Denon AVP-A1HD - Page 6

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of seating, I like to make a compromise for
both and calibrate my levels between the
two rows. Thus I used my SPL meter and
tweaked down the center and surround
channels a bit. Delay settings were pretty
much spot on and I was pleased to see
Audyssey nailed the subwoofer distance
correct for all of my subs. To date, Audyssey
is the only system I’ve found to consistently
do this.
The Denon AVP-A1HDCI has some of
the most comprehensive bass management
facilities I’ve ever seen in a processor. It has
three independent balanced and unbalanced
subwoofer outputs which allows an end
user to connect up to 6 subwoofers in
their system without using a single y-splitter.
The configuration modes include:
• *1SP–assignedtoSW1
• *2SPL/R–stereosplit+LFEtoboth,
assigned to SW1 and SW2
• *2SPMix–monosplit+LFEassigned
to SW1 and SW2
• 3SPL/R/LFE–stereosplittoSW1and
SW2 + LFE only to SW3
• 3SPMix-monosplit+LFEassigned
to SW1 and SW2
* you can also connect a tactile
transducer assigned to SW3 which
outputs only LFE info when using
these configuration modes
I am pleased to see Denon finally offer
a 3SP Mix mode as their previous flagship
receiver – the AVR-5805CI only sent LFE
signal to the third subwoofer which doesn’t
allow the installer to take advantage of all
subs playing the exact same content for
modal averaging. As it stands now, if you use
“3SP L/R/LFE” to achieve stereo bass from
the front SW1 and SW2 subs, the SW3 sub
will be inactive until it receives LFE info
rendering it useless for 2CH stereo sources.
Thus I recommend using “3SP Mix” mode
if you’re running a three subwoofer setup.
In the future, I’d love to see Denon offer a
“3SP L/R/LFE Super” mode that also sends
LFE to the L/R subs while copying the bass
from the main channels to SW3 but that is
wishful thinking for now.
Just like all Audyssey enabled Denon
A/V receivers, the AVP-A1HDCI offers
independent crossover settings per speaker
group from a selectable range of 40-250Hz.
As with all multiple crossover processors,
I recommend not varying each speaker
group more than 20Hz as the bass from
the speaker group set higher than the
subwoofer crossover will not recombine
to the subwoofer channel when listening
to two channel sources in post processing
modes like PLIIx Music or DTS Neo, etc.
The crossovers worked as expected for a
THX Ultra2 certified receiveras indicated
by the 12dB/oct High Pass Filter (HPF)
slopes on speakers set small and 24dB/
oct Low Pass Filter (LPF) slopes on the
subwoofer output which I measured with my
Audio Precision SYS 2722AudioAnalyzer.
Channel trims have .5dB incremental
adjustments and delay settings have .1ft
resolution. This is about the best you can
get and it doesn’t surprise me Denon offers
such a high level of precision here, especially
since their products were some of the first
to incorporate this level of adjustability.
Oddly I had to set the subwoofer outputs
to+7dBforunitygainwithanyofthemain
channels set to 0dB. I am not sure why
this was the case, but as you will see in my
measurements, the AVP-A1HDCI has more
than enough signal drive to compensate if
needed.The AVP-A1HDCI would not allow
me to set the main channels to “small” if
I selected no subwoofer which is how all
processors should function to ensure the
end user doesn’t accidentally lose bass
information from the main channels when
not using a dedicated subwoofer.
Don’t forget to configure to configure
“2CH Direct/Stereo” mode to ensure you
have proper bass management and channel
distances configured, especially since
distance settings for the main L/R speakers
don’t copy over from the global settings yet
oddly the subwoofer distances appear to.
This is perhaps a firmware glitch but not