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.
....I generally feel as though any AVR being run within it's capabilities (no distortion) with all sound processing turned off should be very similar if not the same in sound reproduction. Yes there will be differences in how loud and clean each can go but that's outside of the direct comparison within their capabilities.
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
