The "Official" Denon AVR-4311CI/AVR-A100 thread [NO PRICE TALK] - Page 92

The cable box issue can perhaps be resolved. Did you try fixing the boxes output? This sounds like a classic cable box handshake issue.

Was this at Kief's? To promote the release of the 100th anniversary line, Jeff Talmadge is going to pay a visit and give a presentation at Kief's on Friday 11/19. I plan to attend and hope to ask Jeff some questions about the decline in internal component quality in the AVR lineup, the possibility of a ~$2500 pre/pro to compete w/ Onkyo/Integra, and the potential for another digital only universal BD transport (a la the 2500BTCI, which was ahead of its time) w/ Denon Link 4th.

AJ

Ode to Audyssey Wides.... Or the anti-ode to PLIIx.

So, there are clearly a ton of brand new owners here, many struggling with cable box issues and a learning curve.... Rather than go over yet another bad cable box problem, I thought it better to discuss room set up tonight.

Here is the short version. PLIIx is only mildly additive to your room experience. Seriously, there is very little reason to actually put rear surrounds in your room. I don't say this lightly. I owned the 4810 for nearly a year and have been fiddling with the new XT 32 equipped 4311 for a good couple weeks. I have listened to movies, TV, and other material. I have very good power and speakers and a decent listening area. No matter what I throw at it, the rears are just lame; with on exception.

I have never met Chris at Audyssey and only read some of his material but IMHO, wides are the thing to do first, last, and everything between. I have posted before and you can read my stuff but wides are what you want.

So, the exception..... When you do have a real lossless audio track in 7.1, there is real content and value to the rear surrounds. I give two movies as examples. 1). Prince Caspian, Narnia..... Simply amazing in 7.1 up ticked to Audyssey DSX H + W. One of the best soundtracks ever..... Not bloated, overly bass heavy and Disney at it's engineering best. 2). Kick - Ass. Surprisingly fun but somewhat kid disturbing violence comic book popcorn flick.I just watched this and even at -20db with Dyn Vol Evening in full 11.2 was a treat to watch and listen to.

So, for the few movies I have in discrete 7.1, it is really damn nice to have the rears. For everything else, I am consistently underwhelmed. The problem is, if Audyssey is successful in getting out the message that additional front room speakers are a better idea, we will see less 7.1 material not more. I am just not impressed with PLIIx. I still split my signal this way but know it doesn't add much.

Man, you stay on task...... It's that Dac issue of yours back in da news.... Seriously... It's just a dang blasted receiver...... Again, my Infiniti M series X auto has a plastic V8 engine surround (as opposed to perhaps a metal alloy cover). you don't find me griping as I floor the pedal and scream down the highway with all 8 cylinders throbbing loudly. All I care is that Infiniti makes a great product. I don't agree that Denon has cheapened up it's internal parts and all I care is if it is reliable and sounds fantastic; which it does.

Please go buy something else and leave the poor guy at Denon alone.

I don't want to break up the Bryston setup and I'd rather keep the Vision Signatures paired with them.

The following link gives some background but they continue to be the best speakers I have ever heard and the fact I built the cabinets adds the pride factor.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...202&highlight=


I'll just have to reserve my critical SACD listening to the Bonus room. It's a little unfortunate since we do most of our listening and watching in the Family room but I've agreed to the design concept my wife wants and with what she allows with my basement theater and now a music room I am happy to do it.

I have a feeling I'll be plenty happy with the 4311ci as it has more advanced processing for Movies and room correction but for analog it's hard to beat a Bryston SP2, 6BSST, 4BST, 9BST and 10B sub crossover for Red book and SACD music.

Can the 4311 send signals that would usually go to the surrounds during multichannel music listening to the surround rears? I ask because my surrounds are dipoles, and my rears are direct radiators. My brother has the same speakers with another Denon model, and he can do it.

posts deleted

kindly limit posts to the Denon models listed in thread title

Thanks

Tomorrow is the end of my 30-day return period for my 3311 purchase and so far I've only been able to read through the first 70 pages of this thread (one of the more interesting reads for me on AVS BTW). I'm thinking hard about upgrading to the 4311 with the Audyssey XT32, however, I currently only run a 5.1 system in a smaller room. But would the XT32 still be beneficial with it's higher resolution filtering with only 5.1 - especially on the sub and bass integration? I really love the bass integration that the Audyssey XT has over the YPAO that was in my older 663. Now I only currently use Audyssey for newer movie playback and use my own custom EQ for older/crappier sounding movies and also most all music and xbox 360 games - would the price difference not be worth it to me just for a more higher resolution Audyssey if I'm only going to use it with movies only?

Speaking of price (gulp, I hope talking % is allowed as I see mods are actually active in this thread hehe ), I also got 35% off the 3311 and I'm unsure what discount I could get on the 4311 (if any) so I would have to assume full MSRP for now. Selling my 663 for 75% of what I paid for it three years ago and getting 35% off the 3311 made it a pretty decent and worthwhile upgrade for the money out of pocket. Hell, the GUI, more powerful custom adjustments (like say, being able to save a custom 2-channel setting vs the multi-channel and having them auto load accordingly to the incoming source) and even the compressed music enhancer having three different levels of aggression compared to the Yamaha's enhancer which IMO can be overly aggressive adding more distortion than it helps was reason enough to not take the Denon back and keep the Yamaha. So would the price spent on going to the 4411's performance level be marginal at best for me? Is there any more notable custom settings/features I might like with the 4311 over the 3311 like some of the ones I just mentioned? Sorry, I have to make this decision by tomorrow night, lol. Since I have off work TODAY I'd kinda like to have my mind made up by tonight since I can sometimes come home from work too late to come home and box up a AVR and take it to the store (which is 40min away ), heh.

I'll be using the AVR with...

B&W 804S - Mains
B&W HTM3S - Center
B&W 685 - Rears
Sunfire Signature EQ - Sub
Emotiva XPA-5 - Amp
HTPC w/hdmi HD bitstreaming (Xonar HDAV 1.3) - Source

Now back to page 70 of this post....heh.

Oh yea.... Are the DACs much better in the 4311? Will my breath be taken away with 2-channel listening with the DACs in the 4311 over the 3311? Micro-detail/dynamics/sweeter highs/etc...




Just kidding on the DACs, lol!

I am not sure what you mean by "fixing the output". What cable box settings would I need for my 722 Dish Network receiver to be set to?

For the month before I received my 4311 (since my SN P965 did not have HDMI inputs), I had a direct connection to my TV using HDMI and noticed NO audio dropouts.

Thanks for this post! I currently have 7.1 with rears and am planning on doing the wides as I also like Audyssey's thinking on this. Will get my unit this Saturday, time to experiment and have some fun

The worse your room is acoustically, the better XT32 will make the sound. If you ever plan to get two subs, the 4311 handles them independently and XT32 eq's them independently. It's not an easy call.... You can still order a 4311 for 22% off MSRP (authorized dealer) but as of today, they are still back ordered.

Couldn't decide between Pio SC-37, or Yamaha RX-A3000 or AVR-A100. Just bought the AVR-A100. Hurt the credit card a little more. But I should be happy.. (I hope)

Yea that's another thing, I'm having trouble finding one in stock locally so that I can pick it up today or tomorrow so that I'm not without a unit. But my local Best Buy/Magnolia does have one on the display shelf in the showroom. My experience with Best Buy is that they will not sell a display unit until the model has been discontinued and they can no longer order brand new stock - have even more fun trying to get Best Buy to give you a discount, hehe. But hey, at least I got to "touch" a real 4311!

I could always run into Best Buy like a maniac, grab the display 4311 off the shelf, and run like hell out the door and throw a piece of paper at the security guy that's always standing at the door with a note saying what I'm running out of the store with that has my Best Buy credit card number on it and to charge my card so it actually wouldn't be stealing/shop-lifting, lol. Has anyone tried this type of bargaining before on display units they otherwise wouldn't sell until it's discontinued and all new stock is depleted? I could become a 6 o-clock news celebrity! I mean what would the big deal be, I'm still paying for it, right? I'm just doing it a little more on the run!

As far as dual subs go, by the time I move my system into the larger room and get another matching sub, I might be ready for another AVR anyway. I'd hate to buy a unit with dual subs in mind and not really use it now and then when I need it later, there might be better units out with upgraded room corrections that I wished I had waited for...but who knows how soon I'm going to change rooms/add a second sub.

As far as the "filter resolution" in Audyssey, what exactly does that mean? More finer EQ bands that can be adjusted? So does that mean that there's 512 EQ bands in the MultEQ XT32 vs the 16 in MultEQ XT? That seems like a huge difference to me? But even so, I suppose real-world results would be more apparent depending on how bad your room is to begin with and I may, or may not notice much of a difference with it. Maybe I'll just stick with the 3311 for now. I know the only true way to know is try it out in your own room with your own equipment (reason why I only seriously demo speakers at home). But yea, what does the filtering 512x vs 16x (512x vs 128x on the sub) mean? Simply more EQ bands?

Otherwise, are all the other features basically the same as far as tweak-ability of the custom EQ, compressed music enhancers, being able to have a separate 2-channel/multichannel setting on the same input, etc...

Speaking of the devil, I think big brother is watching me, lol....

Sounds like you DID decide to me, lol.

Have fun.

James

See here:
http://www.audyssey.com/technology/multeq.html

...especially the table at the bottom

Well, that maybe in his case, but there are audio drop-outs that have nothing do to with HDMI handshake. I got (and others) audio dropouts on SPDIF (coax in my case) as well as HDMI.

It seems to occur only with Dolby Digital stereo signal that gets recognized as having monaural surround sound embedded: "S" indicator gets lit in addition to FL and FR.

Btw, I got the dropout also with in Neo:6 surround mode applied to such signal (on SPDIF). Before it happen while using PLIIz.

Switching surround mode or changing Dynamic Vol/Eq setting restores the audio, so it's clearly internal Denon problem, not source or HDMI handshake problem.

I am inclined to try replacing my unit, but it looks like firmware bug. Opinions?

SeattleHTGuy - regarding PLIIx

Yesterday I received a XPA-5 that I plan to use with my A100 that WWS will be shipping today. This my first amp and wasn't sure what to expect as posts appear to be split whether there's real value in an amp when using the Denon 4311 or A100. The holiday sale make it attractive enough for me to buy one so I could hear it for myself.

I decided to connect it to my Denon 3808ci last night. I'm using it for FL, FR, C, SL, and SR while driving the SBL/SBR with the Denon. Ran Audyssey and tested internet radio, movies, SACD's, and Directv using PLIIx - man what an improvement in the audio quality! I don't have the audio expertise most folks on the board have but my ears seem to work fine . I immediately heard the difference. More volume but with significant clarity, the SL/SR powered by the XPA and SBL/SBL as the only speakers powered by the Denon raised the audio volume and clarity to new levels - clearly a big improvement for me.

I plan to test the A100 for a few days without the XPA then with the XPA to determine if there's a difference. Heck, I'll even take the cover off and take a picture of the DAC's if someone will tell me where they are and/or what they look like .

I have two speakers I plan to add as wides on the A100 as a test. Based on your post, I'll remove the XPA from the SR/SL to the wides.

Something tells me I should order another XPA

This is a great forum and my thanks to all who participate and generously share their knowledge.

I too just ordered a XPA-5 (and XPA-2) and A100. Amps arrive 2day, A100 2morrow. Should be a nice replacement for my 11yr old Yamaha DSP-A1. These forums really helped me out too.

FYI -- VANNS currently has the 4311 in stock. I just bought one. They have a nice holiday exception to their return policy (normally purchases after 11/13 qualify for returns w/o restock fee through 12/31. They were kind enough to extend that to my order today. I also was able to get a 26% discount off list (no tax or shipping). Seems like a decent place to shop.

The new 9.x / 11.x models (4810 and 4311) have done away with the Surround A/B switching of the older high-end Denon models (like your brother's unit) in favor of all the height / wide / multizone speaker terminals. You can only have so many binding posts!! The "one set of direct radiating surrounds for music, one set of dipole surrounds for movies" setup is probably just not a common enough setup these days compared to the drive for more speaker channels.

I would give it a shot letting MultEQ XT32 calibrate your setup as a "traditional" 7.1 and I bet you will be surprised at how good the multichannel music sounds....

But if that's a feature that is very important to you, the 4310ci model from last year still has A/B surrounds (although it maxes out at 7-channels ).

Confirmed reproducible audio dropouts with Dolby Digital stereo over HDMI and SPDIF (optical). Absolutely no pattern to it though, somtimes within the first five minutes of watcing and others times we can go an hour with no dropouts.

I am hesitant to return this box for a replacement (again!). The first 4311 I received had a defective HDMI board - no HDMI video/audio at all (that was a great one to explain to the wife ("...and why do we need a new stereo again?"). I don't relish spending another evening crawling behind the stereo cabinet to switch it out - that's only supposed to happen once everyother year or so, right? Hoping for a firmware fix.

-Stanny

does anybody have the audio dropouts with anything BESIDES a cable/sat box?

Yes, power the wides with the XPA - 5. Currently, I have my main fronts powered by XPA-1s and am using an XPA - 5 for surrounds and rear surrounds. I will change the 5 to power Wides and Surrounds in the next two days. You can do this by telling the 4311 to use an external amp for the L/R fronts. I get confused easily (wine helps :-) ) late at night and foolishly set the Heights to be powered externally. I should have not done this as the Wides usually get more material to deal with. My old 4810 had that really cool "Free Assign" amp feature lacking in the 4311 and I just needed some time to get my head around wiring it up. IMHO Rear surrounds and then heights are by far the least tasked channels.

With Emotiva's, keep in mind (as you mentioned) the large gain applied vs the Denon internal Amps. You can really tell during EQ. It's interesting to see how Audyssey deals with this discrepancy. I suppose if you had a 102db efficiency speaker attached to an XPA and an 88 db speaker attached to the 4311 power, you could easily go out of bounds with Audyssey.

I too hear better clarity and a lot more dynamic punch with the externals but it's not like the 4311 doesn't do a good to great job, it just can't compete with true 200 WPC + workhorses like the Emo's. If I could sneak one more amp in, I'd snag the XPA-3 for the last few channels. 5 amps on two dedicated circuits sounds just way too fun. Of course, I'm somewhat certifiable regarding power.

Actually that is the table I was referring to and looking at when I typed my post. What I want to know is what 512x filtering means. Is it 512 separate eq bands or some other type of filtering?


Already out of stock!

unclemat,

You may well have a faulty unit or something that might be addressed via firmware. As far as HDMI issues, for anyone not reading back in the thread. Set your cable box to output everything at a fixed resolution. As an example 1080i. For Tivo's and other boxes, this often takes care of most handshake issues. True, you lose the total up resolution whizz bagginess of the 4311 video chip set but Tivo's do a pretty good job and perhaps so does cable box brand xxx.

As far as losing signal via optical on different source signal types, this does sound strange. I borrowed a 3311 and when my PC would make any change in audio, I got clicks up the whazoo on the 3311; so much so I would not have ever been satisfied with owning the 3311. It didn't drop the signal but it was annoying. So, call Denon CS and see what they have to say, then get ready to replace within the first 30 days.

RE: Audyssey - try the Audyssey thread for more details.

RE: 4311CI - try calling AVS. I hear they sell stuff.

Mike

Audyssey does not use "bands" like a traditional EQ, it creates a mathematical filter for each speaker with "taps" or correction points. Chris (audyssey) can explain it more precisely in the Audyssey thread if you want technical details about FIR filters, deconvolved response, and other gibberish without my bungling of the topic

EDIT: here is a good explanation at "Ask Audyssey" - http://ask.audyssey.com/entries/2155...zation-methods

The multiplier (e.g. 8x or 512x) refers to the coefficient resolution beyond the "base level" filter resolution of "X"; the value of this number is proprietary.

So Audyssey 2EQ has base level resolution of "X" for the speakers.... MultEQ has 2 times the resolution (2x)... MultEQ XT has 16 times the base resolution.... MultEQ XT32 has 512 times the base resolution (32 times the resolution of the older MultEQ XT, which is where it gets the name).

From what we can infer from what Chris has said, standard MultEQ probably has hundreds of "taps" (correction points) for each speaker, MultEQ XT has thousands, and MultEQ XT32 has tens of thousands....

I am new to this forum also. I have the 4311 but am lookinng at buying the XPA5. What should I connect to the XPA5?

I am thinking of connecting the FR, FL anf FC and the Front Wides to it. Is this good ?

I am looking at the 4311 to drive the rest of the 6 speakers...surrounds, surrounds back and the front heights..

In general, most people would hook up their most important speakers, eg LCR, + others.

One thing to consider is the impedance of the speakers.
If you have 4ohm speakers they may (??? 4311 is supposed to be okay with 4 ohm) benefit more than other speakers.
Also, there is more to "difficult to drive" speakers other than the single impedance # (check out a Stereophile measurement review for instance for commentary), but that should help to a first approximation.

Mike

PS - I have a 5308CI + XPA-3
PS2 - Welcome to AVS