What the box says and what is inside it: seven receivers and one measuring trick

I came across a video where a repair shop opens seven receivers and compares what’s inside with what’s printed on the box. Five out of seven came out the same. Different brands, identical cost-cutting.

The list of brands is interesting, but it isn’t what stayed with me. What stayed with me is one sentence about how power is measured - and since then I can’t read a spec sheet the way I used to.

The trick is in the conditions the number was measured under

The box says, let’s say, 80 watts per channel. That isn’t a lie. But it’s measured at a single frequency (1 kHz), with one channel driven, into 8 ohms.

When a film or an album is playing, every channel is working at once, across the whole frequency range. Under those conditions, the video says, the same box sustains roughly half that number.

The figure isn’t invented. It’s simply measured under conditions that have nothing to do with how the thing is used. That’s the kind of honesty which is technically unassailable and practically useless - and once you notice it, you notice it everywhere.

Five that don’t carry the name they sell

The pattern is the same in all of them: the name was earned on professional gear, and it’s being charged for on consumer gear that has nothing to do with it.

Denon - the X1800H and X2800H, which are exactly the ones most people take home, use off-the-shelf class D modules and a switching power supply. From the X4800H up, they say, the engineering is real.

Yamaha - the RX-V line. Here’s a test you can run in the shop: knock on the top panel with a knuckle. If it rings like a drum, the steel is thin and the case resonates. The Aventage line, RX-A4A and above, doesn’t ring.

Onkyo - the most concrete case. TX receivers from the seventies and eighties are still on repair benches, and not because they’re breaking but because they’re still in use. Then came the HDMI board from the 2014-2019 period, which would fail under sustained heat. The amplifier still works, but without that board you’re left without a single input you actually need.

Sony - the STR-DH line, switching supply and surface-mount construction throughout. The ES line is what justifies the name, and it costs accordingly.

Pioneer - the VSX line shares its modules with half the market. But the vintage SX series - SX-1980, SX-1250, SX-939 - is what technicians treat as a benchmark. Those came from a time when the competition was about sound, not about the number of features.

Two that pass

Arcam, Cambridge, since 1976. The SR250 runs in class G and has a real transformer. Ninety watts per channel, and the kind you can actually use.

NAD Masters - the M33 and its siblings. Class D, but the sort developed with Purifi, where the saving is done everywhere except on the signal.

What they have in common has nothing to do with engineering: neither has been through an acquisition that redirected its priorities.

What I checked, and where I’d be more careful

A few things I wanted to see for myself before writing them down here.

Onkyo really did go bankrupt - Onkyo Home Entertainment filed on 13 May 2022 at the Osaka court. The brand had already been taken over in September 2021 by Premium Audio Company and Sharp. But: the video also mentions a class action over the HDMI boards, and that I could not confirm. That the boards failed is documented and well known. That there was a lawsuit over it and that it brought the company down - I couldn’t find it. I’m leaving it as a claim from the video, not as a fact.

The Arcam SR250 is out of production. The manufacturer lists it as discontinued. The recommendation still stands, but for the second-hand market, which is a meaningful difference once you start looking.

The NAD M33 now has a second generation. If you’re buying new, that’s what you’ll find in the shop.

And the main thing: this is one repair shop and their experience, with no measured curves. It isn’t a measurement test, it’s what the people who take these boxes apart every day see inside. Valuable enough for me to pass on, but not the same thing as a measurement.

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What stays, and the reason I wrote this down at all:

The name on the front panel tells you what marketing decided to charge. The power supply inside tells you what engineering was actually given to work with.

The two rarely match. And the only two tools you have in a shop are your knuckle and the question of what conditions that number was measured under.

The video is below. The channel is Wired Truth, and it’s worth watching in full.