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(More customer reviews)History, I was using an old Kenwood for the last 15 years, Dolby pro Logic, it was running with 120 watts per channel. I know wattage isn't everything, but for us non audio experts its a good point of reference. I will do my best to be short, there is a lot to say about a system like this.
The is a wonderful sounding system and is certainly over kill for almost everyone, and if not, your probably hooking up external amps to it and making it over kill. It has more wattage then what I can use, on the volume scale -80 to +18, I'm running -50 to about -30 most of the time. The system is probably meant for much larger rooms then what I have it installed in, 16x20, but even in this room size it sounds fantastic, partly do to the Audyessy System I would think.
I currently have it set up for 9.1, I had most of the speakers on hand from the Kenwood 5.1 system, and oddly enough the speakers sound better then they ever did on the old Kenwood. The old speakers don't sound nearly so muffled, I have more highs and lows, then what the Kenwood was giving it, I place the differences squarely on the Kenwood Decoders and not the amp portion itself, the modern decoders make a huge difference.
The system does not work out of the box, but you don't need to be a professional at all to set the system up. You must however run the auto setup, you need to have it plugged into the TV and then plugging in the supplied Mic to get the system to work. Don't worry about getting it right, I myself had to move a few speakers around, Just unplug the Mic and plug it back in to restart the auto setup. The speaker wiring Diagrams are a little confusing at 1st, 5.1 was pretty straight forward but why anyone would buy a system like this for 5.1 should just buy any number of systems that are 5.1 and vastly cheaper, or even a 7.1. Wiring up 9.1 was confusing for the back surrounds and sides. Lucky I bought a cheap set of banana plugs when wiring it up, made swapping the speaker to the correct ports so much easier.
The user interface is meant to be entirely driven from the TV. While you can do some things from the front screen, it is almost useless for displaying anything but what is currently selected / or being played. Which didn't sit to well with me, do to using a projector as my TV (half of the time I just listen to music, and need to turn the TV on to navigate to my online music, and then turn it back off).
The Webview or http:// view is poorly thought out and implemented its almost useless for anything but volume control, which you might as well use the remote control for. Your better off using the TV. My old Linksys router from the 90's or even my old gen 1 Tivo has more CPU power then the web interface, it has a hard time displaying anything of value, that the front panel can't display just as well.
I do find the user interface somewhat frustrating at times, if playing online music it will sometimes lockup, and the only thing you can do it turn it off. Occasionally it will work and start playing music, and then stop playing music saying that it is authenticating or its download is sitting at 0% in which case it is just locked up, as I still have internet on the computer just fine, thus needing to turn it off and back on again. Seems odd to have such a clunky user interface on a product that cost so much you would think they would have shelled out $6-9 and gotten a PowerPC chip to run the user interface and then debugged/tested it correctly. Keep in mind the other modes(TV, B-Ray, DVD, CD's) work just fine, its just the network portion of the unit that is jacked up, even the on screen TV user interface works fine for the most part, but anything on the network subsystem is buggy.
Windows Media player plays just fine through it, but would have like to have some drivers for windows 7 itself to see the system as multi-channel speaks or something and play music or PowerDVD movies out of the computer into it as i don't normally use media player, as I have a computer system hooked up to the projector as well, which typically doesn't not piggy back audio onto the HDMI cable having sound come from a different subsystem entirely.
Bottom line, Sounds great, Runs great, works great, which is the intent of an AVR, has all the decoders I could think of or want, and is super loud. The user interface it just a minor pain in my side, which is why I focused on that area.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Denon AVR-4311CI 9.2 Channel Network Multi-Room Home Theater Receiver with HDMI 1.4a
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