New Denon, Marantz & Definitive Technology 2023 Products Show Report

gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
Audioholics attended the Masimo Consumer’s two day event at their Carlsbad facility where we were able to spend time with a small group of writers along with personnel from Denon, Marantz and Definitive Technology. During the two days we discussed not only specific new products and technologies but also brand image and implementation as well as demonstrations.

In this report, we cover the following products:
  • Denon AVR-A1H 15.4CH AV Receiver
  • Marantz AV 10 and Amp 10 16CH Separates
  • New Definitive Technology Dymension Speakers
deftech.jpg

Read: New Denon, Marantz and Definitive Technology Product Show Report
 
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BMXTRIX

BMXTRIX

Audioholic Warlord
I always struggle with the price of Marantz preamps. It's like, Denon says: "Here's a complete AV receiver with 15 channels of amplification and full 9.4.6 processing on board, and it'll cost you $6,400." - Then Marantz goes... "We've taken the same 9.4.6 processing power, gotten rid of the amp, and we are going to give it to you for only $7,000." ... Wait... WUT?!?

I get that they use premium stuff on the Marantz side of the house, but one of the things that keeps me from going to separates is that I can't get that same full featured 9.4.6 pre-pro for LESS money than the AVR. It doesn't baffle me all that much as they are targeting those who want the best experience with a premium price point. But, I always feel like if I know I could get a pre-pro for a fair price with features that matched the AVR, then I'd pick up some dedicated amps and then swap out my pre-pro every few years as the technology changed.

I'm sure they have their reasons for this, but it certainly pushes me towards the AVR every day of the week. Especially if all I was using was DefTech speakers.
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
I agree, I would expect the Pre to cost less, not sure what they think went into it that would make it cost more, but it seems counter intuitive.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
I think it still falls back on the volume of sales and that old economies of scale thing. Might be a little of the market they're aiming at, too.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Audioholics attended the Masimo Consumer’s two day event at their Carlsbad facility where we were able to spend time with a small group of writers along with personnel from Denon, Marantz and Definitive Technology. During the two days we discussed not only specific new products and technologies but also brand image and implementation as well as demonstrations.

In this report, we cover the following products:
  • Denon AVR-A1H 15.4CH AV Receiver
  • Marantz AV 10 and Amp 10 16CH Separates
  • New Definitive Technology Dymension Speakers
View attachment 60483
Read: New Denon, Marantz and Definitive Technology Product Show Report
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".
 
S

shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
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".
You may think the feature set is over-design, but the fact is, that is what people want. People want higher channel counts, and they don't really care about or understand the amplifier topology. High-performance class D is still more expensive than decent class A/B, and more people would rather pocket the savings. I agree that a lot of people would be very happy with a much simpler system if they understood what that entailed, but they don't understand. They think more is better. D+M is just responding to the market.
 
gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
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".
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.
 
Trell

Trell

Audioholic Spartan
From the article there is new health privacy issue in an effing receiver by Denon, which seems to be enabled by default. This is one consequence of the new owners of D&M, so stay tuned for more, I guess.

>>>The newest generation 6.5 HEOS module is compatible with Masimo Consumer’s Health Hub, which can communicate with Masimo’s wearable health care devices. The Health Hub functionality is defeatable depending on your preference. <<<
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
From the article there is new health privacy issue in an effing receiver by Denon, which seems to be enabled by default. This is one consequence of the new owners of D&M, so stay tuned for more, I guess.

>>>The newest generation 6.5 HEOS module is compatible with Masimo Consumer’s Health Hub, which can communicate with Masimo’s wearable health care devices. The Health Hub functionality is defeatable depending on your preference. <<<
Aren't monitors Masimo's big product? In the old days when I had a Polar setup something like displaying it on the tv might be nice....
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
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".
…The dead end I'm referring to is the absurdity of a 15 channel receivers….

…your speakers will be connected to your house Ethernet and you will control it all from you iPhone. No receiver and no AVP….

…The receiver can't go soon enough, it is way passed its sell by date. Now an AVP becomes a small neat device, and as time goes by morphs into you mobile phone…
So all AVR and all external amps and even all AVP will disappear and your mobile phone will become the new AVP and control all your speakers with all the amps/DSP/EQ inside of them.

R ———————— I —————————- G ——————————- H —————————- T. :D

You need to stop being rigid-minded and stop thinking that companies will fulfill ONLY YOUR wishes, instead of fulfilling the MAJORITY of the people who spend A LOT more than you do. :D

Get rid of all external amps and just put 3 or 4 amps inside every speaker? Stop kidding yourself. Wake up already. That’s not happening.

Like all of us “rigid-minded” people are telling you, companies are here to MAKE MONEY from the MAJORITY, not attend to a few people.

The MAJORITY and their money want 15CH AVR/AVP, good looking external amps, and passive speakers, NOT $10K powered bookshelf speakers.
 
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BMXTRIX

BMXTRIX

Audioholic Warlord
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.
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.
 
P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
Marantz products are typically voiced for ‘pure, warm sounding, three-dimensional sound’ and Denon is often associated with ‘precise, clear’.
This part is pure BS!!

If you look inside the comparable Marantz (e.g. SR6014, 7013 and Denon (e.g. AVR-X4500H) receivers, and the available service manuals, you will see the following similarities:

- Same audio signal path parts and circuitry from input to output except Marantz's has the HDAMs that acts as an extra buffer in the pre out end, yet there is an Op amp of average quality right before the power amp input, for the front right/left channels. You get that same opamp in the Denon's since the AVR-X3600H and X4500H.
- Identical power amp section, I mean identical to the point even the bias voltages, rail voltages are the same.
- the power supply block diagrams and schematics are the same, except the 6000 series has a slightly larger power transformer but that's loosely based on their silly power consumption specs and bench measurements by ASR.

So what are the so called premium parts? The only thing I can see are the gold plated connectors, that are not found in the Denon 3000 and 4000 series.

May be the cinema series and the 2022/23 Denons have more differences but based on available info so far, I doubt that very much.

Regardless, how do you get those different sound signatures when the hardware, circuitry are the same, and measurements show distortions, noise, crosstalks, frequency response, damping factor, linearity, DR, power outputs are all virtually the same?

Do their soundmaster really tell their designers to tune the sound, by trial and error adjusting resistor, capacitor, inductor values, and if so, why would the bench test results show the same as that of Denon's. The only difference is in the frequency response graph for the digital input test using 44.1 kHz sampling rate. In that graph yes Marantz has the characteristic roll off from just below 10 kHz and dropped gradually, by about 2-2.5 dB by the time it reached 20 kHz. That seemed to say that's really what's behind the different sound, as in the AV10, there is the option to choose the different DAC output filters provided by the ESS DAC, many external dacs provide the same kind of options.

If you look at the FR using analog inputs, or digital inputs but using higher sampling frequency such as 96 kHz, the curve will be flat just like Denon's.

So again, this warrm sound vs precise/clear sound talks are pure (okay may be 99%, to allow for people with bat's ears playing digital contents of sampling freq below 48 kHz) BS.

Denon has a soundmaster too, wonder if he's the same one for Marantz, if not, you get paid more??

1677242123371.png


Finally, even if Marantz did use premium parts (I mean aside from gold plated connectors and the added HDAMs), and different circuitry, how do they explain the price premium for the Marantz vs corresponding Denon's

Do they think AV consumers in North America are silly enough who would fall for the Masimo/SU marketing BS?
 
P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
I always struggle with the price of Marantz preamps. It's like, Denon says: "Here's a complete AV receiver with 15 channels of amplification and full 9.4.6 processing on board, and it'll cost you $6,400." - Then Marantz goes... "We've taken the same 9.4.6 processing power, gotten rid of the amp, and we are going to give it to you for only $7,000." ... Wait... WUT?!?

I get that they use premium stuff on the Marantz side of the house, but one of the things that keeps me from going to separates is that I can't get that same full featured 9.4.6 pre-pro for LESS money than the AVR. It doesn't baffle me all that much as they are targeting those who want the best experience with a premium price point. But, I always feel like if I know I could get a pre-pro for a fair price with features that matched the AVR, then I'd pick up some dedicated amps and then swap out my pre-pro every few years as the technology changed.

I'm sure they have their reasons for this, but it certainly pushes me towards the AVR every day of the week. Especially if all I was using was DefTech speakers.
The "premium stuff" is the gold plated connectors, that's it..

My other question, related to pricing is, can someone tell me why we in the USA and Canada have to pay a much higher premium for the Marantz AVR vs Denon's?

Premium price of Marantz over Denon's, for example between the Cinema 40 to AVR-X4800H is $1,001, that's huge for the little cosmetic difference and the do nothing (audio performance) HDAMs.

In Europe, for example, France and the UK: Cinema 40 cost about 200 Euro (Euro vs US$ are about even).

In Asia, example Singapore, the difference between the Cinema 50 and the AVR-X3800H is a whoppping $1 !!

So why in the USA and Canada, the premium price for the Marantz C50,40 vs Denon X4800/3800H are about $700 to $1,000?

Examples above are based on list prices by dealers. Anyone can search and see.

Comparison based on Denon and Marantz USA:
AVR-X4800H | Denon.............................$2,499
Cinema 40 AV Receiver | Marantz........ $3,500

Again, this is crazy, $1,001 premium, vs $201 in Europe and the premium on the Cinema 50 over the Denon AVR-X3800H in Singapore it only $1.

Now take a look at Europe's (France for example):

9.2 channel and 125 watt audio-video receiver per channel (marantz.com) $201 more than Denon's 4800
9.4 channel and 110 watt audio-video receiver per channel (marantz.com) $300 more than Denon's 3800

AVC-X3800H AV Receiver with HEOS® Built-in | Denon™
AVC-X4800H | Denon

For Asia price comparison (link posted by an ASR member):
Marantz CINEMA 50 9.4 CHANNEL | 110 WATTS PER CHANNEL AV RECEIVER | Shopee Singapore
Multiply 0.74 to convert to USD.

@M Code , do you know of any real reasons for the huge gap between M vs D's list prices in North America and elsewhere in the world? Tariff can't be the reason because M and D are both made in Vietnam and Japan so any tariff on M will equally apply to D as well right?
 
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DigitalDawn

DigitalDawn

Senior Audioholic
Audioholics attended the Masimo Consumer’s two day event at their Carlsbad facility where we were able to spend time with a small group of writers along with personnel from Denon, Marantz and Definitive Technology. During the two days we discussed not only specific new products and technologies but also brand image and implementation as well as demonstrations.

In this report, we cover the following products:
  • Denon AVR-A1H 15.4CH AV Receiver
  • Marantz AV 10 and Amp 10 16CH Separates
  • New Definitive Technology Dymension Speakers
View attachment 60483
Read: New Denon, Marantz and Definitive Technology Product Show Report
Great job Gene!
 
Trell

Trell

Audioholic Spartan
Marantz products are typically voiced for ‘pure, warm sounding, three-dimensional sound’ and Denon is often associated with ‘precise, clear’.
This part is pure BS!!

If you look inside the comparable Marantz (e.g. SR6014, 7013 and Denon (e.g. AVR-X4500H) receivers, and the available service manuals, you will see the following similarities:

- Same audio signal path parts and circuitry from input to output except Marantz's has the HDAMs that acts as an extra buffer in the pre out end, yet there is an Op amp of average quality right before the power amp input, for the front right/left channels. You get that same opamp in the Denon's since the AVR-X3600H and X4500H.
- Identical power amp section, I mean identical to the point even the bias voltages, rail voltages are the same.
- the power supply block diagrams and schematics are the same, except the 6000 series has a slightly larger power transformer but that's loosely based on their silly power consumption specs and bench measurements by ASR.

So what are the so called premium parts? The only thing I can see are the gold plated connectors, that are not found in the Denon 3000 and 4000 series.

May be the cinema series and the 2022/23 Denons have more differences but based on available info so far, I doubt that very much.

Regardless, how do you get those different sound signatures when the hardware, circuitry are the same, and measurements show distortions, noise, crosstalks, frequency response, damping factor, linearity, DR, power outputs are all virtually the same?

Do their soundmaster really tell their designers to tune the sound, by trial and error adjusting resistor, capacitor, inductor values, and if so, why would the bench test results show the same as that of Denon's. The only difference is in the frequency response graph for the digital input test using 44.1 kHz sampling rate. In that graph yes Marantz has the characteristic roll off from just below 10 kHz and dropped gradually, by about 2-2.5 dB by the time it reached 20 kHz. That seemed to say that's really what's behind the different sound, as in the AV10, there is the option to choose the different DAC output filters provided by the ESS DAC, many external dacs provide the same kind of options.

If you look at the FR using analog inputs, or digital inputs but using higher sampling frequency such as 96 kHz, the curve will be flat just like Denon's.

So again, this warrm sound vs precise/clear sound talks are pure (okay may be 99%, to allow for people with bat's ears playing digital contents of sampling freq below 48 kHz) BS.

Denon has a soundmaster too, wonder if he's the same one for Marantz, if not, you get paid more??

View attachment 60509

Finally, even if Marantz did use premium parts (I mean aside from gold plated connectors and the added HDAMs), and different circuitry, how do they explain the price premium for the Marantz vs corresponding Denon's

Do they think AV consumers in North America are silly enough who would fall for the Masimo/SU marketing BS?
Yeah, I too wondered why Audioholics writes an article with audiophool drivel like that.
 
P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
Yeah, I too wondered why Audioholics writes an article with audiophool drivel like that.
Gene, the engineer, didn't write any of that though, the writer's job simply reports, I assume. He didn't express his own opinions either.
 
Trell

Trell

Audioholic Spartan
Gene, the engineer, didn't write any of that though, the writer's job simply reports, I assume. He didn't express his own opinions either.
I know Gene did not write it but some editorial comments could have been added here, and that has been done on a number of articles over the years.
 
T

Trebdp83

Audioholic Ninja
You can spec out your car, phone and PC/Mac before purchase but still not one of these f#%kers. Prices go up, up, up while feature set is further compromised year after year after year.

There isn’t anybody around here who has NOT built their perfect AVR or processor in their head. They just can’t get one in the real world. Everything on the market falls short in one area or another and that, it seems, will never change.

Reasonable folk will deal with compromises here and there for reasonable prices. Some will continue to chase the dragon and buy whatever bulls#%t they are being sold if they believe it can deliver on their fantasies.

Wait, what was the point, again? Oh yes, powerful AV components wearing Dolby and HDCP shackles continue to demand exorbitant prices in a market that cannot help itself from bearing it.;)

F#%k those two extra sub ports and sound mode to signal gimping in the X4800H. The most reasonable deal on the market for Denon fans is the marked down X4700H. Sure, it is lacking in the HDMI department for PC/gaming. But, without 1440p, 144Hz and 48Gbps support the X4800H isn’t exactly state of the art, either. So, use eARC and shut the f#%k up.;) The X4700H is the last 4XXX model to feature a universal remote controller and even the new AVR-A1H has ditched it. I’ve said it before and will say it again. That is some bulls#%t!
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
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.
If one of those 15 amps blows a power transistor, your whole system is dead in the water. If one speaker has trouble, then one speaker is down. If the unit is designed properly, then the owner can replace the offending module as soon as overnight UPS. We need better designs and longer lasting equipment. We just need good engineering and good novel design. If I were let loose, I could change design practice for the better pronto and save a lot of cash. What is on offer currently, is to my mind totally unsatisfactory.

It is unreliable, and this was brought home to me by an extended visit here from the owner of one of the Cities B & M stores. It is also not nearly as good as it could be. I think there is really bad value for money at the moment, to say nothing of awful aesthetics. If you think that a receiver weighing 75 Ib. that I could not even lift, that contains 15 class AB power amps, one power supply and microprocessors galore is good design, and even remotely a good idea, then you are overdue from some post graduate education.

By the way, in most homes AC outlets can be added without too much upheaval as a rule. Active speakers offer the prospect of a highly significant increase in SQ and overall reliability, for multiple reasons. As streaming increase at pace, it will open the way, for no receivers and no AVPs. There is no reason your cell phone or laptop could not control the lot. That would unite the budget for phones, computers and home AV. One of the reasons for decline in home AV is family competition for funds with Internet and Wi-Fi devices. For obvious reasons, phones etc. take priority. So lets unite it.

Come on guys, just stop clinging to yesterdays ways, and think of the possible we could do now and in the future.

If you think that receiver I keep mentioning is not the last train reaching the buffers, then there is a severe lack of creative thinking round here.
 

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