*OFFICIAL* Denon AVR 391 / 591 / 1611 Owner's Thread - Page 2

I'm just playing the waiting game right now. Although it is quite painful using my TV speakers while I'm sitting in front of my new surround sound setup (Energy RC-Micros)!

Bought my 591 a couple days ago, my first avr. Been reading alot since then, trying to teach myself all about it. Ive read batpigs guide, the audessey for dummies guide, and so on.

My impressions:

1. Very user friendly unit, and does everything I need it to do and then some. Setup took about an hour, as I was being extra cautious not to screw something up.
2. The quick select buttons are a nice feature.
3. The hdmi passthrough is great. Wife hates the loud surround sound, so she used it to watch dish with just the tv speakers. A real life saver for me.

One problem: When I shut down the unit and come back later it only plays audio through the tv speakers. I have to shut it down an extra time for it to click the big speakers back on. Not sure if this is intentional or what, but its rather annoying.

Now, I must say I'm not real happy with my speakers. I bought all Bic venturies (62clrs center, dv64 front towers, and a v1220 sub.) The sub seems to be very underpowered, I have to set the gain to 7 (out of 10) to get good bass. The front towers sound just okay. The center speaker sounds pretty good.

The SW trim is set to +7 manually while the other channels are -1,-3,-1.

So, just a couple quick questions for you experts:
1. Is setting the sub gain so high normal? The sub doesn't seem to even work at all any lower than that, so I'm not too concerned about it heating up or blowing.
2. Is this sub enough for my room. Room is a large basement, basically a large rectangle measuring 30x20 with 9' ceilings.
3. Is it normal to have huge differences in input volume. i.e. blue ray player is extremely loud at -30db, while the dish network input finally gets loud at -5db. Ive even got the dish source volume set +15db. I'm thinking it may be a cable issue. Any thoughts?

Thanks for any input, hope to get this thing sounding like the $1k I've got into it. (I know, budget system, but should still sound decent)

The only way the AVR can pass HDMI audio to the TV when the AVR is ON is if HDMI Audio Out is set to TV. Make sure you don't have that setting in one of the Quick Select buttons you are using.


1. No, however, most folks don't have as large a room as yours. How far is the primary seating position from the TV? Where is the sub positioned in the room? If you place it in a corner you'll get more bass impact.
2. Apparently not as you're disappointed. It's more about about how much bass you want rather than the actual size of the room. You probably need to add either a larger 15" sub or 1 or 2 more 12" subs in the room (using an RCA splitter).
3. Yes, although usually most experience the opposite from you .. ie Dish normal volume around -20 to -25 and Blu-ray volume around -5 to -10.

You might want to do a microprocessor reset and start the setup over again.

Yesterday I scored an AVR-591 for in store pickup at BestBuy and am getting 20% cashback through Bing!

After an initial problem with a bad HDMI cable the Audyssey setup went smoothly and the Harmony remote already had the presets for the new Denon. The Audyssey pretty much nailed the speaker distances but was about 8 feet off with the subwoofer. I manually changed the distance from 20 to 12ft. I am currently browsing through the enormous Audyssey thread to make sure I didn't mess up anywhere.

Also, I'm planning on browsing the manual at lunch but if anyone knows off the top of their head what setting disables any HDMI video processing it would save me some time. (It may already be disabled for all I know!)

Thanks for the replys guys. After more research, it appears as though my sub is not going to be adequate for my bass tastes. I have the speakers set to small and the x-over's as 80. The sub is 17 feet from the main listening area, set in the corner. I think I'll just buy another sub, probably a Bic f12.

The volume level problem seems to have resolved itself, I think it was due to the dynamic vol setting being on midnight or whatever its called.

The room is actually closer to 45x24x9, with another open office off that which is 12x14. So thats about 11,000 cubic feet. No 200 sub should be expected to produce in that area.

Thanks for your thoughts, you folks are very helpful.

Thanks Batpig! I will read the faq at lunch.

So since there is no processing, I don't have to worry about any response time issues when playing games? From what I read the analog to digital converting gives a slight delay, I just wasn't sure about the HDMI.

I'm shopping for a new AVR (first in 10 years) and noticed this year's Denon's including the 591 no longer have switched AC outlets. But most of last year's low-end Denons have two 120W outlets. Why is this?

Is it because people are blowing fuses driving their subs? Or perhaps because auto on/standby on/off subs are commonplace? Or just a cost-savings measure?

Total combined wattage from both (not each) switched outlets is only 120W and because of that they are not designed to power a sub, rather for audio components like a CD or DVD player or cooling fans. They were likely dropped because folks generally have more than 1 or 2 components that are better handled with "smart power strips". Also, as you say, most subs have AUTO switches so there is no reason for them to be powering on/off when the AVR powers on/off.

not sure if im doing something wrong. i just got the 591. used the mutli eq that was very nice. the problem im having is getting the dts-hd or dolby true hd audio to play. ive tried several different blu rays and different hdmi cables to see if that was the issue. according to the owners manual when dolby true hd is select from blu ray player the display on the 591 should say dolby truehd, mine only says dolby d. When i try different movies with dts-hd i still just get the dolby d on the units display. is there something i missed or why is it not showing or displaying dolby truehd just dolby d. all the info i can find it owners manual to get the blu ray audio is to use hdmi cables ive tried three different ones and still i just get the dolby d on the display. anyone else have this problem? and or is it something simple i forgot to set up.

The blu-ray player audio has to be set to bitstream or direct depending on your player and set secondary audio to Off (if available). Also check and select the HD codec on the disc track.

Hey guys, quick question about the AVR591 model I'm hoping you can help me out.
I understand it has pre-out for self powered speakers. If I plug in a pair of speakers to the pre-out socket will I be able to control the volume of those speakers using the receiver? I've got a pair of Audioengine A5s that I would like to use as my front pair.

Thanks!

Yes. The pre-out is specifically for either "Front Height" or "Surround Back" speakers.

yes batpig i know the receiver will only play the source it is receiving, guess i was trying to figure out why the receiver wasnt getting the right source i wanted. or if it was something else in the setup that i didnt do or overlooked.

Jchin thanks for the input on this i checked the player, it doesnt have those options you mentioned or i couldnt find them in the set up menu. the player is a sony bdp 301, after some research online i discovered that particular player is unable to decode dolby truehd just dolbly digital plus. Isnt that just great now i have to buy a new player, man it never ends. lol oh well thanks for the advice on this. now to check out what player to get now.

Hi distracted110, before looking into another Blu-ray player, check with Sony and see if there is a new firmware update to add the new HD codecs.

Agreed with JChin, get the latest firmware. At some point they added truehd.

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu...pl?mdl=BDPS301

i was thinking the same thing. so i went to sony downloaded latest driver version 5.3. thought i hit jackpot there, put blu ray in still same results. so i called sony, they stated that player with the latest firmware update will just decode dolby truehd back in dolby digital. wont output truehd. i asked then why on website for firmware does it say dobly truehd. i then got mad and hung up. lol im getting close to the end of my rope here. if i find anything else out ill let you all know. thanks for help

Hi distracted110, try setting the 301 audio output to PCM and then select the TrueHD track on the BD disc. The 301 will decode the TrueHD track and send it as PCM via HDMI to your AVR. Note you will NOT see any TrueHD light up since the track is already decoded as pcm.

jchin, prior to your post i set the player to pcm like you stated. didnt see the truehd on receiver. glad you wrote that it wont show up, cause thought it would. now i see it wont. thanks again jchin and others for all your help on this issue, i really appreciate it. i just wish it would show up on receiver, not really need just would be nice. and here i thought i finally found a reason to upgrade my blu ray player so i could get the netflix stream movies. oh well lol. im sure ill find another reason to talk myself into upgrading.

There really is no benefit to using bitstream, compared to PCM. The only thing you will get is the receiver saying it's in HD audio.

Now, there is one situation where that is useful. Not all Blu-Rays default to an HD audio format. So it can clue you into the fact you forgot to set it. The fat PS3 does it the same way. The slim can do bitstream.

Not to get too off-track, but I've been thinking about bitstreaming issues because I want to build a new HTPC that can play BD discs and rips. It turns out the latest generation of video cards does a good job of bitstreaming Dolby TrueHD and dts HD Master Audio to your AVR for decoding. They will also perform h.264 decoding of the video to further offload the HTPC's CPU. Very cool.

Anyways, I was curious whether it makes any difference who does the audio decoding - the receiver or the BDP. It didn't seem to me like it would make a difference. Then I found this article that says some people claim it sounds better when the AVR does the audio decoding (e.g. the bitstreaming scenario):

http://www.soundadviceblog.com/blu-ray-audio-explained/

The article also mentions some tradeoffs related to bitstreaming, BD menu sounds, and the audio track for "Bonus View PIP". I've never tried this do don't have first hand knowledge.

For what its worth ...

I'm agonizing over which AVR to buy: the 591 or the 791. I'm in an apartment, and this is for a 13'x17' living room (which is open to a kitchen, not factored into room size). The actual listening area is probably only about 12'x12'. It will be driving a set of 5.1 Athena Micra 6 speakers (definitely not top-of-the-line, but not awful). Given that I'm in an apartment complex, the living room is fairly small, won't be needing 7.1, and I'm not going to be pushing the speakers much, if at all, am I giving much up going with the 591 over the 791 aside from the iPod connectivity?

I'm essentially just looking for a decent HDMI switch, auto-calibration and some decent sound. The full setup will be: Xbox 360, PS3, Comcast cable box via HDMI, Wii via component, all going out via HDMI to my 52XBR9.

AA, I'm interested in the Bing cashback offer but I don't see BestBuy listed when I search for Denon 591 on Bing (or even just Denon for that matter).

Can you repeat your search and let me know how I can get the 20% cashback offer?

Thanks for the assurance! I definitely have no need for video scaling (my TV does a fine job of that, and I don't need or want any more processing delay added into the system!) and the iPod connectivity would just be a bonus WAF. I'm hoping that since the HDMI functionality is supposed to be a "dumb switch" for the most part, and no processing is done on the video signal, I shouldn't have any problem with display lagging while playing games.

I should be picking mine up in the next couple days - does anyone have a suggestion for a cheap tripod for running Audyssey with?

Interested in your impressions of the On Screen Display feature and how useful you find it.

I'm considering this Denon 591 or the Onkyo 508.

This might sound like a very silly question, but does the new 591/791 models still have the blue HD audio lights? They don't show up in the press pictures on the Denon site, and they did for the 590/790.