What's the difference in these denon receivers-- thd .05% vs .07%
 

The new Denon AVR-3802 has a thd of .07% in digital while the older Denon AVR-3600 has a thd of .05% in digital. I checked the specs on their respective instruction manuals. Does this mean that the older Denon has better/cleaner sound using 5.1 digial surround?

Yes but IMHO no one could hear that difference anyway.

could be a different calibration system to obtain these measurements, ie +/- ???. Denon doesn't make crap, everything is great in my experience. I wouldn't look too much into specs anyways, think of what their accountants might be doing?

When you have that small of a difference at that level, you won't hear it.

Thanks guys. I just thought that since the AVR-3802 is the newer model, it should be better in ALL aspects to the 2-year-old model. The AVR-3802 is also much lighter than the older Denon. Is this worse or better? If a receiver is heavier, doesnt that mean it has a better & more powerful built in amplifier

Not all new models are necessarily "better".

Well an old idea used to be if something was heavy it was good. In some respects this is true but I think you have to consider the materials used in the construction. Heavier usually meant larger heat sinks and chassis materials, not the "amplifier" per se.

I have not compared these models but they probably added power and processing features to the newer model. I think the 3802 is a fine unit!

The heavier is better philosophy has its roots in fact but may not always be the case now. When you go back to the '70's and early '80's, many of the components (transistors, resistors, caoacitors and the like) used were physically larger than they are now and more were used and especially in the case of transistors, needed more cooling and hence larger heat sinks. Even the circuit boards used were thicker and made of denser material construnction. The more powerful something was, the heavier it got, almost to an exponential rate.

Then came the manufacturers that discovered you could develop an Integrated Circuit chip to be used for amplification (often referred to as "power packs") and then in turn with a lighter, switching power supply allowing for a much smaller transformer (usually the heaviest single component in the unit) allowed them to make a much cheaper product. And cheaper it was. The components were cheaper, they could now go with a flimsier circuit board, a lighter chassis, automation technology was getting less expensive, the lighter weights reduced overheads. All at the cost of sound quality. But their market research and corporate powers that be determined that the public at large really didn't care about that and the reduced price would mean more to the consumer. Unfortunately to a large degree they were right.

This carried into the '80's and '90's. This is when the reputations of Pioneer, Sansui, Marantz, Fisher, JVC, Sony HiFi and a handful of others went in the toilet.

Companies such as Denon, Yamaha, HK, Onkyo and others like them stayed relatively clear of this and used their construction and design quality as the benefit it was (a few of the earlier mentioned companies figured out they were losing reputation and that some people actually were concerned about quality and you saw the birth of Pioneer Elite, Sony ES and Marantz was finally bought by someone who put them back on the map again). In the case of the newer crops of HT receivers, the companies are taking advantage of advances in miniaturization and processing power to lighten things up on the signal processing side, but they do maintain a good level of quality on the amp side. Although they have all produced models that have fallen short of the mark, most of what these companies make is solid.

There is always stuff out there that is better and there is a whole level of products that performs above what you have, but the price goes up exponentially and is usually monstrously more expensive.

To make a long, long story short you made a good purchase and the weight difference on your unit doesn't indicate a much poorer performance.

-Shawn