Home Audio Video Advisor

- Denon AVR-2307CI Home Theater Receiver -
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Top Five Selection

The Denon AVR-2307CI Receiver ($799) is the most affordable receiver on the market, which fully supports HDMI audio not to mention video. If you want to enjoy the uncompressed audio on both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs in most cases your receiver will need to support HDMI audio. This receiver does all the way up to 7.1 without any of the typical LFE issues and lets you apply the auto setup's room EQ to each channel as well as its surround processing technology including Dolby Digital PLIIx.

How does it sound? After doing several A/B tests we decided it sounded right up there with the big boys. With its long list of features and modest cost this receiver will be hard to beat until the next generation comes along with support for HDMI 1.3. Even then this receiver will still be state-of-the-art until the rest of your audio and video chain supports HDMI 1.3.

- Onkyo TX-SR605 -
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Scheduled to be available in May Onkyo's TX-SR605 ($499) AV receiver is a bargain hunter's dream which features the following.

HDMI 1.3a with 2 inputs and 1 output
3 component inputs and 1 output
Audyssey 2EQ room acoustics correction
7.1 Multichannel inputs
TrueHD and HD Master Audio decoding
90 Watts per channel
Sirius and XM HD ports

The exciting news is Onkyo's TX-SR605 decodes all of the new high-definition audio codecs at a great price to boot. Onkyo will be releasing a total of nine AV receivers priced from $299 - $1,999. Including the TX-SR505, TX-SR575, TX-SR605, TX-SR705, TX-SR805, TX-SR875 and the TX-NR905 all scheduled to be released by August. With many of these new models fully supporting the new high-definition players it's probably time to purchase a new AV receiver.

- Yamaha RX-V1700 - AV receiver - 7.1 channel -
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Hands-on Report

      The Yamaha RX-V1700 ($1,199) is a mid-priced AV receiver that offers close to every feature you'll need for great home theater sound. Including plenty of power, HDMI (1080p) switching, HDMI (1.2a) audio processing and YPAO automatic system calibration.

      General Impressions

      If you are looking for a network receiver to play Internet based media as well as your local digital music you might want to step up to the Yamaha RX-V2700 ($1,699). The 2700 also includes 6 memory settings for the YPAO system and it would have been nice if the 1700 offered storage for several different settings. As your only option is to restore to the latest automatic settings that results in losing any manual changes you may have made. Making it very difficult to compare which settings you prefer.

      We auditioned this AV receiver as it was supposed to fully support HDMI audio by supporting up to 7.1 channels, allowing its sound processing to be applied all the way up to Dolby Digital PLIIx, and handle LFE without any issues. With the help of Toshiba's HD-A2 and the Sony PS3 the receiver quickly passed all three tests with ease. Which is rare with most of today's AV receivers as the HD audio formats are still being rolled out and until both the players and AV receivers support HDMI 1.3 many issues will remain.

      Currently players convert the HD audio formats to PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) to enable lossless audio beyond the bandwidth that optical can carry. This requires the AV receiver to accept the PCM audio via HDMI (at times analog) and for the best possible experience apply its sound processing. Such as speaker levels, bass management and surround formats like PLIIx.

     Installation

      Once we were comfortable this receiver could serve our current needs and work well with the next generation of audio formats we turned our attention to how user friendly it is including the remote control and finally how does it sound! Our first impression was the user interface seemed rather simple almost too simple. It appeared to be missing menu after menu of options we are used to seeing with other receivers. Having used the receiver for several months now we haven't found much if anything missing rather we have come to the conclusion that the user interface is simply straight forward and easy to use. As an example there isn't an option to set different LFE levels for HDMI rather it just works.

       Installing the receiver in the theater was a breeze. The seven speakers' wires had plenty of room and Yamaha includes a nifty little tool to tighten the binding nuts that really saves your fingers from getting raw. We did have to use a Y Splitter to connect our two sub woofers since there is only one sub woofer pre-out which is typical. Since we are using the receiver for HDMI switching (two in and one out) and audio one HDMI cable was all it took to connect each source. However we did connect the receiver's component output to the TV installed in our equipment closet so we didn't have to use the projector during the setup process.

      YPAO Automatic System Calibration

      Once we had the receiver installed we used the receiver's test tones to ensure the 7.1 speakers were properly wired and working. Having passed that test we decided to run Yamaha's YPAO before we did any listening even though from past experience the theater's environment doesn't create a lot of challenges.

       The RX-V1700 calibration software only makes once pass unlike Denon and a few other receivers in its price range that allow you to calibrate for multiple seating locations. This was another case where we felt it might be lacking features compared to its competition. However long term we felt the simplest approach probably gave us just as good of a result and certainly reduced our setup time and also reduced the chances of us corrupting the process by greatly lowering the number of steps involved.

       Now we come to our biggest complaint about the RX-V1700. In order to run YPAO you have to select a choice for parametric equalizer level and you are given four options. These are NATURAL (the default), FLAT, FRONT or SKIP. Based on which you select YPAO attempts to "adjust the frequency and the parametric equalizer level of each channel to reduce coloration across channels and create a cohesive sound field" using a different set of criteria. As an example NATURAL attempts to average out the frequency response of all speakers with higher frequencies being less emphasized. FLAT does the same without filtering the higher frequencies and FRONT attempts to adjust the frequency of each speaker to your front speakers.

      Our complaint is not that there is no way in the world to know which to select rather you have to run the entire YPAO process over to try each one and since there isn't any memory to store your previous settings it's very difficult to compare them to determine which you prefer. Now you do have the option to restore your last YPAO settings and this may help some but overall we recommend you spent some serious time comparing the results of each option and finding which you prefer before you go onto setting up the rest of the receiver. Since if you go back later and run YPAO you will be losing most of your manual settings or they may become irrelevant based on the new YPAO results.

      After many listening sessions we decided on FRONT and was somewhat surprised how differently each choice sounded. All of the speakers are the same series Boston Acoustics with the fronts being the best, followed by the surrounds, rear surrounds and center channel each a step down but still of high quality.

      The YPAO process only takes a couple of minutes to run and will perform a few checks first to ensure your speakers are connected properly. It kept reporting incorrectly that the front and center speakers were out of phase. We even swapped wires to verify they were installed correctly and we could clearly hear that they were. Bypassing the check we let it do its magic as we quickly ran out of the room not to interfere.

      Once completed you have the option to view or change its computed settings or store them to memory. We saved the results and then started to dig into the menus to see just what it had figured out. Since we have used this theater with many receivers we are quite familiar with speaker sizes, distances, and required level adjustments. In every case we found the results spot on. As an example typically our right front speaker needs to be increased .5 decibels versus the left front and that's right where it was set. A quick check with our sound meter proved each speaker including our two sub woofers were perfectly leveled.

      Listening Experience

      Now it was time to see just how much we liked this receiver. For starters we left the YPAO settings intact and listened to the opening of Corpse Bride on Blu-ray that we had recently listened to several times on a comparable Denon model. Using the remote we quickly selected Surround Mode PLIIx Movie and the theater came alive with discreet directional sounds encompassing the entire room.

      The lows, mids, and highs were all there and overall we found the receiver very easy to listen to as the dialog stood out and the ambience took over when needed and disappeared when it wasn't. After a few more movies we came to the same conclusion and didn't find any reasons to manually tweak the settings. Although eventually we did boost both the surrounds and rear surrounds by 2 decibels just to wake up the rear of the room a bit. Based purely on our listening preference.

      Final Thoughts

      After a dozen or so movies and several hours of PS3 games we only came up with two changes we would like to see. The display can be dimmed but only turned off when using the Pure Direct mode. We would prefer a setting that turns off the display whenever you aren't accessing the menus. It would also be nice if the volume level display were larger as it is impossible to read from any distance away.

      That's a mighty small and insignificant list of changes. What we liked about the receiver is a whole another story. Pretty much everything. Most importantly it sounds terrific, it's easy to setup outside of our one YPAO issue, and day-to-day it's a pleasure to use. The remote control is as straight forward as its menus and regardless of who used the receiver or what they were trying to adjust they quickly found their way without having the use the owner's manual as a road map.

      Comparing the receiver to its direct competition we have no reservations in recommending it. Currently to our ears that would be the Denon 2807 however if you want to go with Denon we just might recommend the 2307CI. It offers almost every feature both of these AV receivers do for considerably less money. However we were impressed enough with the Yamaha RX-V1700 that it's staying in our theater and we look forward to its next performance.

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