Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater receivers? Sherwood, Denon, Yamaha?

I am currently running a Denon 3806. Really a pain in the butt receive but with good sound. My father is running a Yamaha (maybe V2600 or something)using the same Axiom speakers. His sounds much better than mine and is much easier to manipulate. I will probably switch to the yamaha but an curious about the Sherwood these good folks are selling. What are the oppinions out there on the Sherwood product versus Yamaha and Denon?

The receiver itself won't sound different unless you have messed with tone or eq controls. All solid state receivers are designed to have a flat frequency response from 20hz-20+khz. Also, the room and speaker placement will make a huge difference in what you hear. I doubt it is your Denon.

Are you using Auddessy? How have you calibrated your system? If so that can be messing up the sound quality of your Axioms as well as if you are using any tone controls. Also your room has an influence on the sound which will contribute to the differences you note between the two systems.

ok sounds right. I set up my fathers room and my room. Now he has the QS8 and the EP350 versus my QS4 and EP175. we both have the W150 and W22. Perhaps I just did a better job setting up the sound settings on the yamaha and the speaker differences are that much better.......

not using Auddessy? dont know anything about it?

Aaron, as the previous replies indicated, the least likely reason for a difference in sound between the sound which you're getting(which you describe as "good sound")and your father's is the receiver. Certainly a Yamaha isn't superior to a Denon(or vice-versa). Consider all other aspects of the setups, not the receivers, except if special sound processing modes are in use with one or the other.

Your Denon should have Audyssey MultEQ XT auto setup where you can take multiple measurements with your microphone from each seat in the room at ear level. I even updated my firmware on my 3808 and now use Audyssey's Dynamic Volume and Dynamic EQ, makes things so much better contrary to some opinions.

Check at AVS - there is a HUGE Audyssey thread there with participation from one of the inventors.

As others have said, the biggest influence in your sound is your room. If everything else is equal (same speakers, properly calibrated, same material) your room will still make it sound different. The trick is to optimize the speaker placement and then calibrate (run Audyssey).

Thanks! Sounds like I have a LOT to learn! I will try Auddessy.

I have always been a big fan of Pioneer's Elite line (good features for a good price), but there have been reports of various issues lately with some functionality, and firmware updates needed to get things working out of the box etc... My next receiver purchase will have me looking very closely at Denon. Of course, they are generally a bit more pricey, so we'll see.