Photos by Tony Cordoza
As much as we’d all like to own a flagship model receiver, they aren’t for everybody. Though well equipped and high powered, they tend to be massive and extremely expensive. If you set your sights just a little bit lower — especially when it comes to power — you can get an awful lot of receiver for substantially less money. Denon’s AVR-2803, standing square in the middle of the company’s extensive receiver line, is a superb example.
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Actually, if you do the math, the AVR-2803’s rated output power isn’t low at all. At 90 watts per channel — and here that means seven channels, including two back surround outputs — the receiver will deliver only about a half decibel less power than a receiver rated for 100 watts per channel, if both are driven to full output. This difference is so small as to be irrelevant in most home listening rooms, where the volume control is usually set to deliver less than movie-theater sound levels anyway.
Turn the volume down even slightly, and in most setups you’ll probably never run out of power. (By “slightly” I mean anything lower than the reference volume settings we give for our lab tests.) In any case, the AVR-2803 ably surpassed its 90-watt power rating, which is based on one channel being driven: my one-channel-driven measurement was 124 watts. The results with five and six channels driven were also impressive (see “in the lab,” at the bottom of this page).
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Being of less-than-flagship status, the AVR-2803 has “only” a pushbutton remote control — no fancy-schmancy touchscreen here, and also no extra buttons hidden behind a door. I actually prefer such “primitive” handsets, and their quick and direct access to functions, to the battery-eating touchscreens with their often more roundabout operation. This one is both a preprogrammed and learning remote that can control up to seven other components.
There are two macro functions and “punch-through” capability for certain source components, meaning that you can be operating the DVD player, say, and still change the TV station without having to change the control mode first. On the whole, the remote was extremely easy to use, with excellent differentiation in shape, size, and color between the buttons, which are also grouped logically. For instance, the transport controls — play, stop, fast forward, and so on — are together in the middle, and to top it off, they glow-in-the-dark.
I had no problems hooking up the receiver to an all-full-range multichannel speaker system. Channel balancing was easily accomplished with the built-in test tone and the rare ability to adjust the trim controls in half-decibel steps — a very pleasant surprise in a mid-level receiver. If you have a subwoofer/satellite speaker system, you’ll be pleased to hear that the AVR-2803’s generally excellent bass-management system provides a selection of subwoofer crossover frequencies (40, 60, 80, 100, or 120 Hz). Unfortunately, but typically, the multichannel analog input receives no bass management at all. That’s the main reason I used large speakers all around, because it avoids this issue entirely. It also gives the power-amplifier section a real workout since there’s no powered subwoofer to assume much of the burden of reproducing bass from the main channels.
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Surprisingly, the DSP modes do not include a “Concert Hall,” which I’d have thought was standard equipment. While adjusting the room-size parameter of the Jazz Club mode upward or that of the Rock Arena mode downward may sometimes do the trick, depending on the music, I found that DPL II’s Music mode gave pleasant results with more types of music and with less fiddling than any of the Denon’s DSP ambience modes. Besides, the most realistically enveloping ambience comes with original multichannel music recordings.
A prime example is the Philips SACD of Dvorak’s complete Slavonic Dances conducted by Ivan Fisher. As heard over the AVR-2803, this proved to be the best-sounding recording these delightful works have ever received. For once the bass drum is audible as a very low-frequency presence — on other recordings you usually can’t tell there’s a bass drum at all.
You do get prominent booms — 6.1 channels of them, in fact — from the soundtrack of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which contains quite a few passages to test the abilities of any home theater setup. My favorite scene is when the flying car meets the Whomping Willow (Chapter 8), which contains a wealth of quieter details among the overall sonic mayhem. The AVR-2803 did just fine with both the mayhem and the subtleties.
Given such performance, I can only conclude that Denon’s AVR-2803 would find a place in just about any home theater, even a fairly large one. Considering its combination of features, usability, performance, and price, it’s a bargain.
In the Lab
DOLBY DIGITAL PERFORMANCE
All data were obtained from various test DVDs using 16-bit dithered test signals, which set limits on measured distortion and noise performance. Reference input level is –20 dBFS, and reference output is 1 watt into 8 ohms, which was obtained with the volume control set to read +2.5 dB. Except for subwoofer-related tests, all speakers were set to “large,” subwoofer on. All are worst-case figures where applicable.
Output at clipping (1 kHz into 8 ohms)
1 channel driven: 124 W (21 dBW)
5 channels driven: 83 W (19.25 dBW)
6 channels driven: 75 W (18.75 dBW)
Distortion at 1 watt (THD+N, 1 kHz)
8 ohms: 0.029%
Noise level (A-wtd, 16-bit signals): -76.5 dB
Excess noise (with sine tone)
16-bit (EN16): ±0 dB
Frequency response
20 Hz to 20 kHz +0.22, -0.38 dB
MULTICHANNEL PERFORMANCE, ANALOG INPUT
Reference output level 1 watt (8 ohms) from a 200-mV input; volume setting for reference output level was –1.5.
Distortion
(THD+N, 1 kHz, 8 ohms): 0.009%
Noise level (A-wtd): –95.6 dB
Frequency response
20 Hz to 100 kHz +0, –2.7 dB
BASS MANAGEMENT
Measured results with Dolby Digital test signals.
Subwoofer-output frequency response
24 dB/octave rolloff above –6-dB point at selected crossover frequency
High-pass-filter frequency response
12 dB/octave rolloff below –3-dB point at selected crossover frequency
Maximum unclipped subwoofer output
(at reference volume setting, subwoofer trim at 0) 7.9 volts
Subwoofer distortion (from 6-channel, 30-Hz, 0-dBFS signal; master volume at reference level; subwoofer trim set to 0) 0.91%
Response consistency: no changes with source or media
Source consistency: no bass management for external multichannel audio input
Media consistency: no bass management for two-channel analog inputs unless a DSP mode is engaged
Speaker-size selection: all channels can be set to “small”
Speaker-distance compensation: available for all channels