Sunfire Theater Grand III Conclusion
All-in-all, the Sunfire Grand Theater III is indeed a nice processor that will please many home theater enthusiasts. We simply felt it was somewhat deficient for the price. Past pre/pro reviews we have conducted include the Sherbourn PT-7000 processor, also similar to the Outlaw Model 950 ($799) and the Atlantic Technology P-2000 ($1699). Our review of the Sherbourn shared some of the Sunfire Theater Grand III deficiencies and lacking elements, but we didn’t have the same level of expectations for a processor under $1,500 and it therefore received a much more favorable and complete review. While the Sherbourn is by no means a state of the art processor, we felt it had a more musical analog preamp with a lower noise floor (as compared by the signal to noise ratio (Sherbourn in analog is 97.5dB @ 1V which is an improvement of 6.5dB)). The $2,000 price jump from the Sherbourn PT-7000 to the Sunfire TGIII just doesn’t seem that justified when considering all the TGIII's shortcomings.
If you are in the market for separates and have between $1,000 and $4,000 to spend on a processor, there are many other options. In fact, there are even some receivers that we believe offer higher performance and flexability than the TGIII. Let's take the Denon AVR-3803 for example. This receiver offers quad-dual differential DAC's on it's front channels in pure direct mode and dual differential DAC's on all channels in multi channel modes, subwoofer output in analog bypass, and 0.5dB channel trim accuracy. Few, if any, processors or receivers we are aware of in this price range currently offer this type of digital architecture. Note, Sound and Vision magazine recently completed reviews of a few sub $1000 receivers. Most of the receivers in this review had SNR's about 6-10dB better than TGIII via its 6CH analog inputs. We believe low noise is critical to bring out the ultimate potential of the new high resolution formats such as DVD-A and SACD and is one of the fundemental metrics of achieiving high fidelity.
One can argue and dispute over sound quality, build quality and feature sets between a list of different units. But one thing that isn't as disputable is the Signal to Noise Ratio and it's affect on fidelity, especially when a noisy system is coupled with high efficient speakers in close proximity to the listener. In our opinion, if Sunfire cleaned up the noise floor and addressed some of its design deficiencies, such as additional channel trims (especially for 6-channel inputs), additional IEEE connectors, sub output in two channel direct mode, the Theater Grand III would be more worthy of it's list price.
In the near future, Audioholic’s will be conducting extensive reviews on the Integra and Integra Research products, along with many other processors and receivers. In our opinion, the current Sunfire home theater products may serve well for sound reinforcement, but not necessarily for serious and accurate audiophile reproduction for the most critical applications.
