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★★★★★ 5
Turned me into a Denon fan.
Style: AVR-S770H
I've only ever used Sony components for over 30 years. My latest Sony receiver experienced some problems. When I saw how much it would cost to repair it myself (circuit board swap), I decided to look at what else is on the market. This receiver costs less than the Sony replacement part with S&H. When the box showed up with full-sized, color pictures of the front and back of the receiver, I knew I was going to become a fan. Opened the box and one of the first thing I saw was a sheet of colored cable labels that includes labels for the components that will be plugged into the receiver. Pull the receiver out and see that the ports are color-coded too.
Color-coded ports and labels is something I'm very serious about. I worked for years as a field engineer for a Fortune 100 computer equipment manufacturer. The low-end components started at $100k. For years, I tried - and repeatedly failed - to convince the product design teams to color-code the ports. To find everything I had fought for in a consumer-grade device was a dream come true.
Not satisfied to make the cabling process as easy as paint-by-numbers, Denon embedded a video setup routine in the receiver that walks you through setting up your speakers, running the cables, and plugging in every single cable. The audio calibration process far exceeds what the Sony receivers do. In the box is a microphone with really long cable and a cardboard microphone stand you can easily assemble and disassemble. During the lengthy calibration, you place the microphone in 3 different listener positions - twice - for a total of 6 room readings.
Adding components to each HDMI port was also just as easy and detailed. I have a small 'home theater PC' that it detected and gave me multiple names to assign to the port (Sony port names are fixed). I plugged my Xbox into the Game port and the top name on the list was Xbox.
In no time, my home theater was back to normal - and I haven't even download the user manual to learn how to use the other features or go into the advanced settings.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2024
