Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Denon 3805 out 4806 in.

I’m assuming you’re a game player seeing how you have both 360 and PS3?

Resistance, Fall of Man for the PS3 is supposedly a discrete 7.1 channel game. This game would appear to be the staple test game for these new HDMI receivers at AVS.

I bought the game just for testing and have to admit it’s pretty cool. I’ve tried playing it a few times and quickly get dispatched by monsters in the opening battle, but my 13 year old gaming Jedi master son gives this game his ‘expert’ coolness approval. It is pretty cool watching the little fart kill monsters on an eight foot 1080P screen at about 90 db’s.

…..but anyway, my receiver will not do a dam thing audio wise with this game but play it in 5.1 M-Channel PCM. It will not even matrix the game to 7.1. I’ve heard that if the receiver processes this correctly, the display will show 7.1 M-channel PCM.

Two other good ‘test’ dvd’s are Decent and Crank on Blue Ray. They are both discrete L-PCM 6.1.


The only down side to Lossless sound is standard dvd’s sound like crap now. Between the sound and video, I’m a hopeless HD addict.

What kind of amp do you have? Sounds like a shame to me as I still think that a good stand alone power amp is more efficient then the amps in most receivers.

Very interesting, Michael. Yes, the majority of Audyssey users seem to be quite satisfied with the results. The Denon material indicates that you can use up to eight measurement locations on the 48s and 43s(six on the 38s and 28s), so you have plenty of room for experimenting further, if you want to. Enjoy.

Mike, I've got Resitance and Crank, initial setup I'm only getting 5.1 PCM through both and no DTS at this point through PCM, although I am able to get all 7 channels going. I'm at about page 30 of 150 in the manual so hopefully I'll figure out if it's just limited to DD and THX through PCM or if I can set it up for DTS 6.1. Another thing that's different is in the past I've always kept the room EQ off, but the 4806 has an Audyssey mode and so far it sounds pretty darn good with it on. I figure its going to be another week before I get this receiver figured out.

Lorenzo, I'm using a Aragon 2005, 5 channels at 200wpc, I believe the 4806 has amplifiers for each channel and at 140 wpc with the 80's I would be losing about 90 wpc, probably not significant unless I crank it to Randy's levels

John, Thanks, What I really found that was amazing to me about the Audyssey, is that I can sit at the far left or right in the room with the Qs8's literally next to my ears and I still feel like I'm sitting in the middle of the room. The setup also uses a pretty cool test tone when it's analyzing the room, it almost sounds like it's using sonar to bounce off the walls.

HomeDad, With regards to the onboard amps of the Denon 4806, the rating of 140 wpc is at 8 ohm. Have you been able to find any information as to what the output is at 4 ohm for the M80's? If you run the Denon on "Pure Direct" where all auxillary circuits are shut down in order to direct more power to the two front channels, what is the calculated/estimated output at that point? I have not been able to find information on this as of yet, but I would think it could be approaching 200 wpc.

Bud, by normal calculations I think the ratings for the 80's at 4ohms on the 4806 should be 210 wpc. I'm not positive about this, but I have all the speakers going through the receiver now and it plays plenty loud.

When I originally bought this reciever, I thought I would use it as a pre-pro and use external amps eventually. It has been several years now and I still am using the reciever only and am content with the results. There just doesn't seem to be a lot going on with most recordings in the rear speakers of surround to warrant a huge amount of power to drive them, at least in my experience.

If it helps, when I bought my reciever, Kal Rubinson was reviewing the 4806 in Stereophile magazine and he had some useful insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the unit. This is one article http://stereophile.com/musicintheround/306mitr/index.html I know there is an earlier article, but I can't remember the month. This was the better article of the two.
Towards the end of the article, Kal compares the onboard amps of the Denon with his Bryston 9B-ST amp in a positive light

Another article by Kal Rubinson re: Denon 4806 http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/106mitr/

This article was done before the Audyssey firmware update was implemented.

Bud, thanks for the articles, I was using my amp to drive everything but the rear surrounds, at this point I have the 4806 driving everything and it sounds great, I'm kinda leaning in the direction that with a receiver of this quality an amp is not really neccessary other than to give a small amound of extra power and save some wear on the Denon's amps.
I'm very happy with the way the Audyssey is performing, so I'm not really keen on pulling out the receiver and doing an upgrade that I may have a potential problems with.
Are you using the Audyssey room EQ function or any of the other room EQ functions?

You may have to install some new firmware to get the 7 channel PCM to work. I read that at AVS when I was all fired up to buy the 4806.

My favorite EQ setting is in the Audysey mode. I wasn’t all that impressed with flat or front. But man I can sure tell a difference when I turn it off. It’s quite amazing to me what a little bump here and there with an EQ do.