the bi-polar arrangement does not go anyway to solving this problem. In fact it makes it a whole lot worse because of the time separation and all the irregular sums and cancellations that take place.

Lastly I would point out that all cone type speakers in enclosed boxes become omni-directional below their transition frequency, but there is no spacing phase issue as there is not separation in space. Always remember that spacing and phase are the same side of the same coin.

So I don't think you will find many advocates here, and it sounds good to me cuts no ice with us.

 

[highfigh]

Gene, I think they kept you plied with too much booze on that trip. That really is a bunch old technology, over developed to the point of extinction. I would never purchase, or recommend anyone purchase, one of those products. The electronics in particular just screams trouble. Very few rooms need more than 11 audio channels. In fact less easily becomes more. More speakers do not compensate for poor ones. 11 channels will integrate seamlessly in most domestic rooms if designed right. With the number of channels required now, amps really do belong in speakers, if for no other reason that we can get back to a sane number of amps driven from one power supply. The fact that, that monstrosity of a receiver uses class AB amps in this day and age will seal its fate. Then they have the nerve to charge you more, when the leave out the amps. I think the word that best befits that is "usury".

Usury could also be called 'Treat the customers like farm animals".