Thoughts on the sony strdn 1080

[darreny]

Currently have a yamaha 1073 but want to change things round in the living room a bit. The alcove is 336mm in depth and the yamaha is 435mm so sticks out quite a bit . See my post in home cinema section to see what I have. I want to just have two thick oak shelves in the alcove and the sony would fit quite nicely. Would this be a nice sidestep?

 

[darreny]

Ive done that with the unit i made but want to free up some space

 

[darreny]

My thinking is put up a stud wall to hide all the cables behind and cut enough out for the sony case to snug right up so the speaker terminal go inside

 

[darreny]

I understand that lucid I just want a nice clean install and 4k hdr pass through. I used to have a sony tava8es and that thing was a beast

 

[darreny]

Yes, and a very different beast from the STR-DN1080.

The TA-VA8ES had a claimed 120W/ch for the three front channels, and then 50W each for the surrounds. That makes sense when you remember that this was a Dolby Surround (ProLogic) amp, and as such, the surround channels were frequency limited compared to the fronts. Each of the three front channels got 26% of the available power. That left 11% each for the surrounds.

The claimed power consumption figure (juice sucked from the wall) was 395W. If we allow 10% for heat dissipation and running the preamp features, then what's left is roughly 350W for the 5 channels. 26% of 350 is roughly 90, so that means about 90W for each of the front channels.

The STR-DN1080 claims to consume 240W from the mains socket. That's quite a difference. It's also splitting the power over more channels; 7 in total. Unless Sony are fibbing about the power consumption to keep the EU bods happy that polar bears and penguins are safe when this amp runs, then the same calculation of 240 - 10%, then divide by the channels gives us a rough figure of 30W/ch real world power.

It's true that you don't need a lot of wattage to make a loud noise. However, the old Sony had a power reserve about three times larger than the newer Sony amp.

If we do the same sums with the 1073 we start with 490W and work down to a shade over 60W/ch.

Conclusion: The older Sony amp may have been a beast, but it doesn't follow that all Sonys are the same.


It may not make much difference that you're stepping down in power. In fact, to get something appreciably louder it's said the power has to increase by a factor of ten. Having said that, one of the reasons why we're not all running the cheapest 7.1 Atmos amps is the power reserve that comes with the bigger power supplies and larger capacitors in higher-end receivers and AV amps. It's just something to bear in mind if you find that any new amp is struggling a little to keep everything coherent or teetering on sounding brittle when the going gets tough.

A usual great and informative post from you lucid. The really sad thing is I took the sony amp to the tip about 7 years ago because no one wanted pro logic then and add on decoders were losing ground to full avr's.
I guess I'll have a rethink on the alcove

 

[darreny]

Personally would suggest this would be more valid if you had gone from like to like in manufacturer, there are multiple reasons why this might be the case otherwise (some times a certain model of amp just doesn't play well with certain speakers etc etc)

What you are saying may well be part of the reason but not the whole one.


Im not sure why anyone would buy anything these days just for DD/DTS so its a bit of a non answer , and if a customer knows anything they already know av recievers are generally awful at music anyway.

Im sure pottering around town in an old 2CV is fun, but doesn't mean you want to be on a motorway in one either

I only use dd/dts and stereo, have no interest in going atmos/dts x. If it wasn't for the fact I need hdmi I would still be using the yamaha dsp a1 i have in the loft as it sounds much better than the 1073