Pioneer Elite v. Marantz v. Denon

[rojo]

Well, the thing is, the pure, unequalized, uncorrected power will be the same whether you go with Marantz / Denon, Pioneer, Yamaha, Sony, and so on. (There could be a smell of ozone when an Onkyo fries, but that's a different matter.) The real question is, do you prefer Audyssey, MCACC, or YPAO for eq / room correction? Yamaha fans say there's nothing better than YPAO. Pioneer fans say there's nothing better than MCACC. I say there's nothing better than Audyssey. Unfortunately, I've never come across any posts from anyone who has owned more than one such technology, who has had the ability to provide graphed measurements to demonstrate the effectiveness of each.

I can say that Audyssey XT on my Marantz automatically corrected my bass pretty closely to my tedious manual corrections. The Dynamic EQ feature introduces a house curve (loudness) at low volumes, but flattens out as reference volume is approached. Science. One has little control over the slope of that house curve. Nevertheless, the Audyssey scientists picked a pretty good curve, and dialing in your preferred amount of bass via the LFE channel volume control works without sounding unnatural.

But if I had it to do over again knowing what I know, I'd probably get the X4000.

For what it's worth, many of us have gotten refurbs from A4L, and no one seems to have experienced any notable problems. My Marantz is an A4L refurb, and I honestly wouldn't have known it was a refurb if someone else had done the ordering, save for the refurb labels on the box.

 

[cpp]

Pioneer is about to get sold, so they're probably pushing them because they don't want to get stuck with them. I'd opt for either Marantz or Denon anyway.

I read that last month, looks like by July Pioneer will sell off its AV business to Funai Will Pioneer Sell Off Its AV Business? | http://www.twice.com

 

[Josuah]

I've used older generations of YPAO and Audyssey at home and believe Audyssey is better (but Dirac to be even better than that). I haven't had a chance to try MCAAC at home.

I prefer the high-end Marantz sound to the Pioneer Elite sound. I don't recall when I last listened to a high-end Denon unit. They certainly measure differently and contain different chipsets so that alone should be enough to make you consider different high-end units to sound different.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I prefer the high-end Marantz sound to the Pioneer Elite sound. I don't recall when I last listened to a high-end Denon unit. They certainly measure differently and contain different chipsets so that alone should be enough to make you consider different high-end units to sound different.

They measure differently how?
One has a SNR of -110dB and one has a SNR of -112dB?
One has a crosstalk of -90dB @ 1kHz and one has a crosstalk of -80dB @ 1kHz?
One has a FR of 20Hz-20kHz +/-0.01dB and one is +/-0.1dB?
One has a THD of 0.001% and one is 0.01%?
One has a power output of 200WPC into 4 ohms and one is 175WPC?

I guess if you think that every single component sounds differently even in Pure Direct mode, then that's a personal belief or opinion. But to cover both sides, many of us don't believe that components sound differently just because they use differently chipsets.

I've used older generations of YPAO and Audyssey at home and believe Audyssey is better (but Dirac to be even better than that). I haven't had a chance to try MCAAC at home.

Every room correction company believes their software is the best. Everyone who has heard different RC software has a different opinion for sure. Newer is usually the best.

IMAX theaters, dARTS, NAD, Cambridge Audio, Marantz, Denon, Integra, etc., think Audyssey is best. Other companies think Dirac or ARC is best, etc.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Unfortunately, I've never come across any posts from anyone who has owned more than one such technology, who has had the ability to provide graphed measurements to demonstrate the effectiveness of each.

I've seen some extremely impressive Audyssey XT32 graphed measurements. But, of course, not everyone likes the sound of extremely flat and smooth measurements, as long as they don't measure atrociously.