Sunfire Response - Part 2

Other issues: I attribute other "con" items in this review simply to personal disagreements with our design choices to date. I'm clear the Theater Grand III isn't perfect (if it were, we could all go home!) This is our third and best Theater Grand design. Each new generation has been a dramatic step ahead of the last. And as Al Pacino said on the silver screen, we're "just gettin' warmed up."

[Regarding some of the posts on this thread]

Please be careful when comparing published noise specs. Recent posts have compared our standard path analog (which runs through the entire A/D->DSP->D/A->volume control signal chain like everyone does it) performance against others' 6-channel input (fully bypassing all but the volume controls, again like everyone else does it). Our performance through what we call our 8-channel input is about 12dB better than our standard analog performance, putting us right in there with the rest of the pack as you'd expect. And our "source direct" two-channel mode is about the same as the 8-channel input. Apples to apples please, guys. There's just no smoking gun here.

There's also some confusion about level trims on the 8-channel input. The trims work there just as they do on other inputs. You have full control over speaker trims via on-screen, direct remote commands, and RS232 at all times and with all inputs.

Audioholics Response
All of the noise specs were compared for each product via their respected analog direct modes which bypass the DSP for 2CH and multi Channel Audio via their external high resolution inputs. Please note there are many AV Receivers and Preamp/Processors that offer a TRUE analog direct bypass mode via all of their analog inputs while still retaining subwoofer output in 2CH. The volume controls, although digitally regulated, operate in the analog domain, and the subwoofer output path is controlled via a relay control switch to operate the DSP for bass management to the subwoofer only while the stereo signal is sent directly to the power amp with no DSP processing.

Another point to be made here is with regard to analog noise measurement. Sound and Vision Magazine did do a 6CH analog noise measurement and published it. Tabulated below is a comparison of various processors/receivers from Sound and Vision Magazine and Home Theater Magazine.

[Wrap it up. You've said enough!]

Again, thanks to you all for your support of Bob Carver and those of us who have the privilege of working with Bob here at Sunfire. And thanks for consistently challenging us to be even better. More late nights are clearly in the future for those of us in engineering at Sunfire.

I'll be shaking a little time each week out of my schedule to spend in forums like this one. If you have a question, I guarantee that others are wondering the same thing. And when I have a question, I'm eager to hear a variety of opinions (strangely, I find that people don't all agree on everything -- go figure!) so we can shoot for designs/fixes/etc. that work for as many folks as possible. If you have suggestions, please post them or give us a call. Feedback does get through to me and I appreciate all of it -- pro and con.

I'd like to leave you with an appropriate quote from Brent Butterworth's review of the Theater Grand III (December 12, 2002 issue of the Robb Report's "Home Entertainment and Design" magazine):

It is usually Audioholics' procedure to furnish a copy of a product review to the manufacturer prior to publishing on our website to ensure there are no technical errors or misrepresentations of the product. In this case, since we were so displeased with the product performance and the review as such carried a negative tone, we decided to forgo this policy and publish our findings as a partial review. We now feel that this was unfair and not a good way to conduct future reviews. We offer our sincere apologies to Sunfire for not providing them an opportunity to review or debate our product review prior to publishing it. Going forward, we will make it policy to provide a copy of the review, whether favorable or not, to the manufacturer prior to posting to ensure there are no technical oversights or product misrepresentations. Again, we thank Sunfire for providing review samples of their products to Audioholics.com and hope to one day critically review an improved future iteration of the Sunfire Processor.

Our goal is to always provide the most objective and un-opinioned audio information on the internet. This can sometimes be difficult when writing subjective reviews and we will be mindful in the future. Please note our view of the product remains unchanged. We strongly feel based on its feature set and performance that the Sunfire Theater Grand III is grossly overpriced. However, that is our opinion and should be noted as such. As always we recommend you treat this review and all reviews as a source of information only to assist you in your comparative shopping. We sincerely hope you appreciate our efforts and wish to encourage any consumer in the marketplace to evaluate this and any other product on their own and formulate their own opinions based on their perception of the products performance and ability to satisfy their specific needs.