Secrets Benchmark Product Review
 

Denon AVR-4806 7.1 A/V Receiver

Part III

December, 2005

John E. Johnson, Jr.

 

Features

This receiver has everything, so could I just leave it at that? It would sure save me a lot of space because the paragraph containing a list of missing features would be very short. No?

OK then, let's begin with the codecs. The AVR-4806 will decode DD, DD-EX, DPL-IIx, DTS, DTS-ES, DTS Neo:6, DTS 96/24, and HDCD. It also had Dolby Headphone.

It is THX Ultra2-Certified, so it will process THX Ultra2 7.1 Cinema, Music, and Game Modes.

Auto-Setup for the 4806 employs the Audyssey MultEQ XT program (developed by Audyssey www.audyssey.com) . To activate it, place the microphone in your listening position, plug it into the microphone jack, press the Setup button on the front panel, select Auto Setup, and select Start. The receiver then generates test tones in each channel around the room. Part of this process is to detect which channels have speakers. Of course, you want to have the room quiet during the process. No phone calls, no dogs barking. The process takes a few minutes. Once it is done, you can either select Calculate from the menu, which uses the data to set the speaker EQ, distance (delay), and volume, or select Next, which will let you add more listening positions to the overall EQ (move the microphone to the second position before pressing Next). You can have eight measurements from different spots to end up with the best compromise for all your listening positions. You can also just leave the microphone in the main listening position and have the Denon perform its calculations on several repeat measurements for better accuracy.

Once it is all done, you will be in for a surprise. I sure was surprised anyway. The sound was much smoother and had a terrific surround feeling. The EQ for each channel is adjusted with nine bands. This doesn't provide a perfect room and speaker response, but wow, it was really a big difference . . . and for the better. You can choose to have the Audyssey EQ data or turn it off for comparison, by pressing the Room EQ button on the front panel. This cycles through several options: Audyssey, Front (adjusts the response of all the speakers to the front left and right speakers), Flat (makes all the speakers have a flat response, but does not use all the other compensation features of the Audyssey program), and Manual (selects the values that you provide manually in the Manual EQ Setup procedure). The Audyssey process worked so well, I just left it there. You have to hear this function for yourself to believe what it can do. Several Denon receivers have it.

You really need the On-Screen Display (OSD) for the setup, as there are so many options, they just don't fit on the LCD front panel display. However, if you don't mind not seeing the details, or you just don't like dealing with a lot of data, you can still set the system up by just using the basic menu options on the panel. The OSD will show you the speaker layout that is detected by Auto-Setup for example.

The FM/AM tuner is very sophisticated. You can Auto Tune, which then gives you a list of all the channels that are in your area, or you can program the tuner by Program Type (PTY) such as News, Sports, Talk, Rock, Jazz, Classical, Weather, etc. Traffic Program identifies stations that carry traffic announcements.

The remote control is the only thing I had an issue with for this receiver. It has numerous very useful menus, but the thing is just too hard for me to read. The "buttons" are all soft, being identified by backlit text on a soft pressure pad. The illumination, although adjustable, is not easy to see in daylight. At night, sure, the buttons stand out, but I had a lot of difficulty with it during the day. A different universal remote would be the answer here. I don't mind recharging the batteries more often, I just want to see what I am doing, with a nice bright remote display.

The diagram of the remote control, shown above, illustrates that it is very powerful, notwithstanding the difficulty in reading it with bright room lighting on. To use it with the AVR-4806, you press the AMP button at the top left. Then, all the functions shown on the several menu screens apply to the 4806, as opposed to any other component you wish to control.

The 4806 has controls for Zone 2 and Zone 3. You can use pre-outs to drive power amplifiers in other rooms, and also assign some of the built-in power amplifiers to those zones. However, that would mean taking amplifiers away from the main receiver, meaning you would have to be satisfied with 5.1 instead of 7.1. Ever since I first starting using 7.1, even though the two additional channels are synthesized for all stereo and 5.1 sources, I have felt that 7.1 is beneficial to the surround sound experience. So, if I were to have Zones 2 and 3 active, I would just purchase an inexpensive low-powered stereo amplifier (50 watts per channel would be fine) for those zones, especially since those zones would mostly be used for background music during parties.

Click Here to Go to Part IV.

© Copyright 2005 Secrets of Home Theater & High Fidelity

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