Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Denon 3805?

I just purchased the epic 60 (5.1) home theater. My wife bought me the Denon 3805 receiver for my 30th b-day. My question 1) Is this too much amp for my needs, that is the 3805 is a 7.1 receiver?
2)Can anyone recommend a more suitable receiver for the Epic 60 speakers
Thanks very much, Chris

Dude...

your wife bought you a mid-high end receiver and you're questioning it?

It will be just fine. It will be better than fine. We're all jealous.

Nice receiver...it's what I have with my 60s. Get some flowers for your wife and tell her it's perfect!

Thanks for the response. This is all a little new to me, (I mainly deal with guitar tube amps...most made before 1965!) Should I bi-amp the front channels or not even bother??

It's a great receiver,Keep it! You may want to go 5.1 or 7.1 in the future, if not, beleive me you never want to downgrade. I'll have to show this thread to my wife, mabey I won't get slippers my next B-Day.

Welcome!

No need to bi-amp.

Keep the wife and the receiver!

Thanks....I'll keep both. Anyone have a suggestion as keeping the sub away from a "curious" 9-month old??

I was wondering about the auto settup feature on the 3805. Should I shell out the $65 for the mic or just set it up manually? I just got my 60's in the mail and real anxious to hear them. .....thanks

You don't need the mic if you have an SPL meter.

I bought the mic, used the suto setup and then made corrections with the meter.

Spend the bucks on music or dvds.

The auto setup part sets the delay(distance), levels (dB of each speaker), and checks polarity (makes sure you hooked the wires up right. Distance can be done with a tape measure to the main listening position. Levels can be done with the receiver test tones and SPL meter from Radio Shack, or if your real good, you can do it by ear. I hope you can hook up the speaker wires. As far as the sub, the autosetup does ok, but it would be best to use a meter.

The Room EQ stuff I would leave off.

Which sub do you have? We can help you with the volume on the sub versus receiver, and crossover setting on both, this is important.

What a heck of a wife you have man, mine got me a 2805

I have the EP500 sub. I've reread the 3805 manuel twice already and I think I'm getting more confused. Thanks for all the help

Any time man, just ask away..... The Denon receivers and manuals are hard to follow. Once you figure everything out, you'll like your Denon, I'm still learning.

Hello again.....I'm all hooked up and jammin to the Allman Brothers. Sound is great but the room is completely empty with hardwood floors so I'm pretty sure ounce some furniture and a rug is in it will just get better. Does anyone recommend bypassing the ep-500 crossover in favor of the Denon's?? Eq is off and all speakers are set to "small". Thanks ........Again

Yes. You should pretty much always bypass the crossover in the sub when you're using a modern pre/pro or receiver.

In reply to:

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Does anyone recommend bypassing the ep-500 crossover in favor of the Denon's??

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Yes! Using a subwoofer cord (RCA plug to RCA plug) connect your receivers Pre Out" subwoofer output, to the EP500s "Line In" input; set the EP500's crossover switch to "BYPASS," and set the crossover point in your receiver's speaker set up menu to 80 Hz.

Beat you!

thanks!

Now that is one long animated GIF. I like!

Yep, I've got my sub on bypass, volume at about the 7-8 o'clock position, flat mode, and the receiver set to 80hz crossover, and all speakers set to small right now..

This will most likely sound like a dumb question, but what does setting all the speakers to small do? Are their benefits in this as far as the sound?

Setting a speaker set to small causes all the frequencies below the crossover setting to be routed to the subwoofer instead of to those speakers.

While in a perfect world (with enough time) you might be able to get better sound by leaving the speakers set to Large (all frequencies go to the speakers) and getting the subwoofer crossover set just right, you can get at least 95% of the way there by setting everything to Small and everything is guaranteed to work.

Setting speakers to Large is mostly done either because you are listening to music rather than movies, or because your room has really wierd LF responses and the benefits of having bass come from multiple sources (subwoofer and mains) outweigh the problems.

I just got a 3805 myself and haven't been able to find an answer to this... If the speakers are set to small, does that setting remain in effect when in, for instance, pure direct mode when listening to music?

Thx

Spoiler, I do not have a Denon receiver, but I do own a 2900 player. It also has a Pure Direct Mode, and when it is on it sends full range signal to speakers--no sub. The speaker setting should automatically switch to "large."

Thx St Patguy! That helps... anyone with a 3805 or similar that can verify?

Thx

With my 4802r, the manual says that the surround settings set in direct mode will be the settings used in pure direct.

It also goes on to say that " the crossover frequency setting must be set to 'fixed thx' in the system setup in order to turn off the digital circiut when in the analog input mode in the 'PURE DIRECT" mode".

Fixed thx sets the crossover to 80hz

clear as mud?

By the way happy birthday and congrats on the present

I can't find anything that shows the speakers will revert to large. Since it shuts down all circuitry theres no way to check the settings. But if I go from pure direct to direct my speakers remain on small.

I suppose my question really is.. does the speaker config setting affect the 2 channel modes (Stereo,direct,pure direct), so that even though the speaker setting may remain on small when in stereo mode, the signal may still be full range to the fronts?

Hoping to avoid having to set them to large every time I switch from movies to music!

Stereo and Direct can be set up and saved individually from the 5.1 (DDpl2, DTS,THX) the only two surround settings tied together on my 4802r is Direct and Pure Direct everything else has its own settings. I would assume the 3805 is the same......

I was reading up on this receiver today as Costco had them on sale... long story short, I came across some people who run the receiver in 5.1 instead of 7.1 (various reasons)

They wrote that you can bi-amp the front channels and use the unused amps from the 7.1

Meaning you can hook up the highs to the front left and right and hook up the mids/bass to the unused rear surrond (changing the input/output somehow)

Has anyone heard of this or tried it? From what they wrote you would have your 120watt/channel doubled for the front.

It's mentioned in this post

No. This has been discussed several times on the board. The maximum power that would be available to each section of the speaker is still 120 watts, not 240 watts. The one power supply section is simply sending its power through two output transistor sets, rather than one, so no increase in power(or any other significant advantage)results, and the effort isn't worthwhile.

Thanks Wid.

You're welcome.