Dear Friends: Soon I will be buying a new AV Reciver, my doubt es which one is the best choice on Denon, the new 2807 or the 3806, for you to have a reference my speakers are Polk RTi, 5.1
SWMBO has left the building and all necessary rewiring and switching has been accomplished and bi-amping is in full effect on the FL & FR speakers. It coincided with my father bringing round a couple of collegues who are devout 2 channel audiophiles. One of them reviews for a high end Italian magazine, so I felt like I was being visited by the Spanish inquisition, but never-the-less, I knew no punches would be pulled, so it would be informative to say the least.
They were really here to see the a full blown AV system working in concert with a projector, so much of the evening was spent doing just that.
My 3806 has been Audessey EQ'd several times until I found the microphone positions that seemed to produce the best and most balanced results. I can advise using a pattern that forms a two rows of three pattern with the main position being in the center of the rear row, as opposed to measuring at all the possible seating positions plus whatever is left. Also, using DVE, I have applied adjustments to the manual EQ borrowing the 'Flat' curve and adjusting the apparently inaccurate speaker distances as set by the Auto EQ. Center speaker was reset to small to give it a chance. The findings were as follows:
Home Cinema: Oh my god does this go loud. War of the Worlds, the scene when the tripod first rises above the ground, had started to harden up if the volume was raised beyond -16. I can now comfortably play it at -12. The sense of real sound pressure is palpable, without the sense of borderline strain that existed previously, even at lower levels. The hardness in the treble at higher volumes is gone, presumably because it now has it's own 120w amplifier. Even if the mid/bass is straining, the treble is stays clean. This really helps with the spacial location of effects and intelligablity of voices during aurally crowded scenes. The sound of hard shoes on the deck above, during the opening scenes of Master and Commander hang in space above the speakers and have such dynamic impact you could swear someone was beating on the wall at the front of the room. Also interesting is the fact that I do not miss the presence of the two rear channels. Either their output was minimal or they really added very little to the actual steering of surround effects, but there is no way I am trading this sort of improvement to get them back. Two more Kef Eggs on Ebay then.
Sorry but we are limited to 3000 and something stupid words, so this is part two.
Music: As mentioned the two guys present are very much traditional stereo devotees, so music was on the agenda. Music played ranged from trad jazz to Metallica and a good few ports in between. CD, SACD (I've updated to Denon Link 3rd) and DVD-A. A bit of background. My early hifi years were spent working in a shop flogging the likes of Micromega, Linn, Mark Levinson and ATC (the best transducers anywhere and I will debate this over as many thread pages as you want!) to name a few besides the obvious of Ruark, Mission etc, etc. It's been a long time since I put my 'Hifi' ears on and boy, it shows. All of the improvements listed above applied to music playback. But after extended listening the results were, for me at least, surprising. General results were, with 'Flat' Audessey EQ applied, of a remarkable sense of space and imaging. But somehow, things did not hang together as a cohesive whole. Timing and presence were lacking and I am talking across all formats. There was a serious lack of involvement, not to mention the fact that bass notes had a convincing leadind edge but no sense of resonance and decay. Percussion metal splashed, but did not ring. We turned off channels and tried 'Stereo Direct' which wrought slight improvements, with all formats, switching the DVD3910 to Stereo to help, but to be honest, underwhelming is the best I could comment. To cut a long story short, we turned off all processing, hooked up the straight analogue stereo outputs from the 3910 and switching the 3910 & 3806 to 'Pure Direct' modes resulted in a real music experience. The high end was cleaner, the mid range gave voices presence and the apparent hole between the upper and low bass was filled, giving acoustic bass the body it had previously lacked. I don't know why I should be surprised, but when the least amount of digital intervention was applied, things finally started to 'rock'. I know it's hardly an objective measure, but at this point I could see feet tapping whereas, before, considered expressions had ruled. I therefore conclude that, you can time align and quote truly flat in room frequency response as much as you like, but the less you put in the way of the musical signal, the more music you actually receive. I reiterate that everybody in the room had no doubt that 5.1 DD or DTS sounded fantastic, although we all prefered 'Flat' over 'Audessey' as the prefered equalisation. It may be down to the fact that my listening partners were distracted by an eight foot picture which they had never experienced and this point was discussed at length. But there was no doubt that when music was the object, simplest is best.
...part three... In reality and I admit this freely, a 3910/3806 is about equal to a £300 CD player coupled to a £300 stereo amp in musical terms, all-be-it with a massively increased loudness pottential. I suppose this makes sense when you divide the price by the number of channels and then multiply by two.
The lesson of the evening was that you are never going to impress somone with a 10k+ hifi on puely audio grounds, but you can distract them with the picture. I kid you not, they were like rabbits caught in your headlights, especially when playing Men In Black II on Superbit. The audio purists looked like I had cut their c**ks off when I pressed stop after the post office scene! Sorry for the bad language, but the look of rapture on their faces was stultifying. It really did open up a new world to them. Funny thing was, they looked at me like I was weird when the found out that the PJ cost me 3.5k and was honestly out of date after six months. This from people who had spent a minimum of 6k on a pair of speakers. Oh well, to each their own.
Anyway, I digress. We talk about Denon Link 3 and pure digital connections like they are some holy grail, but honestly, if you really listen, the simplest connections and simplest route, still provide the best music from a format that was released in 1984. Makes you think.
Oh, I didn't get round to what happened when I fired up the turntable!
Hope this provides some points for discussion, but going back to the original point, yes, bi-amping is well worth it.
