EE Times Under The Hood - October 8, 2007 - (Page 80) under the hood: ANALOG www.eetimes.com • www.techonline.com Receiver balances cost, performance BY PATRICK MANNION hen it comes to balancing cost and performance, few areas are as demanding or competitive as home audio/video receivers. Consumers want everything (though they don’t want to pay for it): 7.1 surround sound and high-definition video; 150 watts 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 the The main features of the receiver are 7.1 channels, 1080p HDMI, 110 requirements can quickly W/channel, THX Select 2, Dolby become untenable. W compromising performance. He said the designers had to “provide customers exactly the same sound quality for all channels in all respects, and recreate the studio engineer’s original intent” in the consumer’s home environment. The first task was to eliminate unnecessary components. “We focused on every capacitor and resistor, [assessing] whether the parts were really necessary,” Suzuki said. The team negotiated heavily Digital EX, DTS-ES and DTS 96/24, with device suppliers to Enter the designers push costs down furof Pioneer’s VSXther. 1016TXV receiver. The That led to a design 1016 appealed to me as with a paucity of passive teardown fodder for components. The power two reasons. First, it’s supply essentially coman interesting system prises two D5SBA 20 with design issues relatShindengen diode ed to audio that range bridge rectifiers, a hefty from the design of the 10-pound ATS7407 power supply right power transformer and through to noise mititwo Nichicon capacitors gation in the digital for output-amplifier portion. power stability. Second, it is reasonThe signal input and ably priced, with an The Pioneer VSX-1016TXV achieves high-level functionality, output circuits were MSRP of $499 and performance and aesthetics with low cost — the classic spread across three pc aspirations to equal engineering trade-off realized. boards in a stacked conthe quality and perfiguration and were driven mainly by WMA PRO multichannel, and XM formance of midrange systems HC4051A and LVX4053 analog multiHD radio readiness, with Neural priced at $1,000 or more. This plexers and demultiplexers from On Surround. Inputs include eight video, demanded that the designers find Semiconductor. In addition, there is three audio, five audio/video, two ways to extract component and one LA7109 75-ohm DVD video drivHDMI, six optical, three coax, five manufacturing costs without comer from Sanyo and a PDC131A charS-Video and three component video. promising performance. The team acter generator from Pioneer. The latThere are two video outputs, one managed the trade-off admirably. ter is likely for video overlay purposes XM-ready output, one HDMI 1080pcompatible output, one optical digital on the video input. A Pioneer-marked ONLINE ASIC controls the I/O network. output, four outputs for S-Video and For more insight, view the accomAll signals eventually lead to the one for component video. panying OnDemand seminar at heart of the system: the DSP block. According to Shirou Suzuki, www.techonline.com/underthehood According to Suzuki, the first estiPioneer’s design project leader, the search art id: 201000692 mates before starting the design team sought to reduce costs without 80 Electronic Engineering Times, TechOnline | October 8, 2007 http://www.eetimes.com http://www.techonline.com http://www.techonline.com/product/underthehood/201800069
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