Hi,

I just bought the epic 80-500-180 (7.1 system). Tried to hook it up with the 4311ci denon last night. For BR player, I am using Oppo Bdp-93.

I am struggling with the set up a little bit.. tried Audyssey setup and it seems to be ok but the sounds are not very loud. I ran a few hrs of music to break in the audio, tested out a movie but i need to crank up my receiver to 90% of its volume to get to hear the dialog clearly.. I think the BR player is restricting the audio going to the receiver somehow (i am currently using hdmi cable to get audio from BR player to receiver). Plus maybe i am not setting up my receiver correctly.

When i am listening to music, it seems much better with the volume issue (ie. don't need to crank it up to 90% of the volume to get good volume).

Appreciate if any users have similar set up can provide some tips/guidances... Thanks!!

hhp

I'll wait and see what others will post who may own an AVR-4xxx series receiver. But, that the speakers are capable of ear-splitting volume (I have most of them) with perfect clarity. I know I had to change my Blu-ray player settings by turning off compression and making sure it was PCM (my AVR-2807 won't decode Blu-ray HD audio). Make sure the room is very very quiet for Audyssey as well.

Try disabling audyssey, does it make a difference?

Hh, my immediate reaction is that if the main problem is dialog clarity in movies and there's no problem with music, you should check the VP180 carefully to make sure all drivers are operating. You might even disconnect the other speakers(keeping all settings the same)and listen to the center alone.

A correctly calibrated setup would be too loud at 0 for most listeners during movies. If you mean something like +10 on the 4311 volume control is needed, then yes, something's wrong.

I have a 4311CI and M80s, EP500, QS4 and VP150, and a couple of Polks to take me to 7.2. I have no problems at all. Movies and Music play great. I do however use a HTPC exclusively, I don't have a Bluray player connected to the home theatre at all.

I've only had the 4311 for a couple months now, so I'm not terribly familiar with it. It sounds like you may have dynamic volume enabled. If you do, disable it - it is evil. Dynamic EQ is great, but not the volume. Try that first. There is also a setting for reference offset, but I don't really know what the hell that does.

On your Opppo, make sure you have HDMI and bit-stream selected. Make sure you have the Ohm setting in the 4311 set to 8, not 6 or 4 as logic would suggest.

in my experience, "offset" is used to make the different inputs play at nearly the same volume level.
Ex.: using my Oppo, the offset is not changed and stays at level 0;
using my sat receiver, i use an offset of +4dB so most TV channels and the music channels play well at Reference level.
when i switch from one source to another, volume level is nearly the same.