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The trouble with AVR's


rebuy

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OK--We all know amp separates sound better than AVR's.

Mine is great for movies and music but getting the sound right for music

requires some EQ and listening.

The Audyssey for music, IMHO---BLOWS.

I've been sitting here reading your expert advice and opinions

about amps and AVR's and the such.

Last night I was reading about First Watt Amps and Nelson Pass

along with headroom and power and all that Jazz.

 

I have an 85 Watt Denon and You know--these are geared for Home Theater

Not Music---That's one reason Amps sound so much better--they're geared for Music.

So I got a wild idea---I know, Hillbillies with wild ideas are dangerous.

I'm looking for headroom, real sounding sound, ease of extracting sound

from recordings with the Dynamics we all strive for.

So I had my EQ set already--No Audyessy--turned the sound down

and turned the mains to +12 on the L & R and played some music.

 

What a difference--At any volume--the sound is so much better.

Even sitting here and listening without any tone controls--

just the it comes from Pandora--Yeah--I know it's Pandora

the sound is much more dynamic and clear than running the

system at "normal" settings.

 

I got the idea just to run the AVR Wide Open at any volume

and for me, it paid off in spades.

It sounds like a new system.

YMMV--but I could not be happier--my system sounds great running this way.

 

 

 

 

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OK--We all know amp separates sound better than AVR's. Mine is great for movies and music but getting the sound right for music requires some EQ and listening.

The Audyssey for music, IMHO---BLOWS.

I've been sitting here reading your expert advice and opinions

about amps and AVR's and the such.

Last night I was reading about First Watt Amps and Nelson Pass

along with headroom and power and all that Jazz.

 

I have an 85 Watt Denon and You know--these are geared for Home Theater

Not Music---That's one reason Amps sound so much better--they're geared for Music.

So I got a wild idea---I know, Hillbillies with wild ideas are dangerous.

I'm looking for headroom, real sounding sound, ease of extracting sound

from recordings with the Dynamics we all strive for.

So I had my EQ set already--No Audyessy--turned the sound down

and turned the mains to +12 on the L & R and played some music.

 

What a difference--At any volume--the sound is so much better.

Even sitting here and listening without any tone controls--

just the it comes from Pandora--Yeah--I know it's Pandora

the sound is much more dynamic and clear than running the

system at "normal" settings.

 

I got the idea just to run the AVR Wide Open at any volume

and for me, it paid off in spades.

It sounds like a new system.

YMMV--but I could not be happier--my system sounds great running this way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The whole first watt thing is bs, all class ab amps operate as a class a at very low power.  

The main problem with modern avrs is trading features for amplifier power. Many receivers rated at 100wpc into 2ch would struggle to deliver over 50wpc with 7 channels driven, due to cheating out on the power supply.

 

All solid state amps sound exactly the same so long as they aren’t driven to clipping. Any difference you’re noticing is likely placebo.

 

How much power you need depends on your speakers sensitivity, how far your seating is, and how loud you listen. A speaker with a sensitivity of 87dB 1w1m can reach an in room spl of 101dB at a distance of 8 feet with 75w. Music much louder than 85dB is uncomfortable for me. Real power is needed for movies, not music. Let’s say you sit 10’ away, and you like to play movies at reference level. You’d need 105dB of headroom per channel. In order to achieve this, you’d need about 300w per channel, and that is factoring +3dB for room gain. There is absolutely no avr that can supply that sort of power, and most likely, those speakers would either blow or produce ridiculous amounts of distortion with that much power, therefore, it’s much more effective to just use higher sensitivity speakers. A speaker rated at 92dB would easily hit reference levels with 100w.

 

The pre-pro market sucks. Many pre-pros cost significantly more than a comparable avr, and many “home theater” amps are priced very high. It’s much more economical to simply purchase an avr with preouts, and use pro audio amps for extra power. A majority of consumer amps couldn’t hold a candle to a good crown amp or even a behringer, many of these amps are perfectly stable even down to 2ohms. Ratings for pro audio equipment are held to a higher standard, since audio engineers wouldn’t put up with the bs marketing crap consumers are subjected to.

 

I will agree with you that automatic room correction leaves much to be desired. For one, eqing frequencies above the Schroeder transition is a waste of time, since its highly variable around the room. A much better idea is to simply cut the bumps in response from room modes on the sub. If the room is very reflective and “live” one could either reduce this with acoustic treatments, or apply a sloping “house curve” eq on the high frequencies.

 

If you want REAL headroom and dynamics, you can’t get that with power alone. Look into high efficiency, horn loaded speakers. Klipsch, powersound audio, hsu’s horn bookshelf, and diy sound group are all good places to start. Many of these, diysg and Klipsch , also have the benefit of uniform controlled dispersion. A good deal of direct radiating dome tweeters have a rapidly falling response off axis above 5khz, whereas a Klipsch Modified tractrix horn maintains a relatively flat response out to 14khz across a 90 degree area. 33edcb9a106453946954fa2bca661d05.png

 

Taking the room out of the equation, the speaker measure +-2dB all the way to 20khz 92a45a3d268b4ea17e1478d46cfb7bdc.png

 

Note the dip at 1.5khz is because the drivers were measured individually, it would sum to flat with both drivers measured.

 

Another benefit of horn loading tweeters is that you can use a much lower crossover point. The Klipsch shown in the graph has an xover of 1500hz. The benefit of this is that the directivity of the woofer is matched more closely to the tweeter, which eliminates response aberrations off axis. If you were to use a 1500hz xover on a direct radiating tweeter, it’d most like destroy itself within seconds.

 

There is a good reason cinemas and pro audio concert rigs don’t use your run of the mill fabric dome tweeters or tiny woofers in small boxes designed for extended bass response.

 

If you want to improve your sound with EQ, I’d first start with accurate speakers, following that, I’d pick up a umik and measure the response at the seat using rew. From there, you could correct the low frequency response using a minidsp, or if using a separate amp, the behringer nu x000 amps have a built in parametric eq. High frequency issues can be corrected via acoustic treatments, but starting with an accurate speakers with uniform off axis dispersion should fix most of this, if the sound bouncing off the walls has a similar response as the direct sound from the speaker, the timbre shouldn’t change based on the room.

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

 

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Thanks for your info...I've been into audio for at least 40 years.

I've read more than I can remember.

I am working with equipment I have.

What I said in the first post worked for me.

I'm very happy with the way my rig sounds now.

I don't feel the need to go out and spend money

when I have great sound.

I guess my advice is for people who are willing to give

this a try and see if they have the success I had

without spending a dime.

My system sounds at least 50% better than it did yesterday

all because of changing the initial settings.

Your system might be so good you don't have to do this.

Some of are just working with average equipment

trying to get the best sound we can.

 

Also all SS amps do not sound the same.

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, rebuy said:

-I know, Hillbillies with wild ideas are dangerous.

 

I'm looking for headroom, real sounding sound, ease of extracting sound from recordings with the Dynamics we all strive for.

 

So I had my EQ set already--No Audyessy--turned the sound down and turned the mains to +12 on the L & R and played some music.

 

What a difference--At any volume--the sound is so much better.

Dang dangerous hillbilly!  :lol: (Mr. @rebuy lives about a half-hour from me, to the South of course)

 

Interesting experiment.  There are some technical reasons why turning the mains to +12 is not a great idea but I'm not sure exactly why, as I sit here thinking about it.  Something about stressing out the amp, every +3 db adds distortion or doubles the power needed for headroom, something like that.  

 

I've got to go so this morning so I can't delve deeper into it at the moment.  Some of the smarter guys will pick this up and comment.  We'll see if I'm on the right track or if there is something else I'm missing.

 

The non-technical side of me says if it sounds good, it is good.  Either way it's thought provoking. 

 

 

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If you're not sure about turning the main's all the way up before you add

power to the speakers, try turning most of the way up.

I don't know what scale your AVR has, it might just go up to 10 or so

so you could try 8 or 9--what ever sounds best for the speakers you have.

Mine sound great without any tone controls with these settings but

you can add a little tone control for room acoustics.

Just don't overdo it. 

Mine sounds so good I thought I'd pass along this info

for people that run AVR's.

I'm also using this setting for the TV and really like it.

As far as stressing out the Amps in the AVR,

You don't turn the sound up as loud as you were doing

because the sound is better at low volume and high volume.

I think it's putting less stress on the Amps because I'm getting 

high power sound at low volume and don't feel the need to blast

the sound to get high quality sound.

 

Let me know how this turns out for you.

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On ‎10‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 1:37 AM, yepimonfire said:

 

All solid state amps sound exactly the same so long as they aren’t driven to clipping. Any difference you’re noticing is likely placebo.

Good post and this is what I've read also. Fwiw, I have the rig listed below and will tell you that Multichannel music sounds phenomenal on it in 9.2 using Dolby PLIIz along with the Audyssey curve and Dynamic Volume OFF. 

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Graphs and some of this other data means nothing.  I am all for anything to improve SQ.  The truth of the matter is that separates are not   better, this debate is wide open and old.  I would never take the SC 99 out of the equations and  say it depends on setup.  Dynamic are provided by the avr and the front and  centered and surroud are driven by a power amp..

 

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6 hours ago, derrickdj1 said:

The truth of the matter is that separates are not   better, this debate is wide open and old.

Let me get this right, a quality preamp/amplifier combo will, won't, can, can't, sound better than a receiver under any conditions?:unsure::P

 

Bill

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Listen to a HK 430 then listen to a another brand and tell me solid state all sound the same.....BS as Paul would say......The separates statement is just wrong. But I do agree with you that  you can make an AVR sound better playing with the settings I had to do that on my Integra......when I first got it my 24 watt HK 430 would kick its ***. Probably still does as for quality of the sound, but I played with the Integra enough to get it acceptable I'm sure there are other things I could do to it but learning how to adjust it just gives me a headache...lol....Instruction manual for the 1970s HK 430 probably 6 pages,,,,the Integra is 106 pages and not an easy read..

   Pretty bad when a 45 year old HK430 sounds better than brand new stuff.....but then again it is playing through 45 year old speakers also,,lol

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IMO, more than often some rooms aren't capable of producing any true SQ difference that can be heard by the average Joe. I'm not talking soundstage or larger bass or a big wow factor like swapping a pair of Heresy's for Jubs, I'm talking real SQ.  If you don't have a dampened or treated room, you will never hear truly black pauses, nuances and the delicate, hidden minute qualities of a good recording.

 

Saying a $250 China built AVR wont sound better than a top of the line mainstream AVR is pretty far from the actual.  But for all of this to work, you need revealing speakers and a decent quiet room to see the light. 

 

As far as separates go,  its the only way once you have invested a good amount in great speakers.  Numbers don't lie,  Low noise floor rating for amps, give the blackness in the pauses and are a must for efficient horns. Low THD is just that and its something that has gone up on all of the AVR offerings except the top of the line models. In most cases they just upped the THD rating in order to show a higher Wattage output. All good separate amps should have a THD rating in the .005% range or even better at their given output rating unless they are a tube setup. Once you hit a level of truly upper level separates, they all  are very similar, they just becaome a slightly different flavor of ice cream.

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48 minutes ago, derrickdj1 said:

It is hard to discuss this topic because it is to general.  A lot depends on the quality of the each piece of gear.  A cheap(poorly designed and low quality part) avr or cheap system with separates won't give you great SQ.

Derrick.

 

My comment was really a bit of tongue in cheek.  I think we all know there are too many variables for most comparisons to be apples to apples.

 

Bill

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I can only say one thing........................ABX box. Double blind listening with all conditions controlled to 0.1 db will put away any argument. Problem with audiophiles is they would rather hang on to their technically false belief system rather than hear the truth for themselves.

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3 hours ago, willland said:

 

4 hours ago, derrickdj1 said:

It is hard to discuss this topic because it is to general.  A lot depends on the quality of the each piece of gear.  A cheap(poorly designed and low quality part) avr or cheap system with separates won't give you great SQ.

Derrick.

 

My comment was really a bit of tongue in cheek.  I think we all know there are too many variables for most comparisons to be apples to apples.

 

Bill

 

I agree with Derrick. There may be other variables, but once you supply enough power to drive your speakers efficiently (at the volume you want to listen) then adding more power isn't going to do any thing, regardless if it's from an AVR or a separate amp.

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12 hours ago, Zen Traveler said:

I agree with Derrick. There may be other variables, but once you supply enough power to drive your speakers efficiently (at the volume you want to listen) then adding more power isn't going to do any thing, regardless if it's from an AVR or a separate amp.

Lets even not talk about the topic that deserves a 10 foot diameter version of PWK's "Bullshit" button...............The technical truth about Speaker Cables. So far, the most expensive pair I have found is $15,000 and the Winner of the giant button. Any other finds to top this one?? I'm listening.

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29 minutes ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

Lets even not talk about the topic that deserves a 10 foot diameter version of PWK's "Bullshit" button

Fwiw, I have found folks enjoy purchasing amps  because it pleases them for various reasons but otoh, I've seen people go out of there way to purchase extra power just to "be on the safe side," because they've read it on the internet....On AVSForum they have an excellent Audio Theory section where I posed this question a few years back:   Would I benefit from an external amp?            http://www.avsforum.com/forum/91-audio-theory-setup-chat/1532635-would-i-benefit-external-amp.html

 

 

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