Denon AVR-X3100W
Reason for purchase:
It is replacing a Marantz SR5004 I had purchased about 2 years ago that met its demise at the hands of a 2 year old with a cup of ice. I enjoyed the SR5004 sound but it lacked enough HDMI inputs at that time.
Other product demo'd:
I had tried the Panasonic SC-81 at the urging of a big box chain store and returned it dissatisfied with the sound output. It could have been me not able to set up the speaker output properly. The iphone App for it was pretty cool though, but again I am more interested in driving my speakers.
Setup:
Setup of the Denon AVR-X3100W was pretty straight forward. The Audyssey wizard was pretty much akin to the Audyssey wizard on the Marantz. You move the microphone around to 8 different locations. The included "tripod" was a very nice touch. I plan to tweak from this initial setup point.
I signed into my Pandora and SiriusXM accounts so far (using the iphone app) and they work as...
I love this new unit which has lots of upgrades
This is my second Denon. I had to replace my original 3310 after shorting it trying to connect some wireless speakers (note turn off power before plugging things in, I dropped a metal banana plug across two outputs). The 4 star rating is for Denon service, as others noted they are freakin slow. After three months in the shop, the owner finally decided to credit my repair bill towards a replacement as he was tired of dealing with them (authorized repair center). He suggested this unit as similar to what I had. I love this new unit which has lots of upgrades: wifi, BT, built-in apps, and analog to digital zone 2 (big plus for me, as I previously had to run analog and digital from every source). Set up is simple with the Audessy self leveling. We have whole house and outdoor speakers, so the new 'all zone stereo', selections turns on both zones, single sources, and sets everything to stereo, simplifying getting the whole house into party mode. I haven't tried the Bluetooth, but...
Loving it!
This was easy to set up with the instructions. We were a little disappointed with the sound at first (previously owned a Bose system that isn't compatible) but after adding a subwoofer it sounds fantastic and this might be personal taste. It has an Audyssey setup that will calibrate your speakers and subwoofer that is easy and really makes a difference. You can select different sound modes to suite the type of music or your personal preferences. I'm only giving 4 stars for right now because I haven't set up Spotify or the other features yet but I fully expect to change that because of how great everything else has been.
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