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Are You Happy With Your Denon Hardware?

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2009 11:14 pm
by mgillespie
Each manufacturers forum, I am posting a sticky poll, so others can get a instant feel if other users are happy with their purchases.

Re: Are You Happy With Your Denon Hardware?

Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2009 1:16 am
by ScribeTribe
Denon 3808CI
Overall, I'm happy with this A/V receiver.

Pros:
[*]Sound quality is above average if set up with care
[*]Dolby True HD and dts-HD Master Audio (the best!)
[*]HDMI 1.3 switching
[*]Audyssey EQ is state of the art
[*]Network-ready (but see Cons)
[*]Firmware upgrades via Ethernet or USB
[*]Customizable menus
[*]Customization galore
[*]Works well with Twonky Media Server/TMM

Cons:
[*]Denon's internal media server ("Denon Network Audio") rarely finds my WMP media on my PC
[*]Navigating Denon's onscreen display (on the unit itself) with large media collections is slow
[*]GUI is somewhat awkward
[*]Wish the onscreen display (again, on the receiver) was able to show much more info (plus album art).

Re: Are You Happy With Your Denon Hardware?

Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2009 5:09 pm
by gcoupe
I would agree with ScribeTribe's Pro and Con list. The Pros definitely outweigh the Cons. The two things I most hate about the Denon 3808 are 1) the performance of the Network/USB GUI for browsing or searching through media content on servers. It is simply appalling a) in performance and b) in design. Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful. And 2) the Denon manual appears to have been written by aliens. They clearly do not share the same thought processes with the rest of us humans.

Still, as the heart of an AV setup, it performs well.

Re: Are You Happy With Your Denon Hardware?

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 2:38 pm
by Stany
I agree.
I really like my 3808A but the manual is just useless. It does not explain anything. It just lists menus and functions that you can discover and find out yourself. Pointless!

Re: Are You Happy With Your Denon Hardware?

Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 8:18 am
by tobias
Until yesterday morning I really liked my DENON AVR 3808 device. But then I tried to do the newest firmware update (revision 02.04 from 18.08.2009) and it failed. The display said "Main Firm: 1/14 Updating: 00%" for many hours without progress - menu indicated before that the whole process should not take longer than 3 minutes. I had no choice other than restarting the device. After that the 3808 refused to start up. I even tried a "hard reset" but without any effect.
Now I have to give it back to the local dealer. Let's see if this is done based on warranty. Somewhere I read that Denon does not take warranty for firmware updates. But I cannot believe that.
:(
I cannot understand that a device that expensive as a Denon AVR does not have a dual bios - it seems to load the new software from the net and then immediately starts flashing. Wouldn''t it be a normal procedure to first save the download somewhere to have a fallback option if the connection gets broken?

Has anyone made similar experiences? (I really hope not)

Tobias

Re: Are You Happy With Your Denon Hardware?

Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 10:46 pm
by Wires
I've never had a F/W update problem on mine. I have a AVR-4308 and it's great. The flexibility in the install is amazing.

Only negative point I have is the network audio interface. It's awkward, slow and clunky. I typically just build a playlist, let Twonky spool it up and then just play it. But forget trying to search for a particular artist/song using the Denon interface. Their web GUI is just as painful.

Re: Are You Happy With Your Denon Hardware?

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:53 am
by alero
AVR-4310CI

I bought it mostly for stereo plus to have a theater in the future. Just liked the sound of it with a pair of Paradigms Studios 60 v5. Nice and clean sound for the money if you prefer it on the bright side. It can be very loud without noticeable distortions. Never tried it on full. Too much for me. Again, I just liked the sound and disregarded the hometheaterish reputation . Bonus: MADE IN JAPAN which is quite unusual these days comparing with honorable NADs, Rotels and others from their line.

It has tons of features which I probably will never use. Pairing amp outputs for stereo is nice, so is the networking and 3 zones. The rest are useless for me.

Networking could be done better though. WEB browser-based UI is total crap. I swear, I can write much better myself. , Slow, pedestrian, ugly and buggy. I do not see any reason why it should be so slow serving this kind of primitive HTML pages. Just lame programming.

Browsing servers broke after I installed Twonky server and all my efforts to restore it were just waste of time. Twonky sees the device and pushes the music files but sometimes it looses the receiver. I would blame it on Denon because the device reappears again in Twonky Manager after receiver restart.I hope the problems will be fixed in the firmware upgrade.

Other than that - quality hardware. Software could be done way better.

By the way, Twonky saved Denons butt in my case. At least I can stream audio with occasional problems. I will ask for Twonky license refund from Denon :-)

Re: Are You Happy With Your Denon Hardware?

Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2014 2:09 am
by Murbella7
This has got to be the dumbest question ever. How could anyone NOT be happy with ANY Denon. I have two, the AVC-A1, my original theatre Rx and now the AVR-4311C1. Brilliant, great sound, fantastic control and 11.2 as well.