The **Official** Denon 3311CI/ 991 Owner's Thread NO PRICE TALK - Page 205

Yes the Paradigm shift indeed . I must say they are lovely though now that THAT nightmare is over.

To be fair, the Denon seems like a nice receiver and it hasn't exhibited the shut down problem again. I just for some reason, never fell in love with it and have regretted getting rid of my Marantz. I just took it as a sign that if I'm going to send it back and get another Marantz, I better do it now. Plus I definitely feel the Marantz kicks it's ass in the analog dept.

FYI - I've mentioned using Amazon payments previously. Well, it paid off again. I was just past my normal 30 day return period with 6ave but, checking Amazon, I was able to make a return until mid-April. I submitted my claim through Amazon Sunday evening and Monday morning, 6ave was calling me and apologizing. They sent me a pre-paid return label and informed me I would receive a full refund.

As indicated in the notes under Audyssey MultEQ XT on p. 75, the "frame" will show up after you have run AUTO SETUP. If you then change any of the AUTO SETUP settings (eg. speaker configuration LARGE/SMALL, channel level, etc.), the frame disappears to let you know the original AUTO SETUP settings have been modified.

Hi guys. The graphs in your AVR are an extremely rough "graphic EQ" version of the FR corrections of the filters Audyssey is applying. No "after" responses are measured.

Once you run autosetup, the frame is there to tell you that all the autosetup settings are in place. When you make changes in the Manual menu to the settings, such as speakers large to small, raise crossover to 80, etc., you lose the box. That's all it means, and most of us proudly sport boxless logos.

Sorta, yeh. Once you run autosetup, the default EQ is Audyssey ON. But your AVR has Personal Memory Plus, which recalls your settings from the last time you were on a particular input/source, so if you turned off Audyssey EQ when listening to a stereo CD the last time, it won't be on the next time when you select that input/source. And that's why there is a Audyssey logo indicator light.

Personally I have Audyssey on all the time. For TV, DEQ ON with Dynamic reference offset=10 and DVol=Eve. For Film, DEQ ON, Dvol OFF for action films full effect. For music, DEQ off if listening near reference, or if ON use Dynamic reference offset= 10 ( DVol off for music).

When I first installed my 3311 (last June) it worked flawlessly. After a while I started experiencing intermittent netwrok problems, similar to what others have reported. I'm not sure when this started becuase I have only tried to use the network features infrequently.

- 99% of the time it would sit in "connecting" forever
- it always had a MAC address and could be pinged, but nothing else worked.

Every once in a while I would turn it on and it would work fine for the next few hours. I could always tell when it work because I would get the update notification for air play. I cannot confirm this, but I think it worked after the power the unit was disconnected.

This weekend I turned it on and received the "firmware update" notice. I decided to give it a shot. Other than sitting at 1-minute left for about 10 minutes, it worked perfectly.

I have had 0 network problems since (and I've tried everything). It always connects and the network features always work. I actually had to turn off the upgrade notification because it was getting annoying.

I would imagine eventually, for the most part, we'll see less and less network issues in the future with these types of receivers. And I would imagine that we'll start seeing networking as a standard. Meaning you won't have to necessarily buy the top of the line (or near it) model to get it. Personally for me, I already have networking capabilites on my PS3, my standalone Blu Ray player, my DirecTV box so as far as streaming music it was kind of redundant. Having the capability on the 3311 was pretty much for firmware updates in my case. Which, now that I think about it is a pretty bad reason to decide on a unit. I guess I've come to expect some sort of possible failure nowadays and didn't want to hassle with driving it to a repair center. Weird.

hi all, just received my 3311 last week and fiddled with it all weekend. first off, love the unit so far. it replaced a 5yr old 74txvi elite and although i don't have it fully set-up yet, it is leaps and bounds above in technology, has far more sub response and better clarity with my paradigm in-walls with less midrange.

so my questions at this point are regarding the network. i've sifted though pages of info but cannot find specific "help" or "how to". i have the 3311 connected to a wired/wireless router (through hdmi to my plasma) and my laptop is wireless. what i want to do is a) play itunes on my laptop through my 3311 and b) show pictures from my laptop on my display. seems like it should be simple...

1) my laptop sees the 3311 and i have full web control on the http address. on the 3311, when i go to the network input, then media server, there is nothing there. how do i get the denon to recognize the files on my laptop?

2) once 1 above is complete, will the 3311 only play the music files i have in itunes through the folders or will it actually play itunes? in other words, what i want to do is sit on my couch with my laptop, open itunes, double click on a song and have it play through the 3311. or do i need "airplay" or apple tv to do this?

3) if i get apple tv (seems like the better deal based off what i read on here), will it allow me to show pictures i have stored on my laptop under "my pictures" or will the media server mentioned in 1 above take care of that? In other words, how would i show a slide-show of photos on my laptop's hard drive?

Thanks for the help
Jeff

Jeff,

I have Apple TV and love it!

...but then again I have a Mac and I am sure
the communication between the two is more
fluent than a PC.

You may want to wait before buying it because
the next revision of Apple TV is due shortly and
it's supposed to be faster with more features most
likely at the same price point.

DenPureSound-You beat me to the response. Yes-I'm curious as to the frequency(ies) generated during auto setup. Both for main speakers and subwoofer. I already understand the level (75db) generated. As I said, this is just curiosity. Thanks.

Jeff you have to setup your media player within your PC to accept the 3311 to access the WMP and also need choose what directories to share. I'm at work and when I get home I can probably dig up the link I used to setup WMP to properly stream my music files. Once setup you'll go into your Denon and then see your media server hosted from your PC and once you select it you can browse your music files by album, artist, folder etc... Its pretty straight forward once you get in it. You can also stream pictures through your media server.

I also have a ATI/AMD video card that has a HDMI output on it so I also connect my PC directly to my Denon via HDMI and that allows me to use my Denon's audio and my HDTV from my PC. That way I play everything on my PC, pictures,mp3,movies etc....

I normally don't have the Denon hooked up to the network since I only have one network cable going to the A/V area from my router which I leave hooked up to the Xbox360 (I should just buy another Monoprice network cable, heh, even though my router is also a wireless - I just prefer wired) and I just plugged in the Denon and got a new firmware update confirmation.... Started out at 13 minutes remaining... now as I type this it's at 8 minutes remaining... seems to be going much smoother than the last update which took multiple tries and I almost thought that I had bricked the Denon when it seemed locked up and wouldn't shut off and had to pull the power plug to get it to shut off, heh...

It's at 7 minutes remaining...crossing my fingers....

4 mins... 3 mins... 2 mins... going smoothly with no signs of being locked up again...

1 min... tension is building for the lockup... the arrows aren't there moving anymore...

Timing the last one min... should be about 30 secs remaining...

Oh the arrows are there moving again... we have signs of life...

Still 1 min remaining... (it's been 1:30 actually)....

1 min still remaining (been about 5 mins...lol) Got moving arrows, still signs of life at least, lol...

Oh just said update check complete and powered off/on... think I'm good to go... much smoother then the last update for sure... Hopefully this update makes it sound like a million dollar Classe pre/pro, hehe.

The last 1 min remaining was probably more like 6/7 mins.

You'll have to install a media server on your laptop. I've had good luck with Twonky.


It won't "actually play iTunes". It will give you access to whatever media files your media server provides access to. You have to set-up the server with a list of folders on your computer to make available. This could include iTunes content and other content.

If you want to open iTunes on your computer and play to the receiver, you will need the AirPlay option. You can then select the receiver from within iTunes.


Your media server will serve-out pictures. You'll have to configure the server to tell it where your pictures are.

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There are other options, as well. Personally, I find navigating content using the receiver's on-screen menus to be tedious. (Ditto for my Samsung TV's on-screen server navigation.)

Fortunately, the AVR-3311 is a DMR (Digital Media Renderer) as well. That means you can use an external "controller" to direct content to the receiver. Think of DMR as "AirPlay for the rest of us". (Not tied to Apple products.)

One option is a iPad app called DiXim. You browse the server on your iPad - a lot easier with a touch screen than with an on-screen display. The iPad doesn't actually stream the content to the receiver. It just sends it a URL to tell it where to find it on a server, and the receiver than streams it from the server.

Another is the TwonkyBeam Firefox plugin. (I think maybe Apple-only?) I really like TwonkyBeam especially when used with a TV which can play video. (The AVR-3311 won't play video content, unfortunately.) You can, say, browse YouTube on your laptop, and select media from the TwonkyBeam sidebar to send to your TV or receiver. (audio and images only for the AVR-3311).

If you want a full-time media server, many routers now include this functionality. Just plug a USB drive into the router, and enable the media server. Better still would be running third-party firmware, such as DD-WRT or OpenWRT on your router. However, the router probably would not have enough power for real-time transcoding, which is a good feature to look for in a fully-featured PC-based media server.

Ronald Epstein and DOT-COM...thanks so much for the responses.

DOT-COM...if you can find that link, that would be awesome. I'm going to tinker around with it more tonight. one thing i noticed last night is browsing the denon with my pc and using the volume and switching to hd radio etc., it seemed to "lock-up" sometimes. when i would close the window and re-open the http for the denon, it would be on hd radio still but would be using the video input as i was wathcing tv and the volume db was wrong. i'm wondering if this is firmware update related? i need to look on here to see what the latest firmware is and see what mine is. i just bought it from 6ave so i assume its the latest unless its been sitting in a warehouse for several months...

i too have hdmi on my pc and that feature works great...but sometimes i just like to sit on the couch and control everything

not really.
if you have windows media player installed - it works as media server too.
you just need to enable it.

I have apple tv 2 and it is pretty nice to navigate with the remote that comes with it although the remote does not have a lot of features it does its job well. If you have movies in Itunes it will play them as well as photos.

I am not sure if airplay will do photos maybe someone can answer this for you. It does not do video though.

jtara...great info. unfortunately i need to read it about 5 more times before it sinks in, some of it is a bit over my head towards the end LOL. i will look at twonky tonight when i get home and play around with it.

its nice to know there are a few different options. coming from an old elite that used an older dell laptop as my "media server" sharing itunes, this is all new to me so i'm learning. i had many of these questions in mind before buying the denon but didn't want to start posting questions until i had the unit and had time to figure out what it can and can't do. so far, the unit has impressed me as many of these features cannot be demo'd in a store and unless you read the online manual in detail, its tough to visualize this stuff w/o having the unit in front of you.

thanks for your patience guys.

The AirPlay upgrade will handle the playing of your iTunes songs / music through the 3311. I have it on two 3311 AVRs and it works really well--especially the multiple speakers option, where I can play the same music from iTunes at the same time on both receivers.

I bumped this up from a previously post. Hope it helps. In Canada apple tv 2 $119. Airplay $49

Also you can stream Netflix for $8 in Canada with Apple tv2.

Yes a lot of options.

Does windows media player, play music and video straight to your Denon through your home networking? Do you have this up and running?

I do.
"play to" works just fine.

The last min. took me almost 15 min. and my original update took about 25 min. when it said 1 min. remaining.

Here is a video that shows how to setup Windows media player 12 to become a media server. I have all my computers setup this way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC8A_uWMKH8

Are you streaming this to your Denon on your home network?

Denon will use windows media player for music play list, album art and photos but I could not get it stream video. Windows 7 Play To feature will play video.

Do not think 3311 is capable of video over net/USB

Thanks JD and SoundOfMind

Bah why the hell am I always plagued by the same issues!!! avr-991 got the firmware update notification. Last time I had multiple issues with connection failed after trying everything. (updated everything fine until ether img) Took it back to Futureshop and hooked it up to their internet and it updated.


Fast forward to today, I try the update, all goes well ( I have had no network issues to speak of since the last update) until I reach the dreaded ETHER SBL. Firstly, it goes from 7 minutes down to 5 minutes, then pauses and goes back to 7 minutes. It does this a few times then I get download failed or connection failed errors. I am running it on a static IP. I try bypassing the router, running straight from my internet modem, no dice. I unplug the unit, take the wife out for coffee and come back to retry. I plug the unit back in, reconnect to the network, the update starts and actually goes down to 1 minute!! It pauses at 1 minute like I had read it would. I left it for four hours, still no dice. I try unplugging the power cord and now I am really mired, I can no longer get a mac address to show.

I am stuck at network connecting etc. I have tried changing ips, disabling dhcp, bypassing the router, unplugging the power and the network cable, utilizing a demitrilized zone (spelling?) I really dont know what to do now, I can not use any network functions. It is like it is bricked. I really dont want to have to take this new receiver in for repairs.


Anyone?

You should also look at Tversity media server. It is free and works great with my Denon receiver and my Xbox 360.

Try a microprocessor reset and retry.

I don't think I would be updating this reciever again. I've shut off the notifications and don't plan on even checking for updates, etc.

When I got the unit new, I plugged it in and did the first update (no problems). Then I started reading this discussion. I feel fortunate mine has been working well with no problems. Maybe at some point they will figure this out, but it sounds more like software then hardware problems.

The last firmware update is geared to fix the networking problem. We will wait and see.