The "Official" Denon AVR-4311CI/AVR-A100 thread [NO PRICE TALK] - Page 57

My room is 12x8 feet... The only way I could do 8 positions is if I just moved the mic 1/2 a foot each time.

I will rerun with 2 positions just to see if it happens again.

Did EE send you a printable UPS label? For my 4311 they sent me the label and I just took it to the nearest packaging store, but the rep from EE offered to schedule UPS to pick it up for me as well, but the UPS store was 2 minutes from my house.

Ok, I understand what you mean now. For some reason I was under the impression you were referring to something on the rear.

Well, that's good to hear that they are noticably nicer. As you can tell by my current model, it is quite a few years between AVR purchases for me. My first AVR was in 1987, a Pioneer VSX-5000, then my current AVR-3300 in 1999, and now I'm finally getting ready to be "up-to-date" again.
The only newer Denon model I have been able to look at recently was a 2311 and I immediately noticed the feeling of the knobs were not what I was expecting when compared to my 3300. I know, I know, they are just knobs but the way my room is set up, I actually use them just as much as I do my remote.

The faceplate being plastic doesn't bother me at all and from the 2311 I saw, I agree that unless you "pluck-it" with your finger, you pretty much can't tell it's not aluminum.

Please understand, I am not trying to beat a dead horse here or anything like that, just trying to find out as much as I can before pulling the trigger. It's a bit more difficult when there isn't a stocking dealer within several hours drive of me to go and look at the mid-level or higher AVR's. So until I can convince the wife that we need to make a lengthy car trip, I am going to have to continue to do my window shopping through you guys that can actually touch them.

BTW, thanks for the quick reply.

How is this EE's fault? It's up to UPS to pick it up not EE's.

The "positions" are not actual seating positions, rather they should be within a 2' radius of the primary listening position (ie position #1).

JDSMOOTHIE: When a package is damaged the shipper must file a claim and UPS must send a special driver with a damage claim tag number to pick it up. As a result of EE's incompetence, UPS was never contacted or never responded to EE's request. I am unable to get UPS to send me that Claim Tag driver because it isn't my claim to file.

Dennis: See above, I did not get a UPS label because they require a Claims inspector to come get the box.

I see ... well, I wouldn't feel bad about alerting everyone to their availability of stock as it would have come out anyway ... EE is very well known in these Denon threads and is one of the more popular resellers. Fortunately your experience is not typical of a EE shipment.

Has anyone heard the YAMAHA RX-A3000 in 11.2 "presence" mode? How does that 11.2 compare to the 4311/4810 version?

no wonder the sub needs to be turned down so much! That's a lot of sub for a tiny room



always do all 8 positions (unless u are just testing somethin), it's irrelevant how big or small your room is. The point is to provide multeq with as much data about the distribution of acoustic issues as possible.

Got my 4311 tonight...

Double boxed from Value... that seems to be the only good news..

For the record, I've owned close to 10 AVR's over the last 3 1/2 years.. and I've never bought a defective product out of the box.

Bad news guys... I think Denon has a serious issue on there hands.

Everything powers up, I have audio, and video is passing through.

But the scaler/processor/GUI/OSD generator is dead.

All my sources pass through at their native resolution...

When I press menu (confirmed on the front display) or put the setup mic in... nothing... video keeps passing through..

If I go to the FM tuner, I get a black screen (and sometimes gray) which is flickering a little bit...

HDMI passthough on standby works fine....

Weirdly enough, I get the Net/USB screen....

That's it... nothing else.

SERIAL # between 630 and 640

Really disappointed.. I've tried all the resets and what not.. no love.

I have the A100 ordered and just saw the Emotiva UPA-5 sale. I've never used power amps and know nothing about them other than they improve the audio quality. I'm reading up now but my question is will either the UPA-5 or XPA-5 be a good fit for the A100? Is either a good bang for the buck? Would appreciate any short answers or links that might assist with my research.

7.1
KEF IQ7 (LF, RF)
KEF IQ6 (Center)
KEF IQ8 (SBR, SBL, SR, SL)
Triad Gold subwoofer

Thx!

Even with the major video problem I am having (the unit is still full usable and I can get around the menus with front panel display), and fresh out of the box, with no setup whatsoever, I can report it sounds great.

I can not understand how your unfortunate experience with the scaler/processor/GUI equates to Denon having a serious issue on their hands. I might agree with that if there were two, three or four reports of that same issue on this thread. So far it seems that most here are experiencing a very nice sounding receiver. With the exception of course of the few that had some freight damage and a very few other misc issues. I also want to hope that Denon does not have an issue here as I am planning on purchasing one in the next few months after there is more user feedback posted here and elsewhere on the web.

It is not very often that I spend $1500-$1999 for a peice of electronics and I like to do that only with the highest of confidence. Even then, I do understand that any manufacturer can have a few unts roll off the assembly line with some problems. I hope you purchased it from some place that will take care of you.

Good luck and keep up posted.

^^^DJ... Dennis also had video issues... and if we look at actual owners who have received their units just in this thread, 2 video issues is a high percentage if you ask me
_______________________________________

More weirdness about my issue... With video conversion on, the 4311 still passes 1080i video on Auto... when I "force" it to Analog and HDMI, it puts out 1080p.

Also, if I force any other resolution, I get a grey screen.

So it is scaling.

And if I turn stretch on, I get an anamorphic (squeezed) image...

But no OSD, no setup menu.... but I can get it to up-convert to 1080p..

Something really is amiss here.... could it be a software corruption? The plot thickens........

EDIT: More findings..

Video Convert needs to be on to pass video.. if I turn it off, the 4311 will output a grey screen 480p signal.

The unit will pass video with HDMI Control On and Standby Source On.

i/p scaler does work if on Analog and HDMI..

Vertical Stretch is working...

Video isn't my thing, but it would seem as if

1.) the scaler is indeed working... I think the i/p scaler setting was my issue from my first post (and this is like the 4th Denon in the last couple of years.... forgot about that.. ) But if I force the resolution to 480p, it still outputs at 1080p, but the picture looks down converted/scaled to 480....

2. The OSD for the Net USB works, but that is the only Denon generated display, but the FM/AM/HD Radio tuner OSD doesn't.... if I go to Dock I get a 1080p grey screen.

3. Still no OSD for the menu, no for volume overlay...


3.

That is exactly what I was thinking... have you tried to update the firmware? Maybe the original flashing didn't fully take.

Yep.. first thing I did after three resets.. it says "LATEST.."

I have unboxed my 4311, but I haven't hooked it up yet. I am waiting on a few things. Maybe I should mess around with it a bit just to make sure it wasn't damaged during shipping.

or on the assembly line.

Local dealer gave me an offer I couldn't pass up, guess I'm in the club now

You either are lucky, or i'm very unlucky. I buy hardware all the time, and i've noticed ~15% of the time there is either shipping damage or warehouse damage. You simply got a faulty receiver, every brand has them.

Mine arrives Monday.... I will stay tuned and report any issues as well.

While I still love the sound, I am having a strange issue. I have set the HDMI pass-through for standby to HDMI 3 (sat receiver). If I turn off the receiver while my television and tuner are still on, I get a strange noise out of the tv speaker and almost immediately the source passes through correctly to the tv. However, if I turn the tv off and later turn the tv back on, my issue begins. The television will connect initially and I will ge a picture for about 1 second, and then my television will flash and search for the hdmi signal. It will keep searching and will eventually state that no signal is found. If I turn the receiver on, it will start working correctly again. I haven't had any handshake issues with any of my sources (PS3, laptop pc, xbox 360, dish network) when connected directly, and no other issues while the receiver is on, but want to figure this out. Any suggestions?

Hey Guys,

Currently I have a "temp" receiver whilst my 4311 comes into stock in Australia (few weeks away yet )

It is a Denon AVR-1910

Anyways I am not really happy with the sound its producing, just seems to be missing something...

Do you think the 4311 will be a massive upgrade in terms of JUST sound quality? (forget the features)

The speakers I am using are PMC OB1i's (they are brand new also), I have demo'd them before and I just feel like the 1910 isn't cutting the mustard with them.. (and I know the 1910 is grossly underpowered for these speakers, so I'm not talking about "volume", but more sound quality )

So before the 4311 arrives I want to make sure its going to be a VERY good upgrade.. Otherwise I will go for something like an Arcam instead...

edit - So I factory reset the AVR-1910 and now the sound is much improved... I have set the max vol to -20db (just so I cant clip the amp by mistake) and at higher volumes the music sounds a LOT better..

I set the crossover to 40hz (not the LFE, but the other one)... so maybe that helped...?

Cheers
D

More observations...

Overall, it is fast.. going through the menu's (even if having to use the front panel display) it is instantly responsive to the remote and selections.

Net USB and Internet Radio station scrolling is fast... and changing internet radio stations takes about 2 seconds... way faster than any other product I have used.

Even the web browser seems more spritely.

In addition, I did run a quick 3 position Audyssey to see how it worked...

Way faster than any other version to date, and the calculations were blazing fast... took no more that 20 seconds...

Amp actually sounds powerful (on par with the 4310)... I won't make any Audyssey comments (except that it does not suck) until I have the OSD working and I can see what it has done. It is also the first time I have had any room correction system (including older MultEQ XT) detect my mains as large (Def Tech STS's...)

Word of warning for anyone using a Popcorn hour (C-200 or A-200) with this receiver.


My post on their forums: http://www.networkedmediatank.com/sh....php?tid=45009

I wonder if this also applies to the Dune base 3 (which is also sigma based)

Anyone know?

Yeah I wonder about this as well, I'm getting close to deciding on the 4311 for my upgrade, but I run all my movies through a base 3 from a large NAS, so it would really suck for me if there were major problems with the HDMI connection to the 4311.

On the other hand recent firmwares have improved the behavior with regard to reinitialization before after playing content, but perhaps that has been more about avoiding handshakes than improving the code for the handshakes. Does anybody know if the HDMI handshake part is purely Sigma API or if the HDI devs can work on it (so could fix possible issues wo waiting for sigma)?

Regards /Per

1. The factory Video Convert setting is ON. It MUST be on in order to overlay the GUI over the source video. This setting ONLY effects converting an analog to HDMI signal (no change in resolution).

2. There is no "AUTO" for i/p Scaler. The factory default is "Analog" and MUST be changed to either "HDMI" or "Analog and HDMI" to upscale HDMI sources.

3. Unlike previous year's models, with these new HDMI 1.4 AVRs, you must first press the AMP button and then the MENU button on the remote in order to get the Denon's GUI/OSD.

4. What are the first 3 digits of your serial number? They identify the YMM it was mfr'd.

There have been maybe a handful of Dune 3.0 issue related posts in other Denon model threads (last year's models) ... in one case there was an audio issue which was resolved by turning the HDMI-CEC setting on the Dune to OFF. You can learn more by using the "Search This Forum" button with the key words "Denon Dune".

FilmMixer,

What serious issue do you think Denon may have on their hand other you than possibly receiving a defective unit, which I hope is this case? Will you being trying a replacement?


Willie

It's seems like you are working some of the bugs out, so hopefully the remaining problems are just user error, which it seems like 1 or 2 may have been. Keep us informed.

Also, 2 video issues is not a high percentage, unless of course the entire sampling is only 4 units.


Willie