Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Overstating AV Receiver Power -

To me, purposely making it seem liek it is all channel driven is bad business.

Like I said, if it sound right to you, it is ok. I loved my Yamaha 2090. I will not support a line that is purposely misleading customers, though. I will buy their DVD or CD players, but I will no longer invest in their receivers.

That may be true of music, but I think most people purchse 7.1 receivers for their HT functions. The surrounds may indeed not be taxed very often, but the three front channels are certainly working. The fact is if they say it's a 100 watt receiver, people expect they're getting 100 watts PER channel.

Having said that, the bottom line is - how does it sound? Marketing trickery aside, if the unit does what you need, and sounds good. In the end does it matter that they cheat with their ratings?

I would agree that wattage ratings are a very poor indicator of the quality or even the level of sound you can expect. A family member has Martin Logan electrostats (notoriously inefficient) pushed by a 200 watt per channel Macintosh stereo receiver. There are 2 big meters showing the output power on the front panel, and even when the sound is what I consider "loud enough" they rarely indicate much over 1 watt.

does anyone have the thread to how each receiver's true power rating is?
I am more interested in a denon to yammy comparison.

Ask and ye shall receive(r)

OK...yeah, I know. Bad pun.

JimmyTango, Spiff, JohnK, all,

Putting it in a crude, Brookynese manner: "Whadda ya want for $600? Seven channels at 100 watts per channel, all channels driven?? No way."

The EIA standards for measuring multichannel receiver power output were diluted, to permit manufactureres to sell you relatively inexpensive 7-channel receivers that in many installations will be quite satisfactory (reference JohnK's comments) but that simply have nothing like the power output of the old era of stereo, 2-channel receivers. With the latter, continuous power was measured from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, both channels driven, into 8 ohms and 4 ohms. Now, it's usually measured at a single frequency (1 kHz) with one or two channels driven, and the remainder at 1/8th of rated power output.

To sell a receiver with seven on-board amplifiers that deliver continuous power output with all channels driven would cost multi thousands, with huge heat sinks.

If you recall, we now get 7.1-channel A/V receivers for what 2-channel stereo receivers used to sell for, or even less money.

Regards,

Thanks for that you have put things in perspective nicely, I think I went off the deep end when a competing salesmen trashed my Yamaha RX-V1400. In the end I understand, my listening pleasure is what counts, I think it sounds great.

Thanks for your insight.
Axel

In reply to:

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in my view power ratings aren't being "overstated"; the ratings are accurate in the light of different rating standards applied by different groups.

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I believe they are very much being overstated if the white paper specs cannot match a real world bench test of that statement regardless of how the company hides behind the legal fenangling behind some obscure definition of the standards.
It is true that in a real world application at home this is of less concern, but ultimately if they state a unit can produce 100W /ch then i expect it to put out 100W /ch when i take it into the lab and plug it into a source which can draw that much power from it. This is how it is marketed and this is how people read it and the companies know that.
Enough of this creative marketing crap.
I'm fed up with it.
Where is the damn honesty and integrity gone in this world?
Or was it ever there to begin with?

Yes that's where I was originally coming from, but I guess life is a series of trade-offs for better and worse......

Seems like Denon is only overstating a little more than 10% for their 380x series. My 3802(110W) should still get at least 95W per channel.