Denon AVR-4810CI/AVR-4810 w/ 9.3ch, Dolby PLIIz/Audyssey DSX, October 09- - Page 14

yes, the 4810 seems to no longer has the A+B Surround feature that had been a hallmark of 3XXX and 4XXX level Denons for some time. I think with the addition of 9- and 11-channel processing with DSX, this feature is somewhat obsoleted (though a bummer for those who DO use it!) and you can only stuff so many binding posts on the back of the receiver!!



just to be pedantic, that is not 11.X mode, that would be 9.X. There are only nine channels of processing being used.


how far forward are your frontal "side" surrounds? remember that the "width" speakers should be at 60-degrees, and not necessarily on the FRONT wall, so if the two sets of surrounds have one slightly forward of the seating and one slightly behind, you could conceivably use the frontal side surrounds as WIDE speakers.

Batpig,

Can you look at the Oct 1 post by FilmMixer and tell me why the on-screen display is showing the distance settings tabs for Surround "A" and Surround "B" speaker pairs? In addition to the SB (which I assume is the Sub) then there are 13 additional speaker distance settings that one can make on the 4810, it would appear.

True, you will only get 9.1 "channels" but I have been using Surround "A and Surround "B" speakers with my old Denon 5803, and it has binding posts labeled as such. With the assignable binding posts on the 4810, it is quite unclear (to me) how to make the connections.

Raybo

(Surround) S"A" to Surround
(Surround) S"B" to FH/FW
(S.Back) Surround Back to SBack/FH/FW

Then assign appropriately

Are the Zone 2 and Zone 3 binding posts not assignable to the Main room, by turning off the Zone function?

I guess my point that no one seems to be able to answer is that the Denon OSD that FilmMixer posted shows 13 speaker distance setting functions, yet no apparent capability to set this up as with the older Denons.

Raybo

I think your answer is that FilmMixer owns the 4310CI, and NOT the 4810CI. The 4310 has A+B surrounds. I think he is running as a normal 7.1 setup (which is all the 4310CI can do) and notice that the Hight/Wide speakers are still at the default "12.0ft" setting because they are unused. The web interface probably doesn't delete the unused speakers.

I believe he was just posting what it looks like on his setup as an example, I don't think those are actually from the 4810.

batpig,

WOW!! Now I am even MORE confused.

FilmMixer's screen shot is showing Distance settings for High and Wide speakers for 9.1 that I thought we not supported in the 4310. It appears one can set 13.1 speaker distance settings from that screen shot. What am I missing??? Guess I'll have to wait until I mine arrives October 14 and then set it up to see the actual OSD.

Raybo

the 4310 has DSX and so of course it supports height + wide speakers. it just can't do them all at the same time! it's 7.1 max.

that's why I pointed out the default distance setting of 12.0ft (or 10.0ft) for the unused speakers, notice in the speaker config the other speakers are set to "none". he is only running 5.1 apparently.

Seems kind of sloppy on the part of Denon to have an OSD for the 4130 that even shows these options for speaker settings when the functionality does not exist in this particular model.

Anyway, I am still awaiting someone to answer if the Zone 2 and 3 binding posts can re assigned to speakers in the Main room, if Zone is disabled.

Raybo

I'm still not understanding what you are missing -- the 4310 DOES have the functionality for Surr A+B and also Height or Wide. It just can't do them at the same time. You will notice those speakers are checked as "none" in FilmMixer's screen caps. Where's the "sloppy" other than not having the web page update to delete the "unused" speakers?

The only "sloppy" I've seen is that note you found on pg 42 of the 4180CI manual where they forgot to delete the mention of Surr A+B.



no they can't, this is noted on the top of pg40 in the "free assign" description. The "Bi-Wire/Bi-Amp", "Zone2" and "Zone3" binding posts cannot be assigned to main zone. But if you think about this it makes complete sense as they do not actually have their own amps, they are just "supplementary" binding posts that would only activate if you assign one of the other amps to Zone2/3 or Front Bi-Amp. Being able to reassign those binding posts wouldn't provide any benefit as they don't have their own amplification.

[quote=batpig;17302237]

just to be pedantic, that is not 11.X mode, that would be 9.X. There are only nine channels of processing being used.

[quote]

I'm confused. If an audio processor has functionality for two sets of side surrounds, then wouldn't all four speakers be considered one channel each?

no, the side surrounds (A+B) both play the same "channel", specifically the "Surround" channel in a 5.1 or 7.1 track (as opposed to "Surround Back").

To my understanding, it's just like Front A+B. If you decide to run "quadraphonic" and hook up four speakers to the Front A+B, you don't get any extra channels. The receiver is not producing an independent signal in A versus B, it's a duplicate signal sent to both A+B.

when you go to a movie theater there will be an array of "side" surround speakers lining the wall to either side. But they are all playing the same "channel". It's still 5.1 (even though there are obviously way more than five speakers!)

batpig,
Great explanations.

I used to (in the 4.0 Dolby Surround days...) "matrix" the surrounds by running the (surround) signal into a quadrophonic reciever, making some adjustments (on the old quad reciever) such as delay and "reverb" and hooking up 4 speakers to the mono signal. Actually, worked pretty good.

I'll tell you guys this, I dig the 4810, but I ain't payin' $3k. Not today, not tomorrow. Maybe $2k. But for a technology that in 3 years will already be dated? By then we will all be building 15.4 HTPC pre/pros and buying amps to run the appropriate number of speakers.......

Hey good people,

I've got the new 4810 connected to the new 46XBR8. The picture looks marvelous on the screen, and I have the new HDTV cable box connected to the 4810. Watching sports is great, but when a person's face is shown (like the announcers in the booth), the sound coming out of people's mouth is slightly out of sync with the picture. It appears that the video is ahead of the sound? but I can't tell for sure. I have an HDMI cord from the cable box to the 4810 and a HDMI cord from the 4810 to the XBR8. For 'CABLE/DVR' source, I have it set up for 5:1 Dolby Digital, but I currently only have the center channel speaker connected to the 'Center' speaker terminal. (Waiting for my 2 front main speakers to be re-delivered, got sent the wrong ones.) I'm under the impression that the center channel is the speaker that most of the vocals come out of, which they do,but with a delay.

Also when I use source 'DVD' (an old DVD player using component video + RCA analog audio), I switch the one speaker to the 'Front Left' terminal, and I get the same audio lag, out of sequence with the lip movement. It looks like a badly dubbed foreign film.

What do I need to change to get the audio in sync with the video for both sources?

Thanks

lip sync problems are fairly common with cable boxes. is Auto Lip Sync turned on under HDMI settings?

You can also manually adjust the Audio Delay under "Audio Adjust", up to 200ms, but you will probably find that it's going to vary from channel to channel.

What? Wha? Wha? I surely didn't know that. Alrighty then, I checked and 'Auto Lip Sync' is on. The 'Audio Delay' setting under 'Audio Adjust' is set to 0ms. But if that is a parameter that will vary channel to channel, then I really don't want to mess with it, it would be irksome having to change that constantly.

Is this the same issue when playing my standard DVDs? And when I purchase a DVD player with an HDMI connection, will this still be a problem, since the cable box has the same issue over its HDMI connection?

Personally, I have never had ANY lip sync problems with any source except for my cable box. PS3, Apple TV, and HD DVD player are all perfect.

Also, try turning Auto Lip Sync off and see if it's better. Ironically, many HDMI settings can make things worse instead of better

Nice. Well I turned 'Auto Lip Sync' off and I can't tell much of a difference. I think I need a fresh pair of eyes at this point. I'm going to have my next door neighbor stop by, have her watch it, and let me know if she notices anything without telling her my observations.

The DVD still has delays, though. Ugh! When is that Denon 4010-UDCI DVD player coming out? I think I'll be able to use the Denon Link IV between the receiver and the DVD player which should produce ZERO lag time, if I'm understanding the technology right. (I'm praying.)

Good evening all -

I have just began the learning process for the more "advanced" (with budget constraints unfortunately) home theatre equipment. I have a "old" 3808CI that I picked up last year, and I got a new TV (Samsung 55" 8500 LED) that has a magnificent picture already. It was mentioned that the video processing is one of the major improvements in this new unit (the 4810)...how much should i be concerned about that with this TV? I was under the impression that the less components/processing that was applied to the video, the better - am I incorrect about this?

For example, I have my Dish Network and Comcast box both connected to my TV Directly with HDMI, and I feed the sound to the reciever via optical. Then, I have the PS3, Xbox 360, and HD-DVD player connected to the 3808 via HDMI (so the audio goes to the reciever uncompressed over the HDMI?) and then the reciever goes to the TV via HDMI as well.

Am I incorrect in my current setup? I'd think this TV would do a better job at handling the video then a audio receiver but i'm not certain about that. Perhaps with a TV such as mine, i should be even more concerned about the video processor on the AVR? I've always thought that the scalers and deinterlacing was for projectors mainly.

Thanks

Well PoliteNYC you must be one of the first with the 4810, congrads!
On to your lip sync issue.... have you tried going component and optical from your cable box and or DVD player to see if that fixes the issue?
And yes I think a lot of us are eagering awaiting Denon's new 4010 Bluray player

DreamCatcher

The lip sync feature requires 2 things.. HDMI 1.3a (which none of your source units are) and that the units actually impliment the feature...

Denon Link deals with timiing erros at the sample-length level, not milliseconds... it almost eliminates jitter which can cause imaging errors with audio... it isn't a noticable (visually) sync fixer.

The issue could be your display... sometimes the processing in the displays can exceed two frames, which is fairly noticable. If there is a processing delay, it can be fixed by adding delay inside the Denon, whcih you need to do manually.. go into GUI>Audio/Video Adjust>Audio Adjust> "Audio Delay" and try adjusting it... 30msec is a frame..

Best of luck.

Let me extend what FilmMixer is saying a little, the delay you are talking about is 'normal' infact it might get worse with better scalers. The reason (simply stated) is that to be able to 'fix' video signals scalers/deinterlacers have to look ahead to see what is coming next. The ABT scaler inside the 4810 can 'look' as much as 5 fields ahead and is tracking every pixel in the signal one by one. The only thing a scaler/deinterlacer can do (it can't look into the future) is delay the audio by the same amount. Now both the abt 2010 and realta T2 (the 2 chips denon uses now) will tell the device (in this case the 4810) how much the audio has to be delayed and denon does add this so they should be in sync again.

So why might you still see a delay ?, Well it looks like that your display is also doing some processing on the video (you might be able to turn it off) but the 4810 has no way of 'knowing' how much the tv delays the video !!. So lets say the tv adds 30ms or 60ms the audio will be earlier at your head then the video signal coming from the tv. Each input of the 4810 is able to set a delay value to compensate for this as FilmMixer pointed out a good guess would be between 30ms and 60ms.

Hope this helps and i didn't make mistakes in trying to explain this in a easy way this early in the morning .

Daniel.

On page 77 of the manual it shows the ability to play FLAC Files. This is good news as it looks like it will do this directly from a media server or USB.

Okay, I went to 'Audio Delay' and made the following settings but did not see any noticeable difference in lag: 10ms, 30ms, 60ms, 120ms. So I cranked the setting up to the max: 200ms, and it now looks in sync (still slightly off, I have to get a fresh pair of eyes to critique) for the HD cable programming. The standard DVDs? Not so much.

I'm also going to wait until my front L/R channel speakers get delivered tomorrow so I can critique having all three front speakers in place. That might be a difference maker, instead of me constantly moving one speaker from a side front to the center channel position on the back of the 4810.

Boooo on Denon Link not doing what I want it to do! I'm still going to use it when I snatch up a 4010.

So, should I attempt to turn off any video processing the 46XBR8 is doing? Is there any advantage to have both the receiver and the TV do processing? From what I've read, the ABT 2010 inside the 4810 is a top of the line chip, so does the XBR need to do anything at all?

With 200 something weird is going on probably at the display, you should look into that later.

Daniel.

Most of the time you only want to deinterlace (well you only can do it once) and scale 1 time in your video chain yes. So you pick the best chipset you have and let that one do the action. For example at the moment you might want dvd to come into the 4810 as 480i and let the ABT 2010 make it 1080p24 and pass that to the sony. The sony should stay out of the way and show the picture untouched. Once you have the 4010 you might find that its better to let the 4010 do it and let both the 4810 and sony to leave it untouched. Doing it 2 times is almost never a good idea one result is extra delay .

Daniel.

This is what the XBR8 manual says in the troubleshooting section (it appears that they give two options to resolve)

Symptom: Audio comes earlier than the picture. (Hmmm... maybe my eyesight is dyslexic and the audio is ahead of the video?)

Solution: For 1080/24p signal, picture delay may not be correctable on some AV equipment. In this case. set 'Speakers' to 'Audio System' in the 'Sound' setting, output audio from DIGITAL AUDIO OUT of the TV to the AV equipment, or set 'DRC Mode' to 'Off' in the 'Picture' setting.

From what I interpret, Sony's solution one calls for a 2nd cable to be run and a change made on the TVs 'Audio' menu.

And Sony's solution two calls for a change in the TVs 'Picture' menu.

So I looked in the manual to find out what 'DRC Mode' is and it says: Produces a high-resolution picture for high density sources (e.g. Blu-ray disc player, DVD player, satellite receiver).
Mode 1 (which is the setting I have it on, recommended by the Home Theater Magazine)
Mode 2 Only available for 1080i format. 'Mode 2' is especially effective when original standard-definition signals have been up-converted to 1080i format.
Off Turns off 'DRC Mode'.

Couple of questions, the first solution Sony suggests would mean not using the HDMI cable for audio. Would I be losing anything in the way of audio quality by making a 2nd connection between the TV & the 4810? I'm under the impression the the HDMI cable is the best cable to use for both video & audio. Not true? (But if a 2nd cable is going to solve the lag problem, then so be it!)

And as far as the 2nd solution Sony suggests, is 'DRC Mode' the video processor that Sony uses, (that you knowledgeable folks recommend I turn off on the TV) or should I be looking for another setting? I won't touch anything until I hear back from you good people. I see myself screwing things up badly!

From a very quick google, I read about a person who had problems with DRC mode when dealing with interlaced content... he wanted to disable it (On the Sony KV-30HS420 CRT HDTV he didn't have an off function... he had a function called 'interlaced'- which for him produced what seemed to be the raw signal unprocessed) ... if you can disable DRC (which I think is Sony's video processor) then disable it (good thing you have the option to turn it off). From what I'm reading around, the ABT 2010 chip in the Denon is the way to go for video processing in this situation.

The way I always knew it was to disable ANY processing your TV does so you can eliminate issues like lag and sync issues. Having the receiver handle issues like sync beyond the connection of the display unit is best (in case you need to troubleshoot later).

Good luck! I'm rooting for ya! (I want that receiver lol)

djbuddha

I wish for a $3k price tag!!! In Australia the retail is $5999! Our dollar is just under 90c USD also. There is no excuse for this!

flac has been available since 4308ci, though i haven't tested this feature out yet =P. & i dunno if that's flac 2channel or multichannel.