AVR-2307CI: Listening Tests, Recommendations

There are a lot of different listening tests that a receiver needs to go though. Rather than try to summarize up front I’m just going to take you through each one. Before that, let’s talk about power. The Denon had no problem pushing my Axiom m60 v2’s (not exactly a hard load). For most people in the market for an $800 receiver, this should be more than adequate. From a sonic standpoint, I’m hearing no real difference between this and my Denon AVR-3805 (no surprise there). For 90% of the users out there, this receiver will have more than enough power reserves.

Movie: Immortel (ad vitam) – Dolby Digital Stereo to Prologic IIx Conversion

When you are setting up your receiver, and you need to view a source to ensure that you’ve got everything hooked up correctly, do yourself a favor and make sure it is playing a movie that you’re familiar with. While I was hooking up the Denon AVR-2307CI for the first time, I grabbed the closest movie to me, Immortel, and stuck it in. It is an odd mix of CGI and human actors all set in a somewhat confusing future. Given all the special effects and the money they must have cost, I assumed they would have a surround track. Not the case. It was only presented in Dolby Digital 2.0. Of course, I thought I had something set wrong on the OPPO DV-970HD or on the Denon setup menu. Eventually, I checked the ‘net and found out it was the disc.

Some stereo sources lend themselves well to surround sound decoding, others don’t. The difference? You’ll keep checking the display of the receiver to make sure that it wasn’t encoded in surround. Immortel, was one of those cases where I would have sworn that the disc was surround. Ships that flew over my shoulder on the screen had their sound effects follow them perfectly. Off-screen talking was well anchored and, when the camera panned to them, moved convincingly in space. For one of the few times in my life, I didn’t feel like I was corrupting the listening experience by forcing a surround mode on a two-channel recording. I really don’t think they could have done much better with a dedicated surround track. It was that good. The movie, on the other hand, kinda stunk – mostly because the CGI was weird and out of place, the story disjointed, and the history and characters either flat or completely missing. Funny though, it wasn’t until the end of the movie that I felt this way. I kept expecting everything to be explained. It wasn’t.

CD: Rives Test CD 2 (Mapleshade Recording) – DSP modes

Honestly, I’m more of a “purity of encoding” kind of guy. If it was encoded in stereo, I listen to it in stereo (well, 2.1 – I let the receiver split off the low frequencies to the sub), if it is recorded in Dolby, I use Dolby (rather than try to force DTS or some DSP). As such, DSPs and me generally don’t spend a lot of quality time together. But for the purposes of this review, I’ll just suck it up and bear through it. I decided that what I needed as a very short, high quality two-channel piece of music that had enough dynamic range and variation to be a good test. Enter the Mapleshade snippets at the end of the Rives Test CD 2. I chose the last track on the CD, Sunny Sumter Nick of Time for a lot of reasons, mostly because it had vocals. At 95 seconds, it was the perfect length so I set it on repeat and went to work. Here are my listening impressions from each of the DSPs offered on the Denon AVR-2307CI:

• 7 Channel Stereo (plays the stereo source in all the speakers – all left speakers get the left channel etc) - This is really a mode for a party where you’re looking for an expansive sound. I’ve found that if you want to impress your friends with your new surround sound system, use this DSP (mostly because the surrounds are much louder than usual). There isn’t much of the way of a soundstage or imaging but there isn’t supposed to be. It is loud thoughout.
• Rock Arena (supposed to recreate the atmosphere of a live concert in an arena) – Apparently “live concerts in an arena” sound like echo chambers. Tons of hold over of each and every note/word. The rear speakers are used to pull the sound around you. I’m not really sure what application I’d recommend this mode for… it just sort of sounds weird.
• Jazz Club (recreates the atmosphere of a live concert in a club with low ceilings, hard walls and the artist just in front of you) – Given the nature of the track, this was really the best choice. When I initially switched from stereo to “Jazz Club” it sounded a bit strange but it took only seconds for it to sound mostly OK. There is still a lot of holdover and echo but it is not nearly as bad. With the right music, this isn’t a bad choice. Test it out with a Jazz or ballad track of your choice and see what you think.
• Mono Movie (takes a mono track and expands it out to 5/7.1 speakers) – I don’t own a mono anything so you’re on your own here.
• Video Game (provides a rich sense of presence for video games) – With the next-generation of consoles (PS3, Xbox 360) sporting digital outs and 5.1 surround, this mode is becoming less and less useful. Even you Wii owners would do better to use Dolby Pro Logic as the Wii is optimized for it. This mode is even more “echo-y” than Rock Arena (didn’t think that was possible) and it softened the sound a little. Thinking back to some of the music in the SNES days, this might not be such a bad thing. When you are playing your legacy games, give it a try. I imagine that it will work really well with some games but not with others.
• Matrix (recreates music sources recording in stereo with an enhanced sense of expansion) –Finally, a good DSP! I didn’t think they existed! This is the first DSP I’ve EVER heard that left the vocals alone and focused on pulling the music around you. And it worked. Very well. Try it. I’m going to be using it a lot from now on.
• Virtual (used to enjoy surround sound with only front speakers or when using headphones) – When using this mode with the Axiom m60 v2’s, I found that the high-end tended to be a bit attenuated and flat. The soundstage took a big step back, and the overall presentation was just a little too muffled and compressed sounding. Through the Denon AH-D1000 headphones, I found that there weren’t as many detrimental effects on the sound. It did sound different than the straight stereo presentation but I don’t think I’d call it “Virtual” anything.

DVD-A: Lowen & Navarro – Carry on Together – Auto EQ Test

To test the Auto EQ’s sound, I decided to grab a high quality recording from AIX Records – Lowen & Navarro Carry on Together. I had heard a lot about AIX but I didn’t know much about their offerings until I picked this up. WOW! Nice high quality DVD-A. I am really impressed. But I really wanted to test out the Auto-EQ on a good quality multi-channel track to see how it performed. Using “Off” as my baseline, I went ahead and flipped the EQ between flat, front, and normal to see how it affected the music playback:

• Flat – Significantly less bass. Presentation a bit more forward and immediate. Other than the bass suckout, this setting seemed to add a little without being detrimental in any way.
• Front – It was really hard to hear a difference between this mode and Off. That probably had to do with the recording of the music. Since the Front Left and Right channels are unmodified by this setting, if the music relies too heavily on them, the difference might be hard to detect. The only thing that I could say definitively is that a) the bass isn’t as reduced as the other settings and b) the surrounds seem a bit muted compared to the other settings.
• Normal – Sounded a little drier than OFF… maybe clearer. Seemed to lack some of the warmth of the OFF presentation. Definitely a little crisper. As with flat, significantly less bass.

Not to steal a catchphrase, but I’m a kind of “set it and forget it” kind of guy. If it were me, I’d copy down the settings from the Flat setting and transfer them as best as possible to the Manual EQ screen (bumping up the bass setting on the lowest frequency) and turn it on for all inputs. But that’s just me.

Recommendations

With a slew of new receivers coming out, it is hard not to think about Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio. But this receiver isn’t really meant to compete with that. Nor does it need to. I know that people are all, “I wouldn’t buy another receiver until it can decode the new formats,” but that doesn’t make any sense. Over HDMI, the player does the decoding, the receiver recognizes it as an uncompressed PCM multi-channel input (as if you hooked up the 8 analogue cables) and that’s it. Why does it need to decode? It doesn’t. Get over it.

The manual is written like they took each of the section names, wrote it on a flash card, threw the whole lot of them up in the air, and organized the manual based on the order they were picked up. Why oh why can’t Denon manuals take you through the setup menu in order? Why must we be redirected to different pages 5 or 6 times when researching one setting? Why?