Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Receiver Sound Quality?

I was just reading this post and it reminded me of a discussion I recently had with a friend of mine about the sound quality of one brand name AVR versus another... a partial quote is pulled below to provide a frame of reference without reading the entire other thread.



My friend's experience... his H/K receiver produced the best sound "hands down" over a similarly-priced Onkyo and Pioneer receiver. He did the A/B/C testing in his house and thought (but couldn't remember for sure) that he was just playing them with out of the box settings (i.e. no-auto-room EQ's were run, just XO frequency and the very basic small/large speaker setup).

I can definitely see where, if used, one AVR's auto-room EQ could be superior to another, but in this type of a scenario, running the receiver "out of the box," is it normal that the components used and sound processing performed in an H/K (or any of the receivers) versus a similarly-priced Denon/Onkyo/Pio, etc. would produce vastly different sound from one another at normal listening volumes? When I was shopping for my AVR, I really didn't pay much heed to comments about one AVR playing better sound than another as long as the receivers were from any recognizable brand name and generally in the same price class I was shopping in. I was purely looking at the combination of the ability to handle a 4-ohm load for the 80s and the features I was looking for.

Do others here believe (or better yet have you heard) that there is a clear difference in sound between these receiver models in a similar price class (i.e. the Onkyo 805 vs the 3808) or does it end up being largely subjective?

Looking forward to your thoughts...

Jason

It more a religion/cult thing than anything else.

You can get into detailed discussions about any number of aspects of a receiver and argue that it colours sound and you can hear it, but from what I remember, in any properly conducted blind testing, nobody could tell the difference. Alan Loft can probably cite you the studies chapter and verse. Me, I'll just take his word for it.

Tell that to your friend. He will remain unconvinced.

Puzzle me this though. The room in which you place your system will have a huge effect on the sound you get, yet almost nobody talks about this, its effects, and what to do about it.

On this site, there has been a fair amount of discussion about this as it relates to subs, but your room can also have a significant effect on other parts of the spectrum.

Has your friend ever made any mention of room effects to you?

Agreed, SQ driving an easy (8 ohm) stereo load should be pretty uniform. I think in an A/B/C test, the preference often will go to the unit that happens to be set very slightly louder. The listener might not be able to rank them by volume, but the effect can still be there. Choosing by features and price is reasonable.

I too have seen notes of the effects of room character, with perhaps advice to do "acoustic treatments" but very little indication of how to assess a room and what to do about it once one does.

I have only seen one reference on how to assess and that involved an A/V consultant with expensive equipment. Actually, you can probably get a good idea of what is happening in your room with bass using an SPL meter and REW, and there are inexpensive mikes that will measure from 30Hz-8kHz, but I suspect measuring higher frequencies would be quite a challenge.

There is lots of info on what to do to treat specific issues.

Fred, I agree. The REW software + SPL meter gave me a pretty good idea what my room was doing to the sound. Once I had the sub set up, I ran a full sweep of the entire room with all speakers connected and found the results pretty interesting. I realize the SPL meter isn't good enough to accurately measure the entire spectrum, but I still felt it gave me a good enough idea that I didn't have major response problems in my room. My ear confirms this as it sounds awesome to me, but I wanted to check just to see if there were any major anomalies in the response curve.

Hey Jason--

Haven't compared the latest generation -- I went on features, reputation, and recommendations for my Denon 3808 this time out.

But last time I did listen to a couple of different receivers in my home. I cannot say that I did a scientifically controlled experiment, but tried to keep things reasonably comparable. I definitely heard differences among receivers (Marantz, HK, and Pioneer). For the most part I attributed it to different DACs since most of the comparisons were for music. If I recall correctly, when I went to analog in on the CDs, I heard fewer differences, though I distinctly remember the Marantz receiver being "flatter" sounding.

Just my $.02.

Rich

As long as you use high end Monster brand speaker wires and cables, properly break in the speakers and use Bose cubes, it’s highly unlikely that you will ever detect any sonic differences between modern AVRs. Don’t concern yourself with power either, 2 watts is more than enough.

The dark side weighs in... or is that comes out with both cubes swinging...

Rich. I followed a long thread on DACs over at audoiholics that was very interesting. It turns out that there is not that much difference in cost between the mid price and high end DACs anymore. I have often wondered what difference the DAC would make. Needless to say, it was hard to conclude who was right.

I wonder if anyone has ever done any blind testing?