AV Receiver Reviews - Limited Value

[Leeps]

I can't be the only person who has an AV receiver that enjoys music through it. And it's struck me of late how lacking most AV receiver reviews are, and I'm not singling out WHF here...pretty much ALL AVR reviews seem to fall into the same trap.

80-90% of the review tells you what they do. A typical modern AVR does rather a lot, so understandably this uses up plenty of publishing space. But as a potential buyer, I could find that all out on the manufacturer's website, so 90% of the review tells me nothing new.

I could understand having a resume of their features on a 'preview' of a product just launched where the specs may not have even reached the maker's website, but that's not what I want from a review. And matters have been made worse since Atmos's advent as yet more space seems to be devoted to every possible Atmos speaker permutation available, which as you can imagine takes some length to describe.

Personally, I'd appreciate the reviewers giving the sort of review you'd find of a typical stereo integrated amp: spending much more time describing their timing, tonal balance, bass control, how they sounded playing certain songs or movie soundtracks you know how it goes. One recent lengthy AV receiver review gave just one sentence to its musical ability. It said it had a "good" tonal balance!! What's THAT? Warm? Detailed? Punchy? Well-timed? Forward and dramatic? I haven't a clue what a "good" tonal balance is and seeing that was the only comment about the amp's sound, I was left none the wiser after reading the review. So if I was shortlisting to tonally match my speakers, the reviews haven't helped at all. And surely, tonally matching your speakers to the AV receiver is as important for 2-channel as it is multi-channel. Even if I hadn't already purchased speakers, knowing how acidic or alkali an amp was would again help punters short-list potentially matching speakers.

So can I appeal to reviewers, please can we have less cut n paste from manufacturer's websites and more REVIEW. Thanks in advance.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Agreed, although most AV receiver reviews concentrate on the AV side of things, as that's what most people use them for.

I suspect that with Pioneer and Onkyo, as well as Marantz and Denon, being basically the same units with different knobs on, and with the idea that a lot of the components inside are the same from bottom of the line model to top of the line model from each manufacturer anyway, there really isn't that much to write about sound wise anyway. Rather, the reviewers concentrate on things like how easy the units are to set up, how nice (or unpleasant) the remotes are, and things like that. Kind of like reviewing three different spec. Mondeos and being reduced to discussing the cup holder and alloy wheel options because they've got the same 1.8 engine and suspension, so the ride and performance are the same whichever model you choose.

Added to which, with the possible exception of "I'm off to Currys again" Gel here, most of us don't sit for hours reviewing every pixel of the TV picture, the sound of every "kaboom" monet in the latest blockbuster, or every note from the orchestra. Sure, if you're a WHF (or other mag) journo and spend all day every day reviewing stuff, your ears and eyes are going to get trained to pick up subtle differentces us mere mortals won't notice, but that, as I often say, is like Lewis Hamilton coming into the pits and adding half a psi to his front right tyre and shaving a tenth of a second of his lap time, whereas sat in his car us mere mortals would either be bricking ourselves just at the speed of the car or have parked it into a wall laps before.

IMHO no AV receiver, with the possible exception of that Arcam unit which is really a stereo amp with HDMI inputs, should be regarded as a replacement for a "proper stereo" amplifier either.

 

[hybridauth_Facebook_1512826378744583]

I agree that most AV receiver reviews don't always go into a lot of detail when it comes to stereo sound quality. I was also looking for an upgrade from my non hdmi to a hdmi setup without losing too much sound quality in stereo.

All depends on your needs and budget and how trained your is ear? Do you really want HiFi quality or just a good sound? A stereo amp by Marantz is to sound warmer the a Denon model, so expect the same difference in their AVR model. Note that most differences mentioned in reviews are undetectable by our untrained ears. I believe that differences untrained ears can detect, become detectable when you compare a £200 amp with a £1000 amp or a £1000 amp with a +£5000 amp. Amps of the same price range often have brand specific sound colour as their only difference, give or take a few exceptions.

if this might help, I choose to get the best of both worlds for the budget I can spend and I believe I have reached the best solution my trained ear as a musician can handle. I was looking for a above average 5.1 receiver with second zone (so 7.1) because I like detailed sound quality when watching movies and like to feel like I'm sitting in the movie. No need for high volumes. Then in music I love well recorded records that have lots of detail that I can discover. So detail is the main thing I was looking for.

That said, I choose the brand that sounded good to me in the shop when trying stereo amps and within the price range and I ended up with Marantz. Then I went to see what they offer in AVR. So now I ordered a Marantz NR1607 as my AVR receiver. Later I will add a PM8005 as my stereo amp that will drive the front speakers. Like I said, the best of both worlds within my price range. I have a receiver specialised in stereo sound, and a receiver specialised in surround sounds.

hope this helps.

 

[Native_bon]

Av amps are good these days at playing music. Av amps are just not as good as two channel amps. For you to get a really good stereo performance from an av amp, you will be looking to spend at least 2k & above.

Having said that, it still will be hard to tell differences in a blind test.

 

[Leeps]

My post wasn't really about AV amps vs stereo amps. That argument's somewhere up there with cables and passive vs active...best not go there or it'll result in mud being slung.

Over the years I've seen many newbies to this site looking for advice on musical AVR's. They either don't have the funds or space or both for two separate systems and want one box that does both. But they also don't want to make the sort of compromises required by listening to 5.1 mixes through a stereo-only amp. They want an AVR that can do music too...very well. In percentage terms how many people buy AV receivers and NEVER listen to music, saving their expensive systems for multi-channel movies only? I would imagine a small percentage who have dedicated home cinemas.

I was thinkng, what's the point in taking up column inches in a review that's simply a repetition of what any Joe can search for on the maker's website. A little saved there could be used much more productively by spending a little more comment from reviewers about an AVR's 2-channel performance, what its tonal balance is like and what speakers complemented or hindered the AV receiver in question.

I'd be interested in such reviews, but I just don't think I'm alone in that.

 

[Native_bon]

My post wasn't really about AV amps vs stereo amps. That argument's somewhere up there with cables and passive vs active...best not go there or it'll result in mud being slung.

Over the years I've seen many newbies to this site looking for advice on musical AVR's. They either don't have the funds or space or both for two separate systems and want one box that does both. But they also don't want to make the sort of compromises required by listening to 5.1 mixes through a stereo-only amp. They want an AVR that can do music too...very well. In percentage terms how many people buy AV receivers and NEVER listen to music, saving their expensive systems for multi-channel movies only? I would imagine a small percentage who have dedicated home cinemas.

I was thinkng, what's the point in taking up column inches in a review that's simply a repetition of what any Joe can search for on the maker's website. A little saved there could be used much more productively by spending a little more comment from reviewers about an AVR's 2-channel performance, what its tonal balance is like and what speakers complemented or hindered the AV receiver in question.

I'd be interested in such reviews, but I just don't think I'm alone in that.

I agree with you. Look at my signature I got an AVR myself. It serves me very well with two channel music. Very musical & power to spare. Again I suppose it all boils dwn to how much you want to spend on an AVR amp. Yes two channel amps sound better, but dnt think people with Av amps are missing heaven & earth like they are made to believe. Once had a Marantz SR6003 Av amp. It had so many extensive reviews of its two channel audio performance. Occasionally you do get good reviews of an Av amps that perform well with 2 channel music, giving details & characteristics & presentation of sound. Again agree should be done more often.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Remember Generation Y was raised on iPods, Bluetooth speakers and MP3. They neither understand or expect the same audiophile qualities we old duffers do (cue NTNOCN sketch where Mel Smith goes to buy a gramophone).
Most people who buy HT AVRs do so primarily to watch TV, DVDs or Blu-Rays, not to listen to music. So don't be surprised if te reviews concentrate on the AV side.

That having been said, I too dislike "reviews" that are little more than re-typed press hand-outs, and a little more "bite" in the reviews as happened in WHF etc in the 80s and 90s wouldn't go amiss.

 

[zoz1234]

My post wasn't really about AV amps vs stereo amps. That argument's somewhere up there with cables and passive vs active...best not go there or it'll result in mud being slung.

Over the years I've seen many newbies to this site looking for advice on musical AVR's. They either don't have the funds or space or both for two separate systems and want one box that does both. But they also don't want to make the sort of compromises required by listening to 5.1 mixes through a stereo-only amp. They want an AVR that can do music too...very well. In percentage terms how many people buy AV receivers and NEVER listen to music, saving their expensive systems for multi-channel movies only? I would imagine a small percentage who have dedicated home cinemas.

I was thinkng, what's the point in taking up column inches in a review that's simply a repetition of what any Joe can search for on the maker's website. A little saved there could be used much more productively by spending a little more comment from reviewers about an AVR's 2-channel performance, what its tonal balance is like and what speakers complemented or hindered the AV receiver in question.

I'd be interested in such reviews, but I just don't think I'm alone in that.

I'm neither rich or have a particularly big living room, but I have two seperate systems for music and film. An Arcam hi-fi set up, integrated amp, power amp and cd player, with a Sony casette deck and project turntabe feeding Monitor Gold floorstanders.

But when i'm being lazy, i will just plug my ipod into the home cinema receiver if i'm flicking through multiple songs or playing a created playlist instead of getting up and down with loads of different cds. The sound is totally incomparable though. Saying that, the hi-fi costs a lot more than the cinema set up.

Whether I would do the same now is a different matter, but I hadn't noticed the lack of detail in reviews to be honest. Now that you have mentioned it, I probably will.......

 

[Samd]

However, I was always taught that a testimonial etc was only as good as your knowledge of the standards of the writer and wonder whether bright or warm output, for example, was be similarly classified by all writers. Can you have 'proper' benchmarks for sound?

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Therefore it's best to listen for yourself, get a demo, etc., and see what you feel sounds "warm" or "bright".

Some product lines have their own "factory sound" as well, and some classes of amps - like valve amps - can sound "warm", but since I haven't heard a valve amp since my dad threw his out in favour of a new fangled transistor Goodmans Module 90 in about 1972, I really couldn't tell you what "warm" sounds like to me.

 

[Frank Harvey]

I can't be the only person who has an AV receiver that enjoys music through it. And it's struck me of late how lacking most AV receiver reviews are, and I'm not singling out WHF here...pretty much ALL AVR reviews seem to fall into the same trap.

80-90% of the review tells you what they do. A typical modern AVR does rather a lot, so understandably this uses up plenty of publishing space. But as a potential buyer, I could find that all out on the manufacturer's website, so 90% of the review tells me nothing new.

I agree. You can sum up all the little features in one paragraph really, as time needn't be spent explaining the majority of these features. Most people are interested in any one specific AV receiver because of its price point, or because of what it does, therefore they know what it does already. Maybe the lack of space given to quality sums up the increasing ignorance towards it.

It does seem a little ironic that a lot of people ditched their hi-fi systems during the 90s and early noughties to move over to AV - because they could play music through them too - and yet it was the one thing they didn't do very well, for various reasons. This led to the defection back to two-channel hi-if we've been seeing for the last 10 years or so. They have improved a lot since those days though, but they still have more than one job to do, and at the budget end, there's only so much you can do to maintain the quality of an AV receiver after adding numerous, superfluous features and paying for all the licences.

As mentioned though, it is subjective. Whenever I test out an AV receiver, I'll always try it with music first and foremost - if music doesn't sound right or isn't up to scratch, then it stands to reason that you won't be getting what you should be from films. Despite the soundtracks of Blurays potentially being better quality than CD, it is music that highlights any shortcomings of any equipment that includes an audio aspect. You only have to play music through your TV speakers to see what I mean.

 

[Leeps]

...there's only so much you can do to maintain the quality of an AV receiver after adding numerous, superfluous features and paying for all the licences.

Indeed. It's interesting for example to compare the slightly newer Denon X6300H, which has more features and 2 more channels than the X7200W but is almost 4 kilos lighter. Pennies have clearly been cut somewhere. (Yes, I know it was a few hundred quid cheaper too). The weight I think is an increasingly useful parameter to view AV receivers through - what's their power supply like? Although countering that, it always surprises me the Anthems aren't heavier than they are, given their generally excellent musical performance.

As mentioned though, it is subjective.

True, but that's not stopped reviewers doing a pretty good job of reviewing the quality and feeling of an integrated amp's ability with music. So it's not impossible, otherwise nobody would read such reviews.

Whenever I test out an AV receiver, I'll always try it with music first and foremost - if music doesn't sound right or isn't up to scratch, then it stands to reason that you won't be getting what you should be from films. Despite the soundtracks of Blurays potentially being better quality than CD, it is music that highlights any shortcomings of any equipment that includes an audio aspect. You only have to play music through your TV speakers to see what I mean.

Definitely, and a jolly good tip for demo'ing AV receivers. If it can get dynamics and timing right with music, it's almost a given that it'll do the same with steering effects.

 

[Andrew17321]

"It's interesting for example to compare the slightly newer Denon X6300H, which has more features and 2 more channels than the X7200W but is almost 4 kilos lighter. Pennies have clearly been cut somewhere. (Yes, I know it was a few hundred quid cheaper too). The weight I think is an increasingly useful parameter to view AV receivers through - what's their power supply like? Although countering that, it always surprises me the Anthems aren't heavier than they are, given their generally excellent musical performance."

I have a relative who does design work for a highly renouned HiFi company. He says that they could make their amplifiers a quarter of the weight and in much smaller boxs and they would sound the same and be equally reliable. They don't, because their consevative customers would not buy small light amplifiers. Large size and weight are HiFi myths. Audio electronics has moved on with time just as computer electronics has.