Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Starting to oggle new gear

You have a denon 3700h?

No, we use them in installs.

I have a NAD 777

K cool beans. I need one for myself so was just curious

Ok so i got the Denon 4400H setup today. Ran the Audyssey. It did its thing but i was left wanting for the app to actually see the room response and correction. Bit the bullet, paid the dough and luckily it worked perfectly slick, no issues.
I'll post some images later. Might download that app Trev recommended to verify the room frequency response against the Denon graphs. Another small cost but i think worth doing for the verification.

Unsure about a one thing though it does mention something about this in the manual; it sets the sub distance at 21 feet when really it is at 11 feet. I'll have to read again what it says. What i'm not sure is if i can change the sub distances without the Audyssey profile coming off of use. I think i can manually change distances in the app though and then re-upload the profile.

I guess i'll also have to manually verify the individual channel corrections. So far i can't see anything about phase in the options. I know these things in the past sometimes put speakers out of phase but if a person can't change that manually then...eeech.

A few other notes about the Denon:

1. Do NOT like the remote. Seems like i'm hunting to find things. It's not intuitive.
2. Do NOT like their setup for switching sound DSPs or trying to set a default for an input. It is convoluted.
3. There were more options in how to change 'sound' in my old Onkyo than there is in this new Denon. I was expecting a variety of tweaks. For example, the Onk has a feature to widen the soundstage simply by shifting more of the centre channel sound to the left and right speakers in small increments. It really helped to lessen the hole without having to buy a larger centre channel. There's nothing like that in this Denon. The menu overall is really quite simplistic allowing you to setup the basics (rename the input channel names, what's your TV size, use the Denon video tweaks or turn them off, etc.)
4. I had the Denon turned up to 60 (out of 98 scale) to get 'normal' listening levels. I had to crank it up to 80 to get a more movie experience. That's nuts. The Onkyo on the same scale (0-100) hits ear bleed levels at 70 and has movie SPL around 60-65 with typical listening around 50 (spouse turns it down to 46-48 usually). What the hell is up with the Denon? I expected some difference in signal to output ratios but not that much.
5. I will have to play around with this BUT, i swear after i ran the HDMI from the satellite through the Denon (previously it was hooked up directly to the LG OLED with only an optical cable for sound heading back to the Onkyo), that the picture looks alot more washed out. I checked the Denon settings and turned off any of their video processing so that's not it. I'll double check this later by putting the hdmi back directly to the TV and see if there is a picture quality difference. I will be seriously annoyed if this is the case.

On sub distance- It is actually setting a relative time delay on the rest of your speakers to account for the subwoofer latency. Think of the subwoofer distance as a time weighting and not literal distance.

So, at 10ft added it is adding about 9ms advancement to your subwoofer (relative to the mains.)


1134ft/s / 1000ms/s= 1.134ft/ms


So 10’ = 8.818ms advancement relative to mains

First update firmware if not done already.

In the menu, if you enable Dolby Surround to process legacy material (absolutely good idea) you should be able to enable “center spread”. This will accomplish what you are looking to replicate from your Onkyo.

You can also set per input db offsets if you have some devices quieter than others. This will allow you to use the same volume as you switch inputs without wildly fluctuating output.

On the video side, go into your Bell box menu and ensure the video and audio output formats are set correctly. They always come kneecapped at lower settings (imo to save bandwidth on their side without most people knowing. ) Check to make sure the color space is not adjusted in your Denon by selecting bypass in the setup menu.

App I use is called AudioTools by Studio 6 Digital. Top 2 plugins included. Rest are adders. Transfer function very helpful as well, but involved to learn and $75 when I purchased it.

Yes as mentioned it said something about the distance setting that i was going to read more closely today (had to drive a family member home from the hospital at 1am last night so it's been a distracted week).

On that note about subwoofer distance, i would have assumed that as an end user, home consumer, you would set the sub distance to its actual distance from the listening position and that the AVR would account for the time delay based on differences in sound frequencies from other speakers. The fact that the Audyssey sets the sub distance at 21 feet when it is actually 11 feet is confusing. So the big and obvious question any sane person would ask:
Is Audyssey correct?
Because if so, every home user who sets this up themselves would never know. There are no 'conversion' tables in the manual to say "if your sub is at 11 feet, set it in the AVR at 21..."

Yep. First thing i did was comb through the menu, looked for wifi and updated firmware. All went well. No issues. Been building computers for 20 years. That kind of thing today is a given. In fact, when i got the used Emotiva UMC200 for the main floor, i was having problems with the video switching. I was told that it was updated to the latest firmware but that was only partly true. There is a newer 'beta but stable' version that was posted for people having any issues. It was released 2018 so i figured it was likely due to the newer HDCP 2.2 and newer tvs mucking with the protocol handshake. I updated both the Sony X900 and the Emotiva with this firmware (and the Emo update was tricky). After that, all was well with video switching and the Sony.

So the menu is one of those things then that you have to be set on an input and a DSP type before the options will show up in the menu. So nice of them to tell you that. I was likely on a default DSP like 'stereo' at the time and hence there may not have been the options you mention. I'll take a look at that again today.

I did see that and i probably will use that. There is a SPL bump when i use the Roku which on the Onkyo settings, i had to turn it down from say 55 to 50 whereas the Bellsat PVR needs to be at 55 for relatively similar SPL.


I haven't been in the Bellsat menu for quite some time and the PVR is an older model. Bell only sells their 4k PVR in Ontario that i know of. Why i can't say. Either way i will check anything in the PVR but prior to using the Denon, the picture was fine.

I did turn off ANY video picture processing in the Denon but that's why i was uncertain if something was still going on with the picture. What i'll do today is run a movie through the PVR, watch it through the Denon for a minute, back up the movie 1 min, switch the HDMI out of the AVR into the Tv directly and watch that same 1 min clip again to check for video quality consistency.

I was looking at this again yesterday. One issue, it is iOS only. I have a Pixel. I would have to use the wife or kids phone for it. Not a deal breaker, but not handy either.
Second, i was going to ask what modules i would need to do a room frequency sweep. They are not perfectly clear on their website about what modules together would do this. You need the tone generation, make the sweep and record the results. I know that they a real time analyzer in the base module but that doesn't record the room sweep results and i would need to run my own content for it. I do actually have some test tones from an old cd that Alan Lofft was involved in producing.
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Audio-Test-CD/release/9065715

Are the modules below the ones you would need Trevor for undertaking the room frequency check?
I would love to compare the room with Audyssey on and off.
Note that i haven't had time to read through all the module descriptions yet but i think most of the items i need might be in the base software (tone generator, recorder, RTA)


One other question i had for which Denon had an ambiguous answer. If you use the Audyssey correction and then want to make a change, let's say for kicks you want to change the Left speaker distance from 10 feet to 10.5. My understanding or confusion is that the settings might now become the 'user custom' and the Audyssey corrections are not maintained.
Can anyone confirm?
I'm also going to check with the app today too. You definitely can make changes to the smoothing curve and a few other things after running the Audyssey correction. It lists the speaker types (large, small, etc.) and distances but i'm not sure you can change them. Again i'll have to take a second look. At 10pm last night it was getting late to take on too many more tinkerings.
I'll also post some images of the room correction results today and we'll see about the Audiotools app for verification.

Actually at a quick glance it looks like i would need the LARSA module unless Trevor, you know how to do a frequency room response sweep without it.
https://studiosixdigital.com/audiot...lysis-modules/larsaloudspeaker-and-room/

And it comes as a stand alone application, the main Audiotools is not required.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/larsa-analyzer/id943103573

No, on the Denon after you run audyssey all of the remaining settings remain in place even if you go adjust the distance on one speaker or many. When audyssey runs you can set up two different presets but you can always adjust the readings as you see fit. I ran audyssey only using 3 positions for preset 1 and all positions for preset 2. I am experimenting between the two presets to see if audyssey is more or less accurate using the different numbers of positions. Now that I have my M5s hooked up and the listening position adjusted I need to re-run my audyssey settings but I will still run it twice using the different number of positions.