sacrificing sound quality for features.

[saprano]

Let’s face it. We live in a world of instant gratification. Status quo doesn’t keep us complacent for long. Even when we’ve got great material possessions, we demand newer and better all the time. We do this with cars, homes, and especially electronics. The A/V industry seems to be moving at a more rapid pace than even the computer one with the major Japanese electronics manufacturers introducing new A/V receiver models every 8 months. By the time you purchased your new receiver, the manufacturer has already tested its replacement model and is getting ready to stock the shelves of their local retailers with it.


Once wind of the new models gets out, old model sales plummet and consumers run frantically to be the first on their block to own this new wonder machine with improved performance promised by the manufacturer. But are you really getting better performance with the newer model? Or are you trading amplifier quality for features? This article will be primer for what’s to come in our verification testing to better answer these questions.


The Good Ole Days
Let’s flip the clocks back 10-15 years ago to one of my favorite Pro Logic receivers from Onkyo, the TX-DS828. It was a THX rated five channel receiver that had a very meaty amp section for the main channels. Back in that day it wasn’t a requirement to have equal power for all channels since Dolby Digital wasn’t implemented in consumer gear yet. I recall speaking to a tech at Onkyo about some operational questions I had relating to this receiver. He told me “don’t get rid of that baby, the replacement models coming don’t have the same punch”. I didn’t think much of that until a few generations later where a similarly priced Onkyo receiver was not only lighter in weight, but had a reduced power rating for the front channels but equal power for all five channels

Sure it sported new Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 decoders but for listening to two channel sources, it just didn’t sound the same to me or my brother when we ran some comparisons. On a positive note, getting DD/DTS decoders built in was certainly a worthy trade off. It is costly for manufacturers to not only integrate the parts for these features, but to license the technologies as well. Only your listening habits could govern your decision based on these trade offs. Being a two channel enthusiast like me, my brother kept what he had and waited. The features in this case weren’t worth trading for amplifier quality.


A similar example I recall was with one of the industries first fully integrated 5.1 Dolby Digital receiver, the venerable flagship from Yamaha, the DSP-A3090. It was actually an integrated amp as it lacked a tuner. This beast weighed a whopping 46lbs, had dual rows of heat sinks, a large E-core transformer and generous capacitive power bank reserves. It was also the first equal power (5 x 80wpc) 5.1 channel A/V product on the market. The sound quality was fabulous. The amps were sonically very warm and rich and had no problems driving 4 ohm loads on all channels simultaneously. I owned this unit before I started Audioholics. A few months after I bought it, the RX-V2092 came out. Its rated power was 20wpc higher than the older DSP-A3090 but it also weighed a few pounds less. Did Yamaha somehow change the laws of physics? Not likely.


What I discovered in my listening comparisons between the two amplifiers was that the less powerful DSP-A3090 sounded much smoother and more natural, especially when driven at high power levels. Despite it didn’t put out as much rated power, the sonic differences between the two to my ears was night and day. Years later I discovered why this was the case. Yamaha was biasing the rails higher (using a higher voltage rail with less available current) to yield a more impressive power spec for marketing purposes.

You can read the rest here
http://www.audioholics.com/education...nology/trading

Its a long read but its worth it. what do you guys think?