Integra DHC-80.3 - Page 90

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "more natural"?  Is this with music or movies, or both?

Well with both. It's difficult to articulate but it doesn't sound as restrained to me. More natural sounding as it seems to work more with the room and doesn't try to eliminate the room. This is my interpretation. I'm not really very technical, sorry.

I hear ya about Nick, that guy alone would make me not want to buy an Anthem product EVER. My favorite was him saying how passive bi-wiring/passive bi-amping was so good LOL Any credibility was gone from that point on. I argued that it's really just a marketing point and something to entice the guys who really don't know anything about how active bi-amping works. I mean theres no harm in it but it's just a waste of wire.

Yup, we will be doing ARC vs XT32. I'm not sure if I'll have time to do a pro setup or not but hopefully I will. The only thing I'm worried about is, I'm not a fan of Martin Logan speakers, I dunno I just find their sound to be ...blah! lol thats about how I'd put it lol. He's got a anthem MCA 50 and 20 for amps. His brother works for the Anthem dealer, thus having all the Paradigm, Anthem and ML products. My price on a D2 would be about $1000 more than the 80.3....

I sold off my D2v two years after purchase for what I paid for it (glad they upped the price by a few grand for the same exact product ) I bought 2 of the 80.3's and still had money left over..... Tried one first and snatched up a second pretty soon after.

I found the 80.3 to be equal in SQ if not better then the D2v....

The room will have a great deal of how XT32 or ARC work for SQ and correction - with that said I truly didn't like what ARC did to my bass in my system, it was totally neutered, especially knowing what I'm running for subs. Enter the 80.3 and I was blown away by the improvement XT32 brought to my system. That and a product that actually has 21st century control of my gear was a nice and welcomed upgrade....

Internet firmware updates, droid app control.... THANK YOU !!

YMMV

I wouldn't be the first out of the blocks on that emotiva - until you see that its not a total disaster through other peoples trial and error.
Many people jumped the gun on their last failed attempt at a Pre-Pro.

Remember what you said here....
Edited by Warpdrv - 7/14/12 at 10:43am

lol, true but since that post, I've been doing extremely well for myself and now can afford to try it out and throw it in the garbage if I don't like it

Without hearing both, there is no way anyone can tell you which is "better". It's something you have to do first hand, no 2 people hear alike. if I tell you I love the bryston, someone else will say it sucks. Just the way it is. You should really try to listen to both if you can, even if it's just in the showrooms.

I have heard the SP3 with JBL Synthesis 1400 Arrays driven by a 4Bsst2. Very good but I did not like how it sort of glitched when skipping tracks on a CD. It takes a moment to figure out what format it is seeing. I should be getting the 80.3 Monday or Tuesday and I bought the 4B so I can let you know what I think of the 80.3 by next weekend for 2 channel and Redbook CD. Going to order a 5 channel amp for 7.1 HT on Monday so HT may not make next weekend.

I recently upgraded froma 4311 to a 80.3 and I experienced a substantial increase in dynamics and sound quality with the 80.3 over the 4311, Ive also demo'd another 4311 with the same speakers as mine at another members house and felt exactly the same....dynamics were not showing much and clairty was not as sharp as the 80.3. I use 3 Seaton Catalysts and 2 Submersives...if anyone wants to know what speakers I am running.

My friend who owns a D2V himself actually said to me that if he didnt already have an Anthem D2V he would of picked the 80.3 in an instant, after we A/B'd the 4311 and 80.3. Ive listened to the D2V various of times now and it doesnt leave me wanting it. Especially with the large jump in price over the 80.3.

Ive read a lot on the Anthems threads and all the problems I keep reading of thier units with thier buggy firmwares just put me off them....Great sounding units but I dont think its worth spending thousands of dollars over the 80.3. If anything I think the Anthem might have more of an edge on music! but for HT I think they are damn identical.

Wow. Great price. That would be a no brainer for me. I eagerly await your critiques.

As I may have posted before, I went from a Classe SSP-800 to the 80.3/CP-800 combo and prefer this scenario.

Some may consider ithis sacrilege, but it works better for me.

I am sure that the Bryston is very good, and somewhat better on some sources than an 80.3, notably analog inputs. But, the killer for me would be no Audyssey or equivalent room EQ. You can get around that limitation partly on the Bryston by using an external sub EQ box, such as Audyssey's, as Kal did. But, I personally favor the Full range EQ I get with Audyssey Pro, and the Pro graphs tell me that is confirmed by the measurements. Your own need for that will be entirely dependent on your speakers and room.

But, as a practical matter, in native or direct mode with most processors, I think there are differences, but none as big as turning on the full range EQ. So, unless Bryston included a credible full range EQ system, it would not be of interest to me.

You have the same exact set up as me

Speaking of the pipe always remember to puff puff and then pass when doing your 3500 dollar price differential comparison I prefer no pipe at all myself but I think I was getting a contact buzz from some of your posts ... I kid X2

Haha. touché' ! I will pass it around.

Your a good sport ! Sincerely hope your enjoying your new Anthem and much congrats !

Same here. You can take the best unit/system in the world and put it in a bad room and it will sound awful. If I went for a unit with no electronic EQ, after I'd finished asking myself "why?", the next thing I would have to do is buy a load of room treatments and bass traps. I just can’t imagine paying all that money for an AVR or AVP that offered no room correction.

 

I can pretty much guarantee that my 5509 will sound, in my room, far better than the Bryston.

 

 

In the CT room, the superiority of the Bryston to the Integra was readily apparent when the latter was w/o Audyssey.   With Audyssey engaged, it became a matter of "choosing one's poison::  The overall balance of the room-corrected Integra vs. the greater transparency of the Bryston.   In my much superior NYC room (and system), the value of Audyssey was lessened to the point that, although it was still appreciated, the balance of favor was definitely tipped to the Bryston (with a subEQ).

 

P.S.: There is much more acoustical room treatment in CT but it remains, overall, a less hospitable acoustic environment.  

Yes, this is what led me to parting ways with the SSP-800. My room is not bad, but treatments are more a function of design, not sonic requirements.

As good as the SSP is, I could never get the parametric eq dialed in adequately, and bass performance didn't feel optimal to me. Despite my past love/hate relationship with audyssey pro, i gave the 80.3 a try after speaking with my dealer. For multichannel, I'm preferring the 80.3 with Audyssey Pro, as well as the wide speaker option, over the performance of the SSP. Perhaps its the fact the Audyssey is working in the time domain as well as frequency, and/or the additional filters applied at to low frequencies, but there is a very nice pocketed feel the soundstage. It can be both point source articulate and spacious depending upon content in ways that are quite realistic.

I think in an optimal room, the SSP might very well sound better, but you play the hand dealt...I understands kal's deft phrasing of the sound being a bit "pinched" on the 80.3, at least as i compared to the SSP, though we're talking small fractions here. But the net benefit to me for the 80.3 became clear after a week of a/b listening.

Not as impressed with the 80.3 for two channel,,so the Classe CP-800 fits the bill for that music nicely.

The lack of network control of the SSP was also a bit tiring, so the iPad app for the 80.3 is another nice benefit...

All these filters work in both time- and frequency-domains.  It may be that you attempted to correct the FR with the Classe's PEQ and did not take the time decay issues into consideration when calculating the filters.  Certainly for <300Hz, the Classe's PEQ can do the job.  (Yes, Audyssey has more filters but you can do a lot with 5 per channel.)

True - I won't claim i know precisely what I am doing with omnimic, but even with a calibration by a respected professional, I was not convinced, especially for the dollars...

Thanks. I try not too take this too seriously. It's supposed to be a fun hobby after all.

^^^

xt32 vs. the mcacc in your sc-05 isn't even worth comparing... it's not a fair fight...

and yes, i owned a sc-05 (early adopter, no less), and currently own a xt32 equipped unit...

Now I'm nervous. I could have bought the SP3 but I would have had to buy Emotiva amps as that would have drained the budget (XPA-2 and XPA-5?). Big part of what I was after was great 2 channel. Now I guess a preamp with HT bypass could be in my future.
Edited by jima4a - 7/15/12 at 8:18pm

Not doubting you heard an improvement but isn't it more likely it had less to do with 4311 vs. 80.3 and more to do with different/more careful/more refined Pro cal on your part? Amps aren't a factor obviously, XT 32 is the same, and we're not addressing things like VP so I don't quite understand how there could be such a night and day difference in dynamics and clarity. The only other difference is XLR vs. RCA. Don't get me wrong- I'm glad you're happy - I just don't get it.

Chris

Different items with different components and parts, can be different.

SHOCKER!!!

Except Amps and colas, of course. NO ONE can EVER tell the difference, THAT'S just IMPOSSIBLE.

Let's see it must be room correction OR a bad unit OR the ice cubes. (Always remember, they WANT to tell you, you're stupid. But they think they are being polite)

LOL!
Edited by dean-l - 7/16/12 at 8:33am

Hey mate,

I actually did almost 10 cals on different occasions on the 4311 thinking that it was the same thing as u are saying. But it didnt improve dynamics as much...I did go from RCA to straight XLR's but I dont think that would attribute to the sound difference, would it?.

Cheers mate, I am happy and I dont get why there was such a big difference in the sound. Macca350 who is also on here and the Seaton Sound Forum also heard both my setups with the 4311 and then with the 80.3..........he said he wasnt expecting such a big difference in the sound signature to the 4311. Dynamics alone were the first things we noticed.

Wish you were in AUS!!!...Id be happy to bring my 80.3 and do a cal at your place and compare the two directly. I thought I might of had a bad unit...but just this sat I also went to another Catalysts members place and heard them on the 4311 and the dynamics were a lot less compared to the 80.3. Ill be taking my 80.3 to another members place in the next month who owns a 4311 and we plan to do more A/B testing on them.

Will let u know how it pans out, if your interested!

HT bypass might be your ultimate solution, and if you have already got the preamp for it, then by all means check it out with some comparative listening. But, you might also try going from your player into the Integra via coax instead of HDMI. That might or might not make a favorable difference vs. HDMI and in comparison to HT Bypass, and you would still have Audyssey and bass management that way without excessive domain conversions. Not sure if coax input is still limited to 96k on the 80.3 as it was on prior versions, but you should be fine for CD.

By the way, several of us think that CDs ripped to a hard drive sound slightly but noticeably better than the silver disks themselves played on an Oppo 93. That might be another way to upgrade your sound in stereo without having to go the Bypass route. Note that we do not use a computer for playback. Some knowlegable computer audiophiles recommend avoiding computer playback. It is directly from the hard drive into the same Oppo 93 in all cases.

I gave up on HT bypass myself using a Levinson 380S preamp. It did sound good via the bypass, but, somewhat surprisingly, it also reduced transparency in Mch mode. Since I now overwhelmingly prefer Mch music, that preamp and the HT Bypass is now history in my system.

It would be interesting if someday Integra/Onkyo came out with a premium processor using the best DACs, maybe something like the Sabre DACs, and a pristine analog signal path, power supplies, etc. Coupled with Audyssey XT/32 and a Pro calibration, that might be a formidable prepro for stereo, analog and Mch.