Yamaha Receiver VS Rotel preampTest...

[woodman]

After reading Mr Peabody findings on seperates Vs Receivers ,and the constant rants on how bright Yamahas are I thought I would post my findings...The system is a Acurus a200x3 amp,Yamaha RXV 1400 Receiver,Rotel 1070 2ch preamp,Denon DCM 380 cd player,Paradigm Studio 100 v2s.In this system I run the L/R front preouts from the Yamaha to an aux input on the Rotel.For HDTV ,and DVD I select the aux input calibrate the volume (to 12 oclock).For CD and TT I turn the volume down and use either input as needed..The Denon CD player has a digital and a analog output.I run the analog to the Rotel and the Digital to the Yamaha..Testing is only using direct on the Yamaha.Setting a volume level on the rotel to about 70 dbs then change inputs and set the Yam to about 70dbs..At this point it is a matter of going to and from the AUX input to CD input on the 2ch pre..I have had 9 people that I did this with and not one could say the Rotel was better than the Yamaha..And when done blind no one came close ..I am not an EE but if there is a flaw in this test it would seem to be on the Yamaha...

46min.:
Thank you for taking the time and trouble to PROVE (at least partially) what I've been trying to tell people for years now. That is, that whenever performance differences do exist (which is most certainly not always) - those differences are gonna be small, subtle, tiny, minuscule ... in other words, not really very meaningful. I've been working with audio all of my life and have blown away by the technological progress that's been made. Today, most any audio design engineer that's worth his salt can design an audio product that's merely a few pubic hairs less in performance than a similar product that costs 5-10 times as much! There's simply no such thing as "blows away" or "kills" or "a night & day difference" or "waaaay better" or "a HUGE difference" or any other outrageous claim made by people who've been victimized by their own ABEs (Attitudes, Beliefs, and Expectations). Mr.Peabody is a classic case. He stated in a post on another board here that some amplifier was "light years ahead" in performance over a Yamaha. Obviously, he doesn't actually know anything at all about audio ... only what his ears (and his ABEs) lead him to believe is true.

Another prize-winning example is the myth that Yamaha receivers and amplifiers are "bright" - which they're not. They're simply accurate, with a very flat frequency response - that's all. To anyone that's accustomed to hearing amplifiers that have a rolled off response, of course something with an accurate response curve will sound "bright". That hardly makes it so.

What did you mean by your last line ... ..I am not an EE but if there is a flaw in this test it would seem to be on the Yamaha. ? There IS a flaw in your test since you're not comparing the Rotel and the Yamaha on equal terms ... the Rotel is getting an analog signal (where the DAC in the Denon player was used) and the Yamaha is using its own built-in DAC - using the digital output from the CD player. In order to test the two on a level playing field, they would both have to get the same signal from the CD player (either analog or digital) and their outputs would then have to be switched before the input to the power amp. This would require the use of some external switch, and level matching would be a bit difficult. But the test that you did run - flawed or not - simply proved my contentions as stated above. That the differences in performance are in actuality much too small to be the subject for endless debate that they've become.