<font color='#000000'>Rich;
I don't have the time to sit and debate you in a dissertation fashion on these forums. We never tested the Receiver, just the Processor. The Receiver is based on the Processor and as shown in other reviews (namely S&V magazine) both had appreciably higher noise floors than most midfi receivers and high end processors.
Most of the comments you directed at me where not even from post(s) that I made. I never called the Sunfire amps laughable.
#1: You forget the fact of volume and how larger companies buying higher quantities of parts reap the benefits of cost savings. A company like Sunfire may sell 1000 TGIII's year as opposed to say Yamaha selling 10K Z9's / year. Not to mention that giants like Yamaha, Denon, etc have multi platform products like Shelly pointed out, thus re-use much of the components for each model and further increase volumes and drive down costs. Lets also not forget that big companies such as Denon spend in excess of millions/year on R&D, while many so called high end companies simply cannot afford this.
#2: You forget that audio magazines are a business. If they find a product performs below average, they may list it in measurements, but not make a big issue of it in text. When was the last time you saw a truly critical review of a product that listed all of its shortcommngs? Very few magazines and audio websites do this. We do our best to keep a critical, yet balanced perspective. We don't sugar coat things, nor will we ever.
#3: You fail to realize the power ratings you tout are with the line voltage held up by a variac. This is an unlikely real world usage, unless the user buys such a device to keep the AC voltage from dipping during high current demands. S&V magazine forgot to do this once in a review of a Yamaha RX-V1 and resulted in much lower power figures that devistated the piece because in the same issue they reviewed a cheaper Denon AVR-4800 that appeared to be more powerful since they held the line voltage up for that unit. In a latter issue they apologized in small text, but the damage was already done.
The point is, consumers often make too big of a deal out of power. They fail to realize in real world applications, most users never tax the amps to the limits, nor do their speakers need that much power, especially in systems with active subwoofers. They often fail to realize that trading power for noise and distortion has its place in Sound Reinforcement, but not in high fidelity playback IMO. Again, in applications where large amounts of power is needed, say a large, well damped living room, with inefficient high quality low impedance speakers such as an ESLs,Apogee, Quad, Dynaudio (as a few examples), surely the consumer would greatly benefit from a low noise high power amp such as your Rotel or others as opposed to a high power receiver. No argument there. However the little gain in power from the Sunfire receiver vs other flagship receivers is negligle IMO (<1dB added headroom) when considering the added noise and distortion.
As for measurements, I never personally tested a Sunfire amp, but I have heard them in many installs and never enjoyed their sonic signature and noise floor. We found the TGIII noisy compared to other products we had in house at the time of review. S&V magazine also confirmed this with measurements, though they did not go out of their way in text to buttress an argument.
We just received a slew of new test gear to measure SNR, THD, etc and may be doing power measurements in future reviews as well.
I will not debate this any further. My time is limited for audioholics and this debate has become totally counterproductive. You can continue to engage other forum members here if you so choose. I come to these forums often to offer my advice on products to people when they ask for it, but I can see it may not be such a good idea since some may find my advice biased. Perhaps in the future I will not be so forthcoming and simply let my reviews speak for themselves. If you feel we are biased, or dislike the content of this site, then I strongly encourage you visit the other audio websites that don't share our "minority" review of the Sunfire products.
Here are a few links:
Stereotimes
Secrets of Home Theater
Audiorevolution
These are all very nice websites loaded with product reviews and audio related information. Note that you can also read glowing reviews of exotic speaker cables at these websites as well. Unfortunately you won't find such reviews here. Enjoy.
BTW, I am not sure if you are aware of our Disclaim about our product reviews. If not, here is it:
<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>
Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Disclaimer
Our reviews are based on subjective listening tests and objective analysis. We do our best to define the primary important design criteria and metrics to base our analysis. However, sometimes the performance criteria we deem important don’t always match up to all particular consumer applications. Thus we recommend using our reviews, and all reviews, as a guideline and informational source only to assist you in your comparative shopping. We sincerely hope you appreciate our efforts and wish to encourage any consumer in the marketplace to evaluate the product in question, if given the opportunity, on their own and formulate their own opinion based on personal perceptions of the products performance and ability to satisfy their specific needs. </td></tr></table>
It can also be found on our main page of product reviews at:
Staff Product Reviews
[edited: added links to other home audio websites]</font>
