I have my new receiver (Denon 3805) all hooked up and speakers calibrated. This is my first real A/V receiver. My old receiver was a Yamaha Home theater in a box receiver not sure of the model. There are not many setting/buttons on the Yamaha besides volume, bass, and treble.

At first I felt overwhelmed with the new Denon. I read the manual couple times and i have learn a little about it. But at this moment I don't think I am using it to it's full potential or using it correctly. In perticular the various listen modes direct, pure direct, stanrd 5 ch/7ch and so on. I know it is probably a matter of personal choice but what would be the best setting for listening to music, watching tv, watching dvd? Is there an auto select mode?
What I need is help using this new receiver to it's full potential.
Please help out a technically defecient axiomite.
Any suggestions would be kindly appreciated.

The best mode for watching movies and TV? Well thats pretty easy, Dolby Digital or DTS for DVD's and TV. As far as music goes, you have to play around a little but stereo mode, Pro Logic Music, and so on is what alot of people use.

Clarence, as you might guess, this could be a fairly long story, but I'll summarize. When you're playing a 5.1 DVD use DD or DTS, whichever the disc has. When you're playing 2-channel material(e.g. CDs, FM, TV)don't use any direct, pure or 5 channel stereo mode. If your setup is 5.1 use DPLII to extract surround ambience sound contained within the 2 channels(in varying degrees)and steer it to the surrounds where it belongs. Experiment with the center width and dimension adjustments available with DPLII to try to improve the effect.

I have not found a single "best" setting for listening to music. As others have said, choosing the right mode for DVDs is pretty straightforward and the receiver will usually figure out what to do as long as it knows how many speakers you have.

Music is a different story because you are normally starting with stereo content and choosing from a bunch of different modes which use different techniques to simulate multiple channel audio. Sometimes Dolby Pro Logic II sounds best, sometimes Neo6, sometimes Logic 7 (a Harman Kardon proprietary mode) and sometimes I switch everything off and listen in stereo.

Just learn how to play with the buttons a bit and enjoy. As long as you know how to listen to DVDs in "Dolby Digital" 5.1 (or 6.1 if the disk is encoded that way) you aren't missing out on much.

Thanks John's,

Time to play with the new receiver and learn. I am going to try to figure out if I am watching DVD in DD 5.1

One minor point to remember... the DVD / player combo is part of the equation, in the sense that it decides whether to play a 5.1 soundtrack or something else. With the latest DVDs everything seems to default to Dolby Digital 5.1 but remember that not all DVDs will do that.

re: Dolby Digital vs. DTS -- I think most of us here play the DTS soundtrack if it is available (again, you have to pick this via the DVD menu not the receiver menu) but I doubt any of us have had time to really compare the two soundtracks and see if there is a difference.

Interesting observations :

- a disproportionate percentage of Axiom owners seem to work in the IT sector. Is this meaningful, or is this a natural outcome of having everything we purchase in NA manufactured in China ?

- my other hobby (when I have time) is IPSC (handgun combat simulation) shooting, and again there seems to be a disproportionate percentage of software engineers, IT folks, real estate agents and lawyers. I think this is because of the massive paperwork you need to legally own a handgun in Canada, but again it's an interesting data point.

I agree with eveyone so far, except one thing JohnK mentioned. I disagree with him on playing CD's and/or FM tuner signals. For those options, all I do use is either direct or pure direct modes. The sound to my ears is much better than standard stereo modes. Even the manual states the sound will improve as you progress from CD to Direct to Pure Direct. With these options any internal circuitry not needed is shut down to help give you the most pure output. For me the sound is much improved, but that is just me.

I agree with you Sirclyde about the Denon's, there is so many options it is crazy. For DVD's that have both DD and DTS, I usually try testing both to see what I like best. For the most part, they seem very similar. I believe the DTS signals are decoded at a higher bitrate, but to my ears it is not a huge improvement.

I do agree with John on the PLIIx option. For 7.1 this feature is pretty cool as you get an even more enveloped sound from your rear channels. The problem is figuring out how to get it working. The other night I just happened to hit the right combination of buttons, and the display said Dolby Digitial plus PLIIx.

The other built in DSP things like Widescreen, Jazz Club, etc... have not proven to me yet to be beneficial.

good luck.

Randy

Depends on the speakers IMHO. I Personally dislike the PLII setup. I find that it takes something from the sweetness of the M80. My preferred setup for listening to Music is Stereo/Direct (very little difference). This way I can listen to the M80's doing what they do best. I feel that the PLII lacks the stereo imaging and lacks the sweetness of the M80's playing alone.

Another Personal choice in HT.

Ever tried DTS:Neo6? I think the same thing about DPLII, but Neo6 works pretty nicely.

I have yet to get Neo6 to work -any advice?
I can manually select it, but I'll get no sound...