Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsA kickass starter AV receiver for basic 5.1 surround sound -- super pleased!
Reviewed in Canada on February 24, 2023
I bought this AVR to use in my first 5.1 surround home theatre system. I am displaying on an Optoma UHD60 4K projector, and inputting from a Samsung 4K HD Blu-ray and a Chromecast with Google TV 4K dongle. I am driving 5 JBL bookshelf speakers and a 10" Yamaha powered subwoofer.
I was super impressed by just how easy it was to set everything up. The Denon hand-held me through every step. I am not a complete audio/video dummy but I really appreciated not having to remember everything. I didn't at all mind to let the Denon make all the initial decisions knowing that I could alter settings later on.
I ended-up doing the sound balance microphone setup twice. First time was with some temporary borrowed speakers before my new JBL Stage speakers arrived. Then again after unboxing the JBLs a week later. So I had the opportunity to witness the receiver detecting my plugging in the mic and it taking over and offering to do the full suite of tests again. This is really great user experience design! It did a super job and I have had only made one tweak (to the subwoofer mix setting LFE + front L+R) later on.
Everything seems very well matched. Volume in my home theatre space is more than adequate. I don't run the system at concert or ear-splitting levels and I have audio power to spare.
Image quality on the projector is immaculate. Nothing broke -- always my fear with new components being added in -- and I appreciate the extra inputs and automatic detection of and use of surround content. It even plays all the Dolby modes I have found in streaming content from the Chromecast.
What can I say? So far -- touch wood -- it has been all good and none bad. Woohoo!
Oh yeah, there was one annoying thing: this Denon is rather tall and would not fit into my ancient IKEA TV bookcase furniture along with the Blu-ray player. I had to shift fifty DVDs to make room for it and now they're sitting all over the living room floor. *Sigh*.