JVC Receivers

JVC that zany Japanese Victor Company is still alive and ready to surprise

JVC is full of surprises in the audio and video consumer electronics worlds. The Japanese Victor Company has arms that extend all around the world and is committed to the research and development of audio and visual technology (with particular emphasis on the visual side) and providing their products at affordable prices. Nobody will mistake JVC receivers for high end quality; their market space has never been that of the true audiophile. However, with the audio and digital Home Theater worlds colliding in todays consumer electronics, JVC is taking advantage of opportunities to show remarkable innovation.
Digital amplifiers are something that make most true audiophiles cringe. Who ever heard of a multi-channel receiver that is no bigger than some DVD players? But these new digital amps are more efficient than conventional amps and are gaining converts from the low to middle middle-fi markets that use digital only sources.

JVC turned heads at the CES in January 2005 with a new line of digital Home Theater receivers that could do HDMI up-conversion. Its new breed of receivers topped with the RX-D702B model takes full advantage of todays digital PC served media. It includes a USB input you can connect to a PC to stream in audio from your favorite internet radio stations or just send it your digital music library in the form of a playlist and let it play MP3s all night long. With two HDMI inputs it can handle two separate HDMI sources which can include a DVD player or digital cable box.

The other rare quality found in these new digital receivers is HDMI up-conversion thanks to Faroudja processors providing de-interlacing. What does this mean to you? Take a video signal from an S-Video or composite source into one of these JVC units and itll up-convert to an HDMI output to your HDTV. The de-interlacing is provided by Faroudja, widely recognized as a leader in video processing and digital analogue conversion; their chips are found in the finest audio/video equipment well beyond the price range of this JVC. Now for the bad news about these receivers. Take a look at some of the specs offered by JVC on the RX-D401S:

Stereo: 110 watts per channel, 6 ohms, from 20Hz to 20kHz, with 0.8% THD

Surround: (Front) 110 watts per channel, 6 ohms at 1kHz, with 0.8% THD; (Center) 110 watts, 6 ohms at 1kHz, with 0.8% THD; (Surround) 110 watts per channel, 6 ohms at 1kHz, with 0.8% THD; (Surround Back) 110 watts per channel, 6 ohms at 1kHz, with 0.8% THD

Its been awhile since weve seen amps rated into 6ohms; 8ohm is the standard. The lighter load is designed to bolster the watt rating beyond 100 because thats what guys in board rooms say sells this product. Forget that it uses trailblazing video technology at an affordable price; amp and receiver manufacturers have this problem with rating anything they sell under 100watts per channel.

This is truly sad because fudging the numbers for a spec sheet is a far worse infraction than an amp rated below 100 watts per channel. A rating of 50 watt per channel is truly respectable, but ever since TV ads a long time ago started using the phrase: 100 Watts per channel, baby! its become the standard, when watts should really be a low priority when buying an amp. The watt rating must double to give you 3 more decibels of volume, so a 50 watt amp only sacrifices 3 decibels of sound from a 100 watt amp. Would it have killed JVC to post the power rating at 8ohms and give it a slightly lower rating?

The other part that is disturbing is the surround channels being rated at 110 watts per channel through six ohms but at 1kHz. Rating the power at 1kHz is a single frequency instead of a range of frequencies like 20Hz 20kHz (which is standard). This is a very shady practice intended to bolster the numbers. This means that youll only get 110 Watts if your speakers are 6ohms (which they wont be, theyll be 8ohms unless youve got some rare speakers) and the sound your amp is amplifying is simply a single tone, a 1kHz frequency. This is ridiculous; natural sounds we hear are many tones at once, in fact a range of tones.

Whats sad is that if the specs had simply been honest and rated themselves at, lets say, 75 watts through 8ohms at 20Hz 20kHz for the front two channels and 40 watts for the surround channels at the same load, these are not terrible numbers for average home use. You can find this receiver on the streets for under $500; its not a highly expensive piece of equipment for all the video options it gives you and might make the perfect option for a non-audiophile with smaller speakers. Or it would make a great supplement for someone who bought a new HDTV and still used some older NTSC sources (like VHS, Cable or Satellite box) and theyd like these source signals dressed up for their new HDTV. Im sure this unit would do a great job at it.

But JVC does itself no favors with their dishonest methods at crunching the numbers; it makes you wonder what else theyre hiding. Lets not even get into the .8 THD (total harmonic distortion) which is quite high; but after all this is a digital amp and they do produce more distortion. Youd have to hear it through your speakers to tell if you can hear a difference. But .8 THD is nothing to brag about.