*Official* Denon AVR 2309CI/889 Thread - Page 90

Just sitting on the floor. No angle, except for the center channel. I sit pretty low, so I'm not that far off axis for the tweeters. I did angle them in though. And they do "look like" a wide dispersion dome driver.

So maybe 90 is the right crossover for these? If they start rolling off there. And maybe that's why they sound so damned solid the way they are currently set with a 90 Hz crossover. I'm leaving them alone. Not going to mess with perfection. Dumb luck is a beautiful thing.

the nice thing about Audyssey is that it actually measures the response IN ROOM -- bass is highly sensitive to room positioning and your speakers are jammed into corners.

I would strongly recommend raising them up a bit and then recalibrating Audyssey, I think it will make a big difference. It's a cheap experiment too, just grab some crap you have laying around (e.g. a box, end table, stack of phone books, whatever) and try it out -- if you think the results are greatly improved, spend 50 bucks on some short speaker stands or something.

Oh ok. Maybe I'll give it a try. It won't be THAT much work. But I'm pretty skeptical based on what I've heard. After all, isn't that kind of thing exactly what Audyssey fixes?

As a general rule we try to do what we can to maximize SQ and then run Audyssey, often improving things audibly, as there are limits to what electronic room correction can do. A suggestion: before you make the change, give a careful listen to some good quality favorite music passage. Note, for ex., localization and clarity of the bass guitar, kick drum and cymbals in the sound field and naturalness of female vocals. Then do that again after all is done.

That's how I used to do it in 1972. Getting too darned lazy these days. That's why I love the gizmo (Audyssey). And by the way, the advice we USED to get for little speakers (back in the day) was to jam them in corners to help the base. And sometimes even for big speakers. Remember corner horns? Klipsh?

Oh, and generally I don't mind equalizing to reduce a frequency range, it's boosting that causes the distortion and damage.

Ya mean in the pre-subwoofer & noone I knew could afford good speakers days? Yeh.

Yep, that's the time I'm talking about. Before subwoofers existed.

Chris at Audyssey told me that the crossover point stated in the Auto Set-up menu is pre-selected by Denon and not the Audyssey software. So the crossover in the Manual menu is where your Audyssey crossover is set, and it trumps the Auto Menu's value.

I have just got a Blu-Ray player and I am having a problem connecting it. I have an AVR 2309CI. I have my TV connected to HDMI4 and my old DVD player to HDMI1(DVD input). I renamed the HDP input to BLU-Ray and assigned HDMI2 to it. When I plug in my Blu-Ray player I get no signal. If I go to the DVD input and assign HDMI2 to it, my Blu-ray player works fine. I thought it doesn't matter what the input is called as long as the assignment is OK. I have gone over Batpig's excellent guide a number of times and I am still stumped

Pretty much said that before I thought ....


You can either leave the crossover settings the way the Denon sets them (40hz in your case) after doing AUTO SETUP, or if you prefer,you can raise something higher under the Manual Setup section. There is no "Audyssey crossover". The Denon simply uses the information received from the AUTO SETUP to suggest a crossover. The only way to change it is in the Manual Setup if you want to raise it.

Sometimes the first two HDMI jacks act a little differently then expected. Try swapping the DVD and BDP inputs to BDP (HMDI1) and DVD (HDMI2) if you haven't already tried that.

Coming over here from the 2310 thread cause I had my model number wrong.

From what I understand the 2309CI just passes video over HDMI and doesn't upconvert? In this case, if I turn my Motorola DCX3400 to native mode, the 2309CI will pass the signal straight through to my Panasonic 42-PZ700U at which point any processing that needs to be done will happen there. Someone please correct me if my logic here is wrong.

That's correct. No video processing over HDMI until the 2310. Also, you can delete your post in the 2310 thread by editing it and selecting the DELETE radio button.

Sorry, I missed the part about "the Denon" setting them. I guess I'm still having trouble figuring out which gizmo does what. It seems odd that the Denon would interfere with the settings that would be best under Audyssey. Or that they are competing somehow.

Thanks for the quick reply. I guess at this point it makes sense to just see what looks better to me and if I trust the DCX3400 to process the video before it gets to my television.

In theory, I'd only want the video processed once so it makes sense to run the DCX3400 in native mode either way.

Yes, but. The usual advice is to maximize your speakers' setup then run Audyssey. If I put blankets over all my speakers, Audyssey MIGHT be able to correct the in-room response, but it'd do better without the blankets.

I haven't thought it al the way through, but it may be that the farther off the designed listening axis our ears are, the more work Audyssey has to do to correct overall FR, since a speaker will have a different FR as you change vertical axis (for a vertically aligned speaker).

It's one of the most frequently asked questions in these threads ... which configuration will provide the best picture quality (sat/cable box upscaling, AVR upscaling, or TV upscaling) ... when it fact, the best person to determine that is the owner through trial and error!

It can be confusing to be sure, however, just know that once you "tweak" the crossovers to what you believe sounds best (in Manual Setup), it's those settings that will be used until either tweaked again or until the microprocessor is reset (which would restore all settings to mfr defaults).

Just to get some random feedback, what mode does everyone prefer to listen to music in?

I play a lot of 2-channel SACD and DVD-A's through my Oppo DV-980H and have found that I prefer the sound of neo:6 w/ Audyssey EQ on . It's sounds the cleanest and has the best distribution of bass between my 3.1 speaker setup which consists of 3 B&W M-1's and (don't laugh) a Polk PSW10 subwoofer.

I've tried the direct modes, but it sucks all the bass out, actually turns off the subwoofer and from what I read that's the way it's supposed to work.

The Stereo surround mode sounds decent, but doesn't sound as light and airy as the neo:6. Anyways, just want to see what other people are using to get some ideas.

EDIT: To be more specific I'm using the neo:6 music mode, not the cinema obviously

To add to what jd said, Audyssey is not given access to set the xovers. It gathers the speaker roll-off response data and the Denon then makes decisions, rounding the -3dB point up or down to a set xover point. There is no conflict there. The different setting under manual is the one you enter and as long as you are raising to 80 (not lowering) there is no conflict either.

Actually the only real conflict is that, for bass-capable speakers, the Denon will default speakers to Large. Audyssey says if there's a sub operating, all speakers should be set to SMALL. always, no matter what. So you reset to small manually. There is still no conflict as the AVR must obey its "master" in regards to these manual settings.

Thanks. Don't you think this should be better coordinated? Shouldn't the receiver just "give up" on the decision making and let Audyssey do it all?

Not necessarily, especially as speaker mfrs of low range (<40hz, which is the cutoff the Denon uses) speakers still suggest the speakers be set to LARGE. Also, Audyssey has only been in AVRs for 6 years so give it a few more years and you never know.

Well THERE'S a question for you. Why would Denon default to 40 Hz? I would think that would be the rarer circumstance? The Denon doesn't know which speakers I hooked up. I set it to "small" and it decides 40 Hz is the right number? That's just asking for a 5" driver to be barfed out into the floor isn't it?

There is a lot of history here, JHouse. Audyssey has been fighting for a long time against the "small/large" nomenclature and how receivers configure bass management. Obviously, Audyssey espouses the idea that in any modern, digitally managed speaker system with a dedicated subwoofer, all speakers should be bass managed such that the low freq's get routed to that SW.

However, receiver mfgrs have long battled against consumer perception where people feel "less manly" for setting their big tower speakers to "small". One problem is terminological, in that the "small/large" decision itself is obviously a loaded term! (especially for men ) Chris likes to tell the story of how he has it on very good authority that the whole concept of "double bass" (LFE+MAIN) was created to appeal to the wounded egos of consumers who couldn't stand the idea of bass managing their manly powerful tower speakers If Audyssey had their way, it would just be something like "Bass Management: Yes/No) or whatever.

Also, receivers have had auto setup programs for years before Audyssey came along. The way it works (as I understand it) is that the "measurement" block is separate from the "decision-making" block. You take the measurements, and it reports it to the receiver, and the internal logic of that block then makes specific decisions (distance, crossover, volume level, etc). The AVR manufacturers control the logic in this block, Audyssey cannot tell them what decisions to make (although they push for changes).

Initially, almost all AVR's used a default 80Hz cutoff in their internal logic to set the small/large distinction. So, you end up in a situation where even large bookshelf speakers are being left at "large" and not being properly bass managed. Audyssey fought this for years and finally (I think starting with 08/09 models) convinced Onkyo and Denon to change their decision point to 40Hz. This way, only the biggest tower speakers end up set as "large".

But, truthfully, there are not many consumer tower speakers that can truly handle sub-40Hz content with authority like a dedicated subwoofer can. So even if your speakers are flat to, say, 33Hz, you still really want to perform SOME bass management. At least, this is Audyssey's perspective. Thus, Audyssey recommends that, if you have a subwoofer, you ALWAYS want to manually change speakers to small if they have been set as large, and also tweak the crossovers up a bit if they have been set too low (40-60Hz).

Chris wrote a whole article on this topic: http://www.audyssey.com/blog/2009/05/small-vs-large/

So that's sort of the history of the tension... Audyssey has been battling to change these things, especially the confusing terminology, for some time. Unfortunately they don't get to make those decisions nor design the UI experience in the AVR. I'm sure if you want to ask Chris (or better yet, do some searches in the Audyssey thread using "advanced search" and looking for posts by "audyssey" on the topic) you will get plenty of info.

Well thanks. I appreciate the effort greatly. Yet I'm still puzzled why the Denon picks a 40 Hz crossover point for "small" speakers. That's just dumb.

Huh? The Denon AVR sets a speaker to "LARGE" if it detects a roll off somewhere in the 40-50hz (or lower) range on average, otherwise it will set the speaker to SMALL.

That's my point. After running the auto set-up, and then checking the parameters which were produced, the speakers were all "small" and the crossover was 40 Hz. That's the point of my question. They seem inconsistent. And you guys are telling me Denon does that.

Ah sorry, misunderstood you. You're asking why the Denon set your speakers to SMALL with a 40hz crossover? Just a guess, but as we said earlier, your speakers actually roll off just below 90hz, however, because they're on the floor, your Audyssey results weren't accurately reflecting the true capability of your speakers. The Denon apparently recognized the roll off and set them to SMALL, however, the increased bass effect threw the crossover results off. Place them on stands (as has been suggested) and you would get a higher crossover setting.

Ok, thanks. That sounds like screwed up software. How much of a boost can you get from a floor/corner placement I wonder? I wouldn't have expected much more than 3 db's of "help". Of course, if it is more than that, I could see how the program could think "wow, these have a lot of output down low." Then it runs 137 watts to a 5" driver and puts your eye out.

I tried searching for some information in this thread but didn't find anything conclusive.

I posted awhile ago that the sound coming out of my center channel was hollow. I.E. if optimus prime in transformers is talking the center sounds great but once a human talks or the sound doesn't have bass to it there just isn't any umph behind it and it sounds horrible. My surrounds and floor speakers sound great. People suggested to raise the center channel height wise in the room as it was low before so I built a stand and re-ran Audyssey setup. Still sounds the same.

I raised the center channel levels after Audyssey auto setup (probably 4 or 5 dbs) with a crossover of 90. I have an Infinity Entra Center Two.

Can anyone make some suggestions on what i can try or if I have something setup incorrectly I have a 2309. Let me know what other info you might need to help me out (i understand since your not here this might be diffucult to diagnois i'm just looking for suggestions).

Also I usually have to turn my system up to -10db or less (-5db) for a movie. Would this be considered a normal volume for a Denon?