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Overview:
When it comes to balancing cost and performance, few areas are as demanding and as competitive as home audio/video receivers. Consumers want everything, but just don't want to pay for it. They want 7.1 surround sound and high definition video, 150 W of full audio-range power per channel with 0.001 total harmonic distortion and all the latest codecs and input/output options, from HDMI to banana plugs. Add reliability and aesthetics and it can quickly become untenable for all but the best design team.
Enter the designers of Pioneer's VSX-1016TXV receiver, an interesting teardown subject with design issues that range from the design of the power supply right through to noise mitigation in the digital portion.
More interesting however, is the fact that it's a reasonably priced receiver, with an MSRP of $499, with aspirations to equal the quality and performance of mid-range systems $1000 or above. This demanded that the designers incorporate the features and performance of a mid-range system, yet find ways to extract component and manufacturing costs without noticeably compromising performance.
And according to the reviews available across the Internet, the team managed just that. But the question is how?
What components did the team manage to pull out and how did they include features such as HDMI interfaces and yet mitigate the radiation from that digital interface? We will also examine the processors the team used to reach the rapidly rising MIPS requirements of today's A/V codecs, and how they managed to avoid going to two DSP cores and the added cost that entails.
Use this OnDemand seminar to find out:
- What components the designers chose to include - and which ones they pulled out to minimize cost.
- How the inclusion of HDMI affected the system and how the issues were resolved.
- How Pioneer managed to do all the processing on one DSP - and which one was it.
- And much more!
Who should attend:
Designers and users of home entertainment systems and subsystems, down to the chip level.
Presenter:
Patrick Mannion
Patrick Mannion is Editor-in-Chief of TechOnline (www.techonline.com) and can be contacted at pmannion@cmp.com.
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