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Yamaha vs Denon AVR Power Ratings Comparison?

1900 Views 3 Replies 2 Participants Last post by Russdawg1, Oct 4, 2019

VikenK

Discussion Starter · Oct 4, 2019

Hello Everyone,

I was recently speaking to a person in the industry about my speakers. This person seems knowledgeable but also a little biased as well. The topic of my AVR came up and I told him I have a Yamaha Aventage AVR with 7channels x 110watts. This rep made a passing comment that the Yamaha receivers do not have discreet amps for all 7 channels but Denon receivers have 7 discreet amps providing even power to all channels. The way he put it, the Yamaha splits its power among the channels but the Denon's provide 110w x 7 channels. This person is biased towards Denon because Denon is part of the product family of the company he works for. I'm not stating it as a negative, I'm just stating that he comes from a pro-Denon perspective.

I have read for a while now that most AVR's provide specs that say "...2 channels driven" and that the true power of the amps is divided among all the channels. The more channels you use, the more diluted the power becomes. This rep seemed to indicate to me that the Denon does not suffer from this. Can this be true?

I looked at the specs for the Yamaha Aventage RXA-2080 and the Denon AVR-X4500H, two AVRs of the same price class. They claim to have 140W/ch and 125W/ch (respectively) x 9 channels with "2 channels driven". If take what the rep told me, this would mean that the Denon has 125w x 9ch = 1125watts, but the Yamaha is a total 280w divided into 9ch, which I find hard to believe. Can anyone validate this? Or perhaps I misunderstood what he was saying about the discreet channels?

If I look in the manual of my Yamaha AVR, I see this:

It sure seems to me that Yamaha is saying that each channel is getting 110watts. Am I interpreting this correctly?

Looking forward to the discussion.

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Russdawg1

· #2 · Oct 4, 2019

No discussion to be had here, your rep is quite the wordsmith.

Yes, those ratings are per two channels driven. So the difference in power between the two is minimal (less than a dB).

Discreet channels is just mumbo jumbo to distract you from the actual false info he just fed you.

Every amplifier has its own discreet amplifier per powered channel whether it be a 7 channel amplifier or 9 channel amplifier.

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VikenK

Discussion Starter · #3 · Oct 4, 2019

Russdawg1 said:
No discussion to be had here, your rep is quite the wordsmith.

Yes, those ratings are per two channels driven. So the difference in power between the two is minimal (less than a dB).

Discreet channels is just mumbo jumbo to distract you from the actual false info he just fed you.

Every amplifier has its own discreet amplifier per powered channel whether it be a 7 channel amplifier or 9 channel amplifier.

Still, though, this would mean that my Yamaha AVR is running 7x110 = 770W, but I don't see any claims in the specification that it has 770w. I'm curious as to how much the power is diluted when running all 7 channels. My AVR spec says 110x/ch with 2 channels driven, so a total of 220w. So is the math as simple as 220/7 = ~31w/ch when using all 7 channels? I don't imagine it's that simple, since all channels aren't demanding power equally in a typical movie scene. I would imagine that the "presence" and surround speakers would demand far less power than the L/C/R.

Another part of me wants to try passive bi-amping (or "poor man's bi-amping") by changing my AVR to 5.1ch/bi-amp mode. Still, I don't know if that would be effective since the power becomes diluted as you add more channels.

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Russdawg1

· #4 · Oct 4, 2019

VikenK said:
Still, though, this would mean that my Yamaha AVR is running 7x110 = 770W, but I don't see any claims in the specification that it has 770w. I'm curious as to how much the power is diluted when running all 7 channels. My AVR spec says 110x/ch with 2 channels driven, so a total of 220w. So is the math as simple as 220/7 = ~31w/ch when using all 7 channels? I don't imagine it's that simple, since all channels aren't demanding power equally in a typical movie scene. I would imagine that the "presence" and surround speakers would demand far less power than the L/C/R.

Another part of me wants to try passive bi-amping (or "poor man's bi-amping") by changing my AVR to 5.1ch/bi-amp mode. Still, I don't know if that would be effective since the power becomes diluted as you add more channels.

I did not say that either receiver could sustain “2 Channel Driven” power specs when ALL channels are driven.

A better estimate is looking at total power consumption, subtracting 100 watts or so and then dividing by the amount of channels.

This rating does not hold any good merit because you will never have all channels playing at max voltage simultaneously.

I would simply not worry about wattage ratings as like I said the difference is usually less than 1dB, and choose based on features. That would be the smart decision.

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