The **OFFICIAL** Denon AVR-XX13 Model Owner's Thread & FAQ - Page 7

Setup and troubleshoot on what, on thin air? Some of the models like the 4313ci is not even released yet.

+1


The 1513 through 2113CI are on the street now. And considering the replacement to the 4311CI/4810CI will be the "4520CI" (ie. not a XX13 model) it won't be discussed in this thread, but rather will have it's own thread.

The 1713 (USA) and 2113CI (EU) Owner's manuals no longer list the restriction of using an iPad via the USB jack. If an owner of one of these models (or any "CI" model) can confirm the iPad works and post back, that would be appreciated. Thanks.

Yeah sorry about the confusion there, I was talking about the Hogs. I didn't know the anti-Denon movement was so strong on here that it would get turned around like that. It seems like no one is really making a big deal about Onkyo dropping to 2EQ on a $1000 receiver but yet Denon gets rid of AM radio and everybody is ready to burn down their building. It seems a bit strange to me.

Thank you Batpig. That is extremely helpful to me, and hopefully others too. I did look at the 4311 specs but not the comparison. I was dismayed that the specs show the 4311 as not having Audyssey Dynamic Volume and Dynamic EQ. A side trip to the owner's manual showed that it does. But who knows what else is incorrect in those specs, as I have seen mentioned before for Denon. Side note: it is pretty sad when the manufacturer's website has spec errors that never get corrected.

I don't really care about 3D video, and 4K seems similar in the amount of hype but little real value (to me anyway). Can I assume by your statement about 3D overlay that it can overlay volume/GUI over 2D video? I can get by with Zone 2 the way it is. So I think you just helped me make up my mind.

You and JD should get a commission! Or I'll have to make a donation to BatpigWorld - hopefully it is up to date as I will be camping there for a while again. Thanks again.

- Steve

Yes, that is correct, GUI/voume overlay on 2D video only.

Aye?

AM? you mean people are really complaining about losing AM?
I haven't listened to AM in a car, truck or home in decades.

of course I'm not a fan of wingnut radio either

I may still spin vinyl on occasion but even a legacy person like me has limits....those that are upset about not having crappy sounding AM, I think they deserve the ccotenj Luddite Award

According to sources, in Europe they don't even bother putting over air radio in AVR's. They are expected to buy ext tuners.

I know where I live anyway there are a few news and sports station that are still AM only. Varies by where you live I'm sure.

Regarding that external tuners point, is there a list somewhere for that? or does anyone have any recommendations? Seems like a good thing to have around in the xx13 thread for people who really want/need AM.

^^
here's a few -

http://www.amazon.com/Teac-TR-670-St.../dp/B00006I5VT
http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=NAC426
http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo...umber=PAZTUNER
http://www.supremeaudio.com/fmtuner.htm
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=REG&A=details
http://www.onecall.com/product/Yamah...ner/_/R-106986

If you google, you can find scads of them from respected audio companies that have cred not just low-end junk...yamaha, parasound, nad, teac, even car audio pyle has a home tuner.

Magnum Dynalab is a brand of "audiophile"-grade hi-end tuners - MusicDirect is one source for those, if so inclined

I am wondering if anyone has a good way to manage the control of two Denon receivers that are next to each other. I'm looking at picking up a 3313 because of the zone-2 HDMI, but due to the loss of PCM 2.0, I'm debating keeping my AVR-888 to power the speakers in zone 2. This brings up the problem of controlling the whole rig effectively, since to view a video source in my bedroom, I'll need to send different commands to the two AVRs to make them work nicely.

I am running Harmony One remotes, so if I were to say pickup a Xantech IR router I could probably jig something with that using the sequences. Can anyone think of another way to accomplish this?

You can probably grab an old portable AM/FM radio from a garage sale or Craigslist (or new on Amazon) for less than $20 and connect the headphone jack to a 3.5mm to RCA cable and be good to go.

^
Good call jd, just might recommend that to some people. Cheap and easy.

It's not the same JD, you're asking them to spend extra money and pick up junk from a yard sale then stack it against their supposedly state of the art new Denon. I'd rather have Denon let go of the bunch of stupid yellow 'composite' Video IN/OUT and Blu-Ray Analog 'IN' in exchange for an AM tuner. Seriously, who watches Blu-Ray and hook up sound through analog stereo out?

Don't know about your part of the country, but in Orlando, AM radio from the AVR sounds like crap. So trying to duplicate it with a portable AM radio sounds like a comparable option.

Yeah, like how I ordered my steaks! But I'm pretty sure the future 43xx series will be my port of call.
But for now, S-Video is not only limited to LD players and I'm sure you know that by know, but 'Composite' is the lowest-grade video quality, 10 out of 10 times that port will never be used, a waste of space in my opinion. S-Video (DVD-Recorder, Laser Disc Players, etc..) still gives you twice the resolution over those yellow video inputs. I can understand Analog IN audio can also be used for other audio devices no matter what because I have done so with an array of mix and matches on my 2310CI, but why labeled it 'BD-IN' if most us wouldn't even bother using it anyway? The point is, some things are still useful and others are not, why not omit those instead?

Actually AM radio will always be crap compared to FM Stereo and all the other stuff but it was never a problem listening to the news, and as a matter of fact it sounded just like how it sounds when I'm listening to it from my car. I live in a crazy city called Los Angeles.

Better act fast then as the 4311CI ends the 43XX series and has been or will very shortly be discontinued.

FWIW my father listens to AM radio during the Packers football game to hear the Packers radio announcers, he cant stand the television announcers. AM radio definitely was convenient to have on the receiver.

Apparently you've forgotten that the on-disc video of laserdiscs is composite video, not s-video. Encoders are built into those LD players which output s-video.

I'm considering purchasing a 2113, but I see that it's not "Audyssey Pro Calibration Ready", whereas the units above it are. If I understand this correctly, to take advantage of this feature I would need to get a 23xx (or higher) and either A: pay an installer to come and perform the calibration or B: purchase a calibration kit and learn how to do it myself. In either case I would have to pay hundreds of dollars more than the cost of the receiver itself.

If I wanted to go this route, would it instead make more sense to move up to to a unit that features XT32, and just use its improved on-board calibrator and skip a Pro calibration? How much does a MultEQ XT "Pro" calibration improve on a default MultEQ XT calibration, and how does it compare to a non-Pro XT32 calibration?

^^
Likely depends on the quality of your speakers although if you're considering anywhere from $500 for an installer to come out to $700 to purchase the kit, you likely have a nice setup (ie. > $1500). If that's the case then spending the money first on the 4311CI would likely be your best bet as there are quite a few former XT owners in the 4311CI/A100 thread that have upgraded to XT32 from an XT AVR with a much more noticeable improvement in audio fidelity then going from MultEQ to XT, although your question is better posted in the Audyssey Pro Installer thread below which has a number of mostly XT32 owner's posting who have upgraded to XT32 first and then bought the kit. Not sure if any of them have used the kit on a XT AVR however.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1346723

and he also likely has forgotten that many ld players had such crappy comb filters that it was actually better in many cases to use composite and let something else in the chain handle that...

You sure about that?

One one hand, the AM radio chip costs about a dollar, so there's no reason not to include it. On the other, way back in 1966, when I bought my first receiver at 15 years of age, I couldn't afford the model that had both AM and FM. And since I was an audio enthusiast, I didn't care about AM anyway, except that there wasn't much rock music on FM as yet (that didn't happen until the end of July). So I bought the model (Fisher 500c) that had only the FM tuner.

At this point, since almost all receivers support web streams, I can see AM/FM tuners disappearing completely, especially once they get the web stream user-interfaces to be better. If I could pick the radio web streams as easily as I can tune the radio, that would be fine with me, even though not all the radio stations I listen to transmit at high bit rates.

i hope he's not... while a s-video signal requires greater bandwidth, it changes the resolution not one whit....

the only thing a s-video connection allows is moving the comb filtering process from the display to the player... and as noted earlier, many ld players had really crappy comb filters (of course, so did many tv's)...

In the end, that's what everyone wants. Everyone thinks that what they personally need is how the receiver should be. And what each person needs depends upon whether they have all new equipment or whether they have legacy equipment and how much.

But there does come a time when the legacy inputs/outputs gotta' go. Because IMO, one of the reasons why the A/V market is a tiny fraction of what it used to be is because the user-interface and configuration of these A/V receivers is a nightmare for the average person. I'm an ex-recording engineer and I can't figure out what half the functionality does. What the A/V manufacturers have done is the equivalent as if computers still had the original gigantic parallel and serial ports. I think the original parallel printer plug was about half the size of my entire iPhone.

One way of looking at it is breaking down the market into three categories: a) the user who has tons of both new and legacy equipment and needs every possible input and output. So those people will still want all of the composite, s-video (even though they're mostly gone) and component video and they'll still want a bunch of analog audio as well as digital coax and optical, etc. even though I bet they're not using most of it.

b) the user who is new to all this and only has new equipment. They really only need HDMI. If they're also a vinyl enthusiast, maybe they also need the phono input. Possibly, they want to use the analog output of the BD player for music listening. So in that case, they also need at least one analog audio input on the receiver. So that means HDMI, one analog audio input and a phono input.

c) the user in the middle: they've been around a while and need both old and new, but they primarily have new equipment. But the question is, do they need more than one s-video, one component and one composite video input? (In my personal case, all I need is the s-video, which my receiver doesn't even have and that need is only temporary until I finally copy my personal VHS tapes of stuff that isn't available in other formats somewhere).

But then there are two more breakdowns: someone with a home vs. someone in an apartment.

For the most part, someone in a typical small city apartment doesn't need all of the Zone stuff. I sure don't. But if you have a big house with a basement and a backyard, etc., you sure might need the zone stuff. Personally, if I were in that situation, I think I'd find it easier to buy a small receiver for each location rather than wiring up the house (unless it was new construction). But I really have to wonder whether those analog video outs make any sense any more? Who watches analog video?

However, all those combinations I just came up with constitute six different models. (And there's obviously others). So rather than come up with six different models at each price range, the receiver manufacturers instead just pretty much build in everything to almost all the models, except that most have removed s-Video and many have removed multichannel audio In (and some the Out) at the lower end of the line. And some manufacturers, like Onkyo have never had audio digital outs anyway. I don't think anyone has coax digital outs, but many have optical digital outs. And I think that's how it's going to stay for a while unless someone comes up with true customization (much farther than NAD has gone) where you can buy various cards with analog or digital audio or video ins and outs, etc. and plug them in.

Back in the day of the 888, the Denon remotes included a "Remote ID" setting in which you could change the ID of both the remote and the AVR so you could accomplish this task of controlling dual Denon AVRs in the same room. However, this capability has since been removed from all but the 43XX series and higher remotes. You may be able to accomplish this using a Harmony remote as there are some snippets on the net that indicate Logitech got a hold of the Remote ID #2 codes. Check remotecontrolcentral.com for more info. If you can get the codes loaded to a Harmony remote, you should be able to control the 888 by changing it's Remote ID to "2". Yet another option would be to connect to the RS-232 jack on the AVR and control it using serial commands (via pc or other control device).