Denon 3910 Owners Thread - Page 245

Thanks all for the quick replies.
I can't believe ANYONE would make a player w/o volume controls or anyone would allow them to. I read a ton of stuff about this player before purchase and never gave any thought to the lack of discussion regarding volume control because I thought this was a given on every player ever made. I could have just gotten the cheapest player with denon link if I wanted to go through a cheap ass receiver volume control. My Panasonic DVD player from 8 years ago has volume control.

You may want to go back to the drawing board and research high end audio all over again. I think you are way out in left field with your expectations and knowledge of DVD players

You'd rather send it through a cheap ass volume control in a CD player? Clean and quiet volume controls cost real money regardless of the component in which they are installed.

EDIT: Typically, the volume controls in players are simple digital attenuators which sacrifice resolution for attenuation. Typically, that is inferior to the simple analog potentiometer in preamps or the IC equivalent in most AVRs.

Why would somebody buy this relatively expensive player without a clue as to its advantages over machines you can get for $80?

This is very odd, and I can't figure out if something on my 3910 is broken or if there is a setting I have somehow changed. When I use either the coax or DL3 output from this player into my Denon 3805 receiver, I'm getting normal sound from all channels. In the receiver, the sub is set to ON and the crossover is 80 Hz.

I also get normal sound from all five channels when I use the 5.1 analog outputs--but only when DL3 is turned off in the 3910. When DL3 is turned on, EVEN THOUGH I am using the analog connections, nothing comes out of the subwoofer analog connection.

FYI, the speaker settings on the 3910 for analog have the SW as ON, the crossover as 80 Hz, Bass Enhancer as ON, and the +10dB subwoofer setting as ON.

Any suggestions? I did try a couple of different interconnects for the subwoofer on the off-chance that one of them was faulty, but this was not the problem.

Does anybody know if denon 3910 upscales vob files?
Thanks.

Denon customer service responded that the situation I described is normal functioning.

It's been quite a while since my last post in the thread, but I've encountered a strange thing with my 3910. Quite frequently, when I put in a CD (which is all we use the 3910 for), there is a loud rattling sound as it loads the disc. Sometimes it will successfully load the disc and at other times I'll get the 00h 00m 00s readout. Also, I frequently get the 00h 00m 00s readout after trying to load discs. I reload them a couple of times and usually the 3910 will pick them up, but sometimes it's a bust. I've tried cleaning the lens and blowing out the drawer, but haven't had a lot of luck maintaining a good streak...

Jason

Sounds like you are a victim of the dreaded transverse unit failure. This is a $300 repair. The tranverse unit is the laser assy basically. This failure is not strange at all unfortunately. Many owners of the 29/39/5910 and 2930/3930 players have experiened this. Twice for me. Each time I had it repaired the new transverse unit lasted about 1 year.

Well... Assuming the user have the tranverse unit failure, what would be the best thing to do? Getting the player to repair and paying the 300$ at the risk of encounting the same failure in a short time OR get rid of this player and getting something like an Oppo player?
Does the user will have some sort of ''downgrade'' about audio/video quality switching from the Denon to the Oppo?

i think the the oppo 83 is a slight downgrade audio wise from the 3910 with the analog outputs, but dvd performance is a slightly bigger upgrade (but not huge) from the 3910. plus it's a fantastic blu ray player, it's not 5 years old, and oppo provides better support.

it was an easy decision for me to switch.

I have had my DVD-3910 for almost 5 years and use it usually 3 to 5 hours on most days listening to Multichannel music and every once in a while will play a CD on it; however 3 months ago I started to have the same problem on playing CDs (sometimes), but it doesn't do it on any other material and not on every cd.

I keep anticipating that it will eventually go out and I have become accustomed to using DenonLink to my AVR-4806, which converts multichannel music to 7.1 nicely.

I am contemplating buying one of those Oppo BD-83 players however there are a number of people reporting problems with multichannel music and I am tempted to buy either a B-stock DVD-3910 (or possibly a DVD-3930 if it comes down another couple hundred) and a separate player for Blu Ray.

Are there any other Multichannel music folks that are experience the same dilemma?

I've also had my 3910 for 5-6 years and have used it mostly to watch DVD concerts and listen to DVD-A's and SACD's. It has not had nearly the playing time as yours and I've never had a problem with it. After adding a cheaper BD player to our bedroom last year I just connected an Oppo BDP-83 to our main system the other day. Have watched two blu-ray movies so far and have experimented a little bit, including doing some calibrating of the EXT-IN channel levels using a sound meter. My impressions so far:

1. The Oppo is excellent as far as video is concerned, including upscaling regular DVD's.

2. The multichannel sound using the 7.1 analog EXT-IN sounds very good, but in my less-than-ideal listening room it definitely lags behind the 3910 using D-Link which allows for room and EQ correction. However the same would apply when I listened to the 3910 using EXT-IN. It just makes a big difference in my particular room, which I confirmed when running some audio tests (frequency sweeps) on a set-up disk yesterday - there are some frequency issues that the processing in the receiver helps correct if D-Link is used that cannot be addressed using EXT-IN. That said, the lossless audio tracks on BD movies do sound great.

3. For now I plan to keep both players in the system, and will use the 3910 for just critical audio listening, including CD's, DVD-Audio and SACD's. I figure this will help extend its life and hopefully I'll be able to avoid the issues that others here have experienced after many hours of use

4. Next purchase will be a new receiver to replace my 3805 so I'll be able to use HDMI audio and EQ processing with the Oppo. I will not need lots of power as I use a separate 3 channel amp for the front speakers and so will mainly be looking at the latest mid-priced Denon's that have very capable processing and room adjustments.

How does the Oppo compare to the 3910 when you use analog (EXT IN) connections for both?

When setting up the Oppo I immediately disconnected the analog connections on the 3910, and therefore did not do an A-B (D-O) comparison. However this afternoon (when my wife was out of the house!) I did have a chance to play a DVD-A disk very loud on the Oppo using EXT-IN and it sounded superb - very powerful with a great soundstage. This was after I carefully balanced all of the EXT-IN channel levels yesterday using an analog Radio Shack sound meter.

I then played the same track on the Denon using D-Link. I actually had to turn it up a couple of notches to play at the same volume, probably because when setting up the Oppo I needed to add several db's to my front speakers to balance them with the center and surrounds. But to my ears the Denon sounded better balanced throughout the frequency range, with better extension in the upper frequencies. It also provided the benefit of being able to hear the rear surrounds (7.1 system) which you don't get using EXT-IN, for just about everything, including movies.

I realize, however, that this better frequency balance is probably purely a function of the room eq adjustments made in the receiver, which in my room make a big difference for a critical ear. Honestly, when I used the Denon playing through the EXT-IN's, I probably would be hard pressed to tell the difference, but again this was not an A-B comparision, more just from memory as I almost always used D-Link before getting the Oppo.

Your results would probably be very different if you had more of a perfect listening room. Same could be said if your room was less than ideal while using a receiver with HDMI/lossless decoding capability where room eq could be properly adjusted. If that's the case, I doubt you would be giving up much by substituting the Oppo for the 3910. At least for now, until I buy a new receiver, I plan to keep my 3910.

[quote=J I did have a chance to play a DVD-A disk very loud on the Oppo using EXT-IN and it sounded superb - very powerful with a great soundstage. This was after I carefully balanced all of the EXT-IN channel levels yesterday using an analog Radio Shack sound meter.

I then played the same track on the Denon using D-Link. I actually had to turn it up a couple of notches to play at the same volume[/quote]

I have found with my 3910 that there is an overall volume difference of several decibels in the level of the EXT IN signal than through D-Link or the other digital audio connections to my 3805. This difference was measurable using the Radio Shack meter, and it was there even when the AutoEQ feature (affecting only the digital inputs, of course) was turned off...

I've had my 3910 for about 4 or 5 years, and have suffered for at least 3 years with disc playing issues. For me, it's DVDs that sometimes won't play and get stuck on 0:00:00. Also, multichannel SACD's will skip when playing at around 1 hour into them, when the player is warm.

The DVD issue doesn't bother me so much, since stopping and pressing play again usually works. But the SACD problem is annoying.

I believe I actually fixed both problems for a while, once. I opened the player up, and removed the enclosure covering the laser assembly. I noticed that when the disk tray closes, a round weighted "clamp" comes down onto the disc, holding it in place. That thing can move around a bit, and doesn't always clamp down in the center. If it's way off, it causes the dreaded v-i-b-r-a-t-i-o-n that the Denon 3910's are known for. If I positioned it so that it came right down in the center, the SACD issue went away. I closed it up, and it seemed to fix things for a while, but the problems eventually came back. I may open it up and try again, and see if I can make the problem go away again for awhile.

Interesting info.

I can't play SACDs on mine anymore but I think it is settings related bewteen the 3910 and my 4806. Everything else DVDs CDs and DVD-As all play with no problems. When I put a SACD in it is being read by the 3910 and shows all 5 channels but I get no input on the 4806 and no sound.

New to this...I have loaded ess8280-1 to my US 3910

Is this the latest version I can use????

I have done the region change and get a region-a1....I presume this is multi

I get sound only when I play UK dvd,s

I was going to buy a new Denon Blu Ray and keep my DVD-3910. Then I heard about the Oppo BD-83 and bought that instead. The Oppo was so nice, and works with all my multi-channel DVDs, that I ditched the 3910. The Oppo is so fast, that I bought a second for my upstairs day to day rig. life it too short to be waiting for a DVD door to open. On both rigs I use the analog outs.

How do the analog outs compare? I have a 3910, too.

Thanks. I don't use this unit for CDs anymore and it still plays multichannel disks perfectly and I can use my Denon-Link to convert 5.1 to 7.1 (which I couldn't if I used the analog connection). I keep waiting for the DVD-3910 to breakdown, but it's not doing it.

I think the Oppo is just as good, if not better, and has more control. With the 3910 my Pre-Pro had trouble getting a level on the sub high enough to turn the sub on when using the analog route with some discs. The Oppo handles that better. Before the Oppo, I was actually upgrading my pre-pro to something with HDMI support for the new formats, but there were other problems with that upgrade. Once I had the Oppo, the analog works well enough that I sent the new pre/pro back. For movies in DTS HD Master Audio, the analog is the same as the HDMI.

I'm wondering, what happens with a true 5.1 SACD, like Dark Side of the Moon. With my pre/pro with 5.1 inputs (a B&K Reference 30, upgraded to a Reference 31), the pre-pro adds the rear channels (with matrixing I think). With the new pre-pro I tried out, but returned, with the 7.1 inputs connected to the 7.1 outputs of the Oppo, I got nothing on the rears. I figured it was because there wasn't a true 7.1 worth of music on the disc, but it seemed goofy.

I didn't think using the analog cable allowed anything but the separate discrete channels to come through unmolested/unchanged, whereas if it comes through one of the digital connections it goes through the AVR's (or in your case the pre-pro) processing and allows some manipulation (i.e., EQ and AVR's surround processing).
{EDIT: meaning, if the disk is 5.1 as the one you mentioned, it won't add rear channels on SACD/DVD-A thorugh analog.}

This seems odd to just drop the rear channels. I'm glad the B&K adds these. I verified that is does.

I have both the Oppo and the 3910 in my system. The Oppo is connected via analog 7.1 and the 3910 using Denon Link 3. I use the 3910 for SACD's and DVD-A's to get full use out of my rear speakers and also frequency and room eq. To my ears it sounds better than the Oppo which of course is the important factor when playing these disks.

For all movies I use the Oppo, which to my eyes has better upconversion than the 3910 and of course for blu-rays it's as good or better than any other BD player. I figure using both will extend the life of the 3910 which I will continue to use at least until I get a new AVR to replace my 3805, which I am in no rush to do (also use a separate 3 channel amp for the front speakers which really helps also).

If you are going digital to the receiver, that is the sound of the receiver more than the players. If you have a rig that works, then stick with it for sure.

This might sound really stupid to you guys but I need help. I picked up 3910 a few months ago so far have only been using it as DVD player. I wanted to venture in SACD so I got one and played but I could not hear anything! I have the 3910 hooked up to a Denon 2809 via HDMI. I can see the player recognize the sacd and starts playing but I get NO sound..is there I setting that I need to change? DVD Audio plays fine...please help because I really want to untilize the player's potential!

The 3910 does not play SACD over HDMI. DVD-A does, however, play over HDMI.

To get SACD out of the 3910 and into your receiver, you have to connect the 3910 to your receiver either with DenonLink III, with the 5.1 analog outputs, or with IEEE1394 (aka Firewire).

If you go with the DenonLink (which requires a cheap Ethernet cable), first you have to turn on DLIII in the 3910's setup screens. Then you go into the receiver's setup screens and assign DLIII as the digital audio input for your 3910. This kind of connection allows you to use the Auto Eq built into your receiver--Auto Eq is not used if you use the 5.1 analog connections. I have the 3910 connected to my receiver with both analog and DLIII, so I can compare. But you only need one of these.

I haven't used IEEE1394, so I won't comment on it.

If you bought an older 3910 that didn't come with DLIII and has only DLII (you'll see in the audio setup screens), there is a firmware upgrade on the Denon website that will upgrade the player to DLIII.