*Official* Denon 5308 Thread - Page 150

Reset doesn't work. Talked to Denon support. They gave me a few things to try.

Found that I have to turn off Kuro Link in my Pioneer 500M in order for HDMI pass thru' to work. Which is kind of strange. With Kuro Link off, the vol up/down button on the TV remote no longer interlocks with the amp. So when the amp is on, I have to use the amp's vol buttons.

^^
That is strange indeed as normally HDMI-CEC must be enabled on both devices for the HDMI standby pass through to work.

I contacted Audyssey and talked to Luke who confirmed we just need to send them an email of our upgraded machine (w/ serial#) and he will generate a new license to use w/ ver 3.5 up on the installers section. So, no additional monies are required for the upgraded Pro kit users!

Kevin

That is really an odd one!

Can you confirm for us Surround A&B users if Free Assign will let us route the Surround A signal to another channel (like the extra Amp Assign), so we can still use our Surround B speakers? That would be most helpful!

Kevin

Can you provide the number to Audyssey that you called? Thanks!

http://www.audyssey.com/about/contact

Been thinking real hard about doing the update, Just can,t do it. $1000 + tax i am not rich. The receiver is over two years old and everything has been working great.I don't want to jinx any thing.

Kevin,
How difficult is it to use the pro kit to calibrate my receiver? Talked with Luke at Audyssey and pro kit runs $550 and license is $150, so it would be $700 for me to do this myself. I am just trying to figure out if it is worth it or just use the auto setup and calibration in the receiver itself.
Thanks,
Stephen

Not Kev, but it's reasonable to just use XT32 and see how you like it first.

Then, if you can imagine and you desire even better integration of satellites/subs, tighter bass and added detail and polish/smoothness consider Pro. It's not at all hard to run, even a cave man can do it. You have to set up the program on your laptop, load your license # and make the proper connections so figure on more than an hour to do your first Pro calibration. Running it is similar to doing autosetup.

Pro also provides some useful room measurements that can help with sub placement and Pro allows EQ tweaks. For info and tips, we have a dedicated thread here.

Not difficult at all but with the new upgrade features that I have yet to decide on, I have no clue (as SoM indicates), if it'll make a huge difference any more (although I will tell you it certainly used to especially given the fact you could EQ up to 32 seats!). If you love the calibrate and customize aspect then it might be worth it.

As a follow-up to my original request for confirmation... Has anyone upgraded yet and if so could you please check your Free Assign settings for me and see if it's possible to assign the Surround signal to both my old Surround A & B speakers (i.e. - through say the 'Amp Assign' output or something)? Thanks!

Some XT32 sub setup ideas, copied from my post in the AVP1 thread.

XT 32 is great and is especially effective with 2 subs. As you may well be aware, it is vital to EQ multiple subs all together at once. You really don't want each sub actively trying to correct its solo output according to its solo interaction with the room. I have 2 Velo DD10s with built-in Velo SVS active sub EQ but I don't use the active EQ at all. Unlike the sophisticated external Audyssey Sub EQ stand-alone unit, my Velo EQs cannot correct the two subs together. So I want XT32 to have a clean slate to apply its considerable EQ power upon, not potentially be battling inappropriate EQ efforts in each sub. I took the following approach.

As I was flexible in sub placement, first I did a sub crawl. I hooked up one sub's test tone and video output to the Denon with no active Velo EQ engaged. I then split the sub output from Sub Out 1 on the AVR to both subs. Again, no Velo auto EQ is engaged and Audyssey is also set to OFF at this point. This outputs the uncorrcted Velo test tone from one sub out of both subs simultaneously. I could instantly see the results of the two subs interacting with each other and the room using the Velo FR trace.

I started with direct opposite mid-wall placements, which not surprisingly turned out to yield smoothest overall bass. One especially wants to avoid the deepest widest dips as those are black holes for your sub amps. Once I settled on placement I did not run individual Velo EQ as that could only be done one sub at a time. To give XT32 maximum flexibility I manually disabled the Velo LPF in both subs. I connected one sub to the Denon Sub Out 1 and the other sub to Denon Sub Out 2. Then I ran XT32, which pings each sub but EQs them pinged together (as I had measured them) -> superb results.

One can use OmniMic, or other measurement system, to generate sub test tones and get instant measurements. You can use the Audyssey Pro kit "before" graphs in the same way for sub placement. It's slightly more combersome in that you run a minimal satellite channel 3 mic position cal, upload the data and view your graph in the certificate off the website.

IOW I treat my subs as though they have no active EQ so regardless of your subs, this may be of some use to you.

Anybody got their 5308ci upgrade done?
I am going to initiate prepay, that local Service Center order parts for me and I will bring receiver in when parts arrive.

I just picked up a 5308cia used of course. But I have a couple questions.

Has any connected to an xbmc computer without issue. it sees the computers plays from my windows 7 computer as well as my Mythtv server but when I try to access the xbmc machine it says not authorized, there are no passwords and no proxy on this machine.

Another quirk I am having and I think It may be a setting. if I pwr on the denon to a music only source IE phono, usb, tuner etc,,, anything with no video, I can start playing the source but then the receiver starts to dropout the sound and the HDMI indicator flashes on and off in the display. when I got the unit home It was reset and I hooked it up to a pair of speaker only and popped in a usb drive to test some audio flac tracks I had and it did not do this, so now I am trying to figure out what I changed...

Finally I set it up late and ended up falling asleep with the unit on when I woke up I changed some speaker stuff and tried another calibration. the calibration went south on my surrounds with 250Hz crossover and told me they were out of phase then I tried accessing the gui after the calibration and the gui screen was garble with all kinds of color and not legible at all. So I shut the unit off and gave it a couple hours to cool off and redid the calibration later and it was fine.

It has not done this to me since as far as the gui is concerned. Had me a little concerned. I also had a couple loose binding posts on the right - side so I removed the panel and tightended those up what pita that was. I also cleaned the unit from dust internally while I had the top off just for peace of mind.

I have set it up with 7.1 and separate 2 Channel Bi-Amped between my Radia in-wall and ceiling 7.1 system and in 2 channel to my 684 B&W, did that make a difference in the SQ... day and night for audio quality.

Thanks,

Dave

Hi all!
I'm having a real headache with my UK AVC-A1HDA at the moment, I wonder if any of you good people could help me out?

Its concerned with the USB/NET input. Whenever I try selecting either an mp3 track from a USB device or whilst browsing folders from our computer, or even selecting say an internet radio station from my favourites, the end playback is just a random selection!
I can select a radio station or music track, but what I get is totally random! This random selection is also displayed on screen...?

I havent got "random" selected in the menus or anything, has anybody else had this behaviour from their big Denon? Could it be some button I've mistakenly pressed on the remotr, or is my amp losing its mind? :-(

Any help or advise please?

I will do the same. I am waiting for the holidays to come and go. I think the upgrade to the x32 is worth the purchase price. That will keep my 5308CI worthy for another 3 to 4 years.
Manny

Wow!

No one on our 5308 thread has gotten their upgrade yet!? It would sure help a lot of us multi-surround installed users to know if there's way to keep all the original A & B surrounds through Free Assign or not.

Can anyone comment please.

Thanks!
Kevin

Kevin.. haven't you asked the AVP owners?

From my understanding, what you desire has indeed been removed.. but there are a bunch of owners over there that can confirm.

Pre-ordered kit and paid 999$ for it in advance. When it will arrive Service Center in Portland Oregon will call me to bring my 5308CI in. They told me should take about week, but I replied that I want to do it after New Year evening, as we are celebrating it as well. So, looking to a beginning of January for upgrade.
They told me they never done it and my unit will be the 1st, but they very confident.Besides, they give 90 days warranty period vs. 30 days by Denon.
Will let you know how it goes.

I've already tried there too. When I called Denon originally, I was told the free assign could not change any of the Height or Width channels to accommodate my old Surr B's. Thought it might be possible to use Free Assign to feed the Surr A signal to two sets simultaneously and let Audyssey do the calibration of splitting volume and timings (better than nothing!).

I have the upgrade on order now but was looking confirmation. I bought a two channel amp in case free assign didn't work because Denon told me at least the low level outputs were always on for Surr A.

I have the same issue. Denon support was of no help. It was reported as a firmware bug. The only work-around I have discovered is to press the Randomize ON then OFF to cycle the function. When it says "OFF", it will no longer play randomized until you turn the unit off (stand-by). Not the best solution, but it works.

Cheers,
Adam

Dropped my unit off and it will be ready Wednesday evening. Hope I made the right decision here (I asked them to give me back my parts in case I wanted to go back to the old version... of course they said they weren't sure they could do that... I said sure you can because the parts belong to me; not Denon).

The good part of this at least was it being a great excuse to clean up the rats nest behind my 6' rack and finally getting rid of all the "3D work arounds" to support two different rooms.

Even if you have the old parts, you would still need a way to also revert back to the pre-upgrade firmware. And I don't think that they will supply you with a way to do that.

They were more likely referring to the fact they couldn't revert back to the previous firmware version, not that they couldn't give you your old parts back to you.

You guys might be right. Are there some non-user code they have to load? I though putting the old parts back and having them flash to the latest version (non-3D/XT32), would work.

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This is my exact set up I was wondering if someone could help me with where I should place front height speakers at the 45 degree angle someone please help I will be installing them soon I was thinking up close to roof in the corners

^^
Ideally the Front Height speakers should be placed above the FL/FR speakers so you're likely better served going straight up to the ceiling from their rather than in the corners. As it's what "YOU" would prefer; however, suggest you temporarily place them directly above the FL/FR speakers first and then in the corners to see which you prefer best.

I believe jd is referring to the PLIIz recommendation. Audyssey DSX height is 45degrees for elevation and 45degrees off the centerline, while fronts are at 30degrees off the centerline. It's a fairly simple trig problem and there are formulas and solve-for unknown triangle calculators online like this one.

Use ex. #2, insert your distance from MLP to the front wall (call it 10') and 45as angle D, you'll see that you'd mount the speaker 10' up. In fact the same height up the wall as from the wall to MLP will always yield 45 degrees elevation. For lateral placement, just turn the triangle sideways. Again, if you're seated 10' from the front wall, then mount the speaker 10' off centerline and that will yield 45 degrees. For this ex., FR/L should be at 5.7' off centerline.

Now, it doesn't have to be exactly 45 elevation but if you cannot get close to that angle cuz you're seated too far from the front wall and don't have a tall ceiling, you might use a ceiling-mount.

Upgrade went smoothly out of the West Chicago location (Electronic Express was great and my receiver was as pristine coming back as going out!), and I can report 3D passthru works as expected. I still need to get my updated Pro kit license from Luke at Audyssey but did a quick 8 seat calibration with the new (included), mic and can also report XT32 does indeed add a distinct layer of finer resolution all around, especially in the bass area (much smoother yet authoritative presence).

I did find it strange that the surrounds ended up ~2-3dB too hot for my room but also found a new feature (well if not new from the upgrade, certainly a new and cool feature to me... never knew it was there!), where if you select the center "Enter" button while not in the OSD it brings up all the speaker output levels, allowing a quick adjustment; nice!

I can also confirm the 'Free Assign' will not allow you to allocate a 2nd set of surrounds to an unused speaker post set (Denon has completely disabled the 'Amp Assign' outputs now except Amp Assign 2 which can only be used for FH/FW!). I ended up buying a small two ch. Dayton Audio amp to drive off of the baseband outputs for SurrB's but unfortunately this amp's sensitivity in relation to the speaker outputs on SurrA is about 4dB too low so I can't get the two surround outputs synced (although it could also be the relationship of the amp which is an Input impedance of 47k ohms vs. Denon's output which the specs say 1.2v output). I may have to look at either a diff amp or some rigging of an 3dB attenuater on the SurrA speaker outputs.

To Denon on removing the Surround B option in the assign functionality . . . What the hell were you thinking guys... Come on man!!

Do you think, the $1100 was worth the price for the upgrade. At this time i do not have a 3D tv. I could use a cleaning on the receivers.

Tough pill to swallow having to fork over $1100 but I do like being able to hub everything to it, whether 2D or 3D and rid my rack of all my 3D workarounds. The XT32 codecs is a noticeable upgrade but for me I'm still fuming over removal of a previously purchased "feature". I never intend to use FW/FH so for me it was a hard call (but worth it I guess; necessary evil if you will).