Good cinema receivers and dvd's

We use the Tune Method to evaluate performance

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doze84
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Good cinema receivers and dvd's

Post by doze84 »

This thread is a split from "Absolute bargains". /Az

Seems like Sherwood have some bargains when it comes to performance in Tune Dem for DVD players in the lower price ranges. (Price range 0$-1500$ NEW) ,

Their least expensive dvd, the vd-4500 is spoken of to beat like all marantz dvd's(i think even CD's), in musicality.

And then Sherwood DVD V-768 should be even better, cost around 600$ a couple of years ago, and now can be found for under 250$, but it seems to be on it's way off the market quite soon. RD-871 is the only DVD that's better and it's goes for 600$. The Dvd v-768 according to taktoton, was the best DVD-player for music under linn classik movie 3 years ago.

And if they're right DVD v-768 seems like a really hot bargain, if the measurement is tune dem. But I haven't affirmed this, they say it's even better than the System fidelity cd-250... I'm doubting it, but would be interesting to compare, but it can take a while before i order one.

1. RD-871
2. V-768
3. 4500

Edit: Made price span and validation method more clear.
Last edited by doze84 on 2009-09-08 18:31, edited 6 times in total.
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Receivers

Post by doze84 »

And when it comes to none- linn recivers it looks like sherwood is the king here as well. (Price range 0$-1500$ NEW)

1) 7500, leaving the market now, is the best one they've ever made. Sold for around 320$.
2) 7502 then comes the 7502, almost as good in the analoge as the 7500 but if i got them right, slightly better when used with the internal dac. (goes for like 450$ new) Is soon going to be replaced with 7503.
3) 5300- The cheapest, one comes on third place.

I'm hoping for the 7503 to beat them all, because that one will have full support for HDMI. And i really like the bluetooth support that's coming, means you can stream from your cellphone, up to 320kbps mp3, direct to the reveiver('s internal dac?)!

Intresting to know would be how these ones stand compared to the denon avr-2808 praised on the faktiskt.se forum.

This seems to be the hierarchy when it comes to bioreceivers and tune dem.
1. Sherwood, if you pick the right models
2. Older Arcams fex avr250
3. MArantz.
4. Kenwood.

Some Denons seem to be pretty good to, fkes avr-1507, avr-1707, avr2808 and more and probably (just geussing) would go in quite high on the list).

Edit: Specified price range and corrected price on 7500, added to the list
Last edited by doze84 on 2009-09-08 18:29, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: Receivers

Post by trumpeten »

doze84 wrote:And when it comes to none- linn recivers it looks like sherwood is the king here as well.

1) 7500, leaving the market now, is the best one they've ever made. Sold for around 3200$.
2) 7502 then comes the 7502, almost as good in the analoge as the 7500 but if i got them right, slightly better when used with the internal dac.
3) 5300- The cheapest, one comes on third place.

I'm hoping for the 7503 to beat them all, because that one will have full support for HDMI. And i really like the bluetooth support that's coming, means you can stream from your cellphone, up to 320kbps mp3, direct to the reveiver internal dac?.

Intresting to know would be how these ones stand compared to the denon avr-2808 praised on the faktiskt.se forum.

This seems to be the hierarchy when it comes to bioreceivers and tune dem.
1. Sherwood, if you pick the right models
2. MArantz.
3. Kenwood.
Thanks for the input. What about the Arcam receivers? Seems that you can find them for quite resonable prices second hand eg. AVR250, AVR300 or AVR 350. How are they compared to the above? (Just bought a 40 inch flat screen and started to think about building a small home cinema.)
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Re: Receivers

Post by ThomasOK »

trumpeten wrote:
doze84 wrote:And when it comes to none- linn recivers it looks like sherwood is the king here as well.

1) 7500, leaving the market now, is the best one they've ever made. Sold for around 3200$.
2) 7502 then comes the 7502, almost as good in the analoge as the 7500 but if i got them right, slightly better when used with the internal dac.
3) 5300- The cheapest, one comes on third place.

I'm hoping for the 7503 to beat them all, because that one will have full support for HDMI. And i really like the bluetooth support that's coming, means you can stream from your cellphone, up to 320kbps mp3, direct to the reveiver internal dac?.

Intresting to know would be how these ones stand compared to the denon avr-2808 praised on the faktiskt.se forum.

This seems to be the hierarchy when it comes to bioreceivers and tune dem.
1. Sherwood, if you pick the right models
2. MArantz.
3. Kenwood.
Thanks for the input. What about the Arcam receivers? Seems that you can find them for quite resonable prices second hand eg. AVR250, AVR300 or AVR 350. How are they compared to the above? (Just bought a 40 inch flat screen and started to think about building a small home cinema.)
Thanks for asking this question as it connects with something I wanted to post. To answer your question I have generally found the Arcam AV receivers to be easily the most musical on the market. I will even go so far as to say that their first FMJ preamp/processor came very close to the Linn AV5103 in musical reproduction - close enough to require a couple of A/B comparisons to sort out the winner.

I have not compared the Arcam directly to Sherwood or Kenwood units nor to the most recent Marantz receivers so I can't really comment on how they would rank. But we carried Marantz until a few years ago and the Arcam receivers of the time were far more musical. Indeed it was the fact that not only the Arcam receivers were better but that the NAD receivers at the same price point were also superior to the Marantz that was a big part of us deciding to stop carrying Marantz.

This also brings up a question about the last several posts that I am hoping one of the administrators will answer. It has been my belief that the real purpose of this forum is to allow people to share their own experiences of how equipment, accessories and setup techniques compare using the Tune Method. This way we can have meaningful discussions of how to obtain the most musical performance from any equipment we might own. As such, it seems to be contrary to the forums goals, and even more-so the purpose of this particular thread, to post listings of items recommended by others if we have no personal experience of them. There is certainly no shortage of places on the internet where you can find recommendations for all kinds of things - regardless of whether they actually have any worth. Without personal experience of the piece of equipment, evaluated using the Tune Method, I don't think such recommendations really help anybody.
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Post by lejonklou »

Yes indeed, Thomas.

In this place we do take the "evaluated with the Tune Method" criterion seriously. I have also cleaned up this list of 'Absolute Bargains' several times, to keep it tidy and focused on what we know. Not what we guess or what someone said. The subject is also bargains - which means something should have exceptional value for money to fit here.

To doze84: Please confirm what personal experience and evaluation method you have behind your recommendations above. Also note this sticky is about bargains.

It's perfectly ok to come up with ideas and suggestions, or to ask whether anyone have compared X and Y. But such subjects should be posted as independent topics, not in this list of 'Absolute Bargains'.

Only what is properly evaluated will stay on this list.
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Re: Receivers

Post by Moomintroll »

ThomasOK wrote: ...I have generally found the Arcam AV receivers to be easily the most musical on the market. I will even go so far as to say that their first FMJ preamp/processor came very close to the Linn AV5103 in musical reproduction - close enough to require a couple of A/B comparisons to sort out the winner.
Interestingly, the current MD of Arcam is Charlie Brennan, who used to be Linn's Sales Director back in the 80s.

'troll
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Post by lejonklou »

I first visited Linn in 1989 (or was it 1990?). Studied electronics at the time and called them two days in advance and said I was an enthusiast that wanted to do my exam work there. In retrospect it was quite a bold move as I had already bought the ticket before I called.

Charlie Brennan was the one who picked me up in his Jaguar. He was a great guy! Took care of me for one whole day and introduced me to everyone he thought I should talk to. Also ran into Ivor there, who very bluntly asked me who the * I was and what the * I was doing there. :lol:

Thank you Charlie B!
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Post by ThomasOK »

I met Charlie Brennan in 1983 when I was the National sales manager for the importer of Linn and Naim. I was privileged to take a 10 day trip to Scotland and England to visit the Linn and Naim factories along with about ten dealer representatives and two of my associates. I have to say we were treated royally by everyone on the trip and it still ranks as one of the peak experiences of my life.

It didn't hurt that our group had a really good mix of people and Linn remarked for years afterwards that ours was the most fun group that had visited. Charlie, Martin, Ivor, Julian, Paul and the others at Linn and Naim were all very gracious and there was time for other diversions like a boat trip along the Scottish coast (quite gorgeous in May) and sailing on Julian's yacht on the last day.

Charlie was and is quite personable and I have talked to him once or twice since he has been at Arcam. I think it is no surprise Arcam makes the quality of equipment they do with Charlie at the helm.

Ivor is...well, Ivor! He can be very charming and gracious and has always been so to me, even when we have disagreed. But Linn itself once described him as "a walking PR nightmare" in an employment advert for a personal assistant for him. It is safe to say he has certainly rubbed some people the wrong way, but he has also charmed a significantly larger group. And of course, he has created and steered Linn to be the provider of much that is the best in equipment for reproducing music. It does seem like brilliant and forceful men do often polarize people. :)
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Post by doze84 »

Of course the only validation method is tune dem, as i made it very clear to them that that was the main reason I called them up, to draw from their experiences over the years and comparisons in tune dem. I thought this could be very helpful to people who look for products in this specific price range.
I don't see how these products could not be bargains when they are most likely are the best products on the market from 0$-1500$(10k sek) according to www.taktoton.com evaluated with tune dem(affirmed by more then one seller, who all compare different brans). And these units I put up here only cost from 150-400$.

Even another Linn dealer that doesn't sell Sherwood, affirmed that Sherwood probably was one of the best receivers(in this price range), since they had sold Sherwood before and only stopped because of cooperating difficulty with Sherwood.

Of course it's not possible for me to affirm all this information by personal testing, but let's take it for what it a serious dealers tests over they years that probably has a lot to tell us. For me these recommendations says more then what a comparison from a single member could do, even though I of course admit that's these dealers like non of us can have the full overview of the market. You probably know taktoton personally and can tell if they know how to apply tune dem correct.

And since they even recommended products that are not even available any longer, that proves their honesty, that they are not only recommending to sell more.

The prices range i mentioned is the price the products are sold for new, and arcam is outside of this price range. The range is products that cost new under 1000-1500$. If we want this list to be filled with, juicy great bargains, why not take tips from other serious tune dem'rs as well!

If I use the word that a product sounds good i mean it has low musical coloring. I don't care how many details or how much power the unit has if it doesn't play it in the right order and tune. Because if it's not in the right order and tuneful, something is seriously wrong with the sound anyhow, and then it is not details we are hearing, it's distortion or a squeezed sound image. Btw low musicality gives me headache. :)
Last edited by doze84 on 2009-09-06 14:47, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Receivers

Post by doze84 »

trumpeten wrote:
doze84 wrote:And when it comes to none- linn recivers it looks like sherwood is the king here as well.

1) 7500, leaving the market now, is the best one they've ever made. Sold for around 3200$.
2) 7502 then comes the 7502, almost as good in the analoge as the 7500 but if i got them right, slightly better when used with the internal dac.
3) 5300- The cheapest, one comes on third place.

I'm hoping for the 7503 to beat them all, because that one will have full support for HDMI. And i really like the bluetooth support that's coming, means you can stream from your cellphone, up to 320kbps mp3, direct to the reveiver internal dac?.

Intresting to know would be how these ones stand compared to the denon avr-2808 praised on the faktiskt.se forum.

This seems to be the hierarchy when it comes to bioreceivers and tune dem.
1. Sherwood, if you pick the right models
2. MArantz.
3. Kenwood.
Thanks for the input. What about the Arcam receivers? Seems that you can find them for quite resonable prices second hand eg. AVR250, AVR300 or AVR 350. How are they compared to the above? (Just bought a 40 inch flat screen and started to think about building a small home cinema.)
A search in the database on the swedish linn-forum gave a hint that these specific sherwood-receivers might be better in tune dem tan those arcams you mentioned, but I'm asking around for more clear tune -dem' comparsions and will be back.
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Post by doze84 »

According to Andkan(from selleri.de) who used to work as a seller in taktoton.com before (swedish Linn-store), the Sherwood 7500 outperformed arcam 250 quite easy in tune dem. According to him it was a classic demonstration, to compare those two, for costumers. Do you believe its a bargain now?
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Post by lejonklou »

I appreciate your tips, doze84! But they are quite extensive and all originate from a shop, instead of someone who participates on this forum.

It's interesting that Sherwood 7500 is said to outperform Arcam 250, but a bargain? I thought you said the 7500 sold for 3200$?

As I really do find these tips useable, but don't quite see them as Absolute Bargains, I wonder if it perhaps should become a separate Home Cinema thread.

What does the moderator say?
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Post by doze84 »

320$ not 3200$. (3 000kr)
And if the receiver is likely to be the best one from 0-20 000 sek, isn't that a bargain compared to bying "arcam 350" for 2500$. And then we don't even know it's gonna be better.

Yes they do origin mostly from one shop, but they are tune demer's too. And the last guy that answerd for the arcam 250 doesn't even work there anymore.

And even another linn-shop that don't even sell sherwood confirmed the tune dem quality of sherwood. And also some confirmations from diffrent forums, Of course i want more confirmations and the opportunity to hear myself, but isn't this a clear first hint. Especially if that was a daily thing to compare arcam 250 with sherwood 7500 for costumers to hear them self.

Did you mean like that bargains only can cost maximum 100$?
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Post by lejonklou »

Well that certainly more interesting than what you previously wrote! :)
doze84 wrote:7500, leaving the market now, is the best one they've ever made. Sold for around 3200$.
If the above price had been correct, I'd have to mention that a first version Classic Movie easily beats every Arcam receiver I've heard so far. But at one tenth of the price you first mentioned, that Sherwood does sound like a steal!
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Post by doze84 »

Ops sorry, must have slipped on the keyboard,,, :oops:

That explains it..
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Post by trumpeten »

I was scanning an other a Swedish forum were a Denon 1507 and Denon 2308 is told to be betten in tune dem compared to a 5103/5125 combo, at least through its digital inputs.

How about these Denon receivers? Some of their latest model are supposed to be something called UK tuned: "which means that Denon's Japanese engineers have conducted extensive listening sessions with Denon UK's audio gurus and tweaked the sound until everyone in the room is happy. It's hard to say exactly what the 'UK sound' is, but it lies somewhere between the upfront brashness favoured by Germans and the softer, detailed sound that delights Japanese eardrums." /TrustedReview.

Anyone who has evaluated them?
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Post by lejonklou »

What other Swedish forum, trumpeten?

A perhaps more importantly; who wrote it?
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Post by doze84 »

It comes from faktiskt.se, I think it's a test that Richard and a friend of him did. But i think even squeezebox is better than the internal DA of 5103 so that's not a big deal.. at least of what i heard from selleri.de in the last months.-

In this test richard even claims to use tune them as one of the test methods as he has been working in a linn-shop before he claims to know how to use it. they did make it blind also i think, and even the friend got the same result.

But i would guess avr1507 is a pretty good receiver with a guite transparent sound, but that there would be any extreme hights in musical transparancy, i doubt. ( since the same people thinks that pinoeer Dv-668 is one of the best cd-splayers in the world)

I tried to make them test the analog input of the two receivers, but, they had already sold the 5103:), but i'm pretty sure that would give another result.
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Post by trumpeten »

lejonklou wrote:What other Swedish forum, trumpeten?

A perhaps more importantly; who wrote it?
Sorry about that, the forum is faktiskt.se, the writer is "Richard" and it can be found at http://www.faktiskt.se/modules.php?name ... 42&start=0

Not surprisingly the thread is followed by 22 pages of discussion...

Since everyone on that forum has so fundamental different opinions of what good sound is and how it should be evaluated it is very hard for me to make any conclusions of what is written there. On the contrary, everything I ever heard that has been evaluated/developed with tune dem in mind has in my ears sounded good. That why I appreciate reading this forum, I believe what is written.

And yes, I should go out and listen myself, but before taking the time running around in different stores, especially since not one store carry all the brands and some alternatives are second hand, I'd appreciate some input. A good shout-out should for me should probably be Linn Classik Movie (both Di and the newer version), Arcam AVR something, some of the Sherwood ones and perhaps some other like eg. Denon/Marantz.
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Post by lejonklou »

trumpeten wrote:Since everyone on that forum has so fundamental different opinions of what good sound is and how it should be evaluated it is very hard for me to make any conclusions of what is written there.
Indeed. Faktiskt is a place for technical discussions between people who fail to understand what the purpose of a HiFi system is. I wouldn't consider it likely that anyone who knows how to use the Tune Method would actively contribute there. Consensus among those who frequent that forum is that there are no musical differences to be found in any HiFi components.

What they do regard as terribly important is how flat the frequency response is. I regard that as similar to measuring how perfectly round the tires of your car is - and use that number as the proof of how good it is.
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Post by doze84 »

Invar öhman does admit that there are differences in the musicality, i even saw him correct one of his own people, and called that person to be totally lacking musicality ear, when that person thought there were no differences in the musicality among different products.

But he doesn't seem to admit that there's a lot more to gain than what the pioneer dv-668 and the denon receivers lives up to( i thnk he has the avr 2102 or something at home, now uppgradring to avr1507) . And he means that F/E-listening (Before / After listening) is enough to detect coloring, and musical coloring is something that you detect among other typs of coloring. Tune dem is useless according to him. I think he thinkgs that linnists are dealing with over musicality, making the music more musical than it is. Some sort of coloring.

But no deeper revelation of misucality seems to be found.
That's why I'm trying to impose degrees of musical coloring when I'm writing there. And trying to get them to understand that there's still a way to go before we get to transparancy, in the musical flow.
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Post by lejonklou »

If you hang around there, you must either be on a mission or a masochist. Or both! :mrgreen:

There are some highly educated people there, but without a valid and reliable method of evaluation, their conclusions aren't really interesting. I won't go into a discussion about the Before/After evaluation method, it's just too far off any sensible track, in my opinion.
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Post by doze84 »

I think they use some sort of fake resistance, but still i don't know how they do it without affecting the signal. . but they probably have some answers for that. Anyhow if it works, it still would be helpful to know tune dem to detect colouring in the musical flow between the Before and the After.

It actually seems like the Speakers PIP Made by Ingvar Öhman got quite good performance in tune dem, and it seems(according to Richard) that they are built in a way that could be even more transparent than th majik 140(in other aspects than musicality), at least according to Richard. Because the majik 140 seems to throw out the sound in backwards phase from the treble and seem to be built to stand against walls, which makes the sound has a coloring of LIVE..They are built to operate together with the echo from the back wall, while the PIP's are built to operate with a quiet wall behind. PIP's actually sound much worse with no damping material behind, and the majik 140 sounds worse with damping material.. And they seem quite equal in tune dem, according to Richard. They even glue the filter on the magnet just to aviod using cables that can affect the phase. Well i don't know about this just trying to repeart what he said.. but maybe this should be a Pip thread or a faktiskt thread or something. But what worries me about the pip's is that everyone builds them themself, which I think would make it differ in the final result of each product.

The pip's are one of the reasons I hang out there, but of course the mission might be another reason, and to learn about their way of thinking.
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Post by vicdiaz »

ThomasOK wrote:I met Charlie Brennan in 1983 when I was the National sales manager for the importer of Linn and Naim.
Until when you were with AS???? Maybe I did meet you back in September 1986 when I went to Indianapolis for a week!
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Post by ThomasOK »

vicdiaz wrote:
ThomasOK wrote:I met Charlie Brennan in 1983 when I was the National sales manager for the importer of Linn and Naim.
Until when you were with AS???? Maybe I did meet you back in September 1986 when I went to Indianapolis for a week!
No, I'm afraid not. While I enjoyed working with the people at ASL and was quite pleased to be representing Linn, Indianapolis itself didn't agree with me or my family. I ended up leaving Indy and ASL in 1984.
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