Denon AVP-A1HD Product Review page 4

Denon AVP-A1HDCI Surround Sound Processor and POA-A1HDCI Power Amplifier - Page 4
amp, you connect the outputs of one module
to the tweeter and the other module to the
woofer (don't forget to remove any speaker
jumpers that connect the tweeter and woofer
on the back of the speaker). For bridging, you
use the + speaker terminal from each module
to connect to the speaker binding posts. The
front of the amplifier has three meters that
you can set to read the output of any of the
channels. They read in dB, -60 to +6, with 0
dB being full output.
You can see two control links at the bottom
of the panel, and there is a cable supplied that
lets you connect the SSP to the amplifier so
that the SSP will turn on the amplifier when
you power on the SSP.
So, you may wonder why there are ten
amplifier modules. Here is how it works. If
you have a 5.1 system, you bridge each pair,
giving you five bridged amplifier channels,
300 watts into 8 ohms each. If you have a
7.1 system, you bridge three pairs to drive
the front left, center, and front right, and
there are four single module amplifiers left to
power the side left, side right, rear left, and
rear right. If you have a 9.1 system, you bridge
one pair for the center channel (that is where
most of the movie sound track energy goes),
leaving eight individual amplifier modules
for the rest of the system (front left, front
right, side A left, side A right, side B left, side
B right, rear left, and rear right. So, basically,
you are not going to waste any amplifier
channel with the POA-A1HDCI. It has the
most flexibility of any power amplifier I have
ever tested.
There are two remote controls. One has setup
features on it, and the other one, which is
somewhat smaller, has the day-to-day user
features on it. The larger remote is backlit.
The volume control for all channels is
available on the smaller remote by pressing
the "Enter" button. All channels can be
scrolled through and adjusted up or down.
I consider this very important because I like
to change the center or rear channel volume
from time to time depending on the music or
movie. Or as another example, if I move one
chair over to the side, I need to readjust the
front left/right channel relative volume. Such
ease of individual channel volume control
has been missing from remotes for a long,
long time.
"I have to say that I love the changes
that Audyssey made. It all sounded
so much more natural. This is really
a terrific feature. "
In use
I had several Denon players on hand which
I used for the review, including the DVD-
2500BTCI Blu-ray player that we recently
reviewed, and a DVD-2930CI which is an SD
DVD player with a Denon Link connection
to feed the SSP SACD DSD bitstreams.
Speakers were Paradigm Reference, Final
Sound ESLs, and four Velodyne 18"
subwoofers. Cables were Nordost. When I
ran the Audyssey setup, I recorded the final
settings so that I could experiment with
manual changes to the speakers (loudness,
crossover, etc.) and be able to go back and
put in the original settings.
Below is a sample of the music and movies I
enjoyed with the Denon system. I configured
the amplifier as 7.1, and the SSP delivered
audio to the seven channels, plus three
discrete subwoofers (for the total of all ten
channels on the SSP). I had four Velodyne
18" subwoofers for this purpose (two of them
were connected to the LFE output, and the
other two served as left and right subwoofer
channels). I listened almost exclusively to
SACDs and watched Blu-ray movies as they
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came in for review. They had either Dolby
TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, or 48
kHz PCM soundtracks. Note that standard
CDs can be played through the HDMI
connection along with SACDs and movies.
So, you don't really need analog cables at
all with HDMI sources. In fact, that is the
whole idea. Go Digital!
I must say that I have never had so much
enjoyment from a surround sound system.
Although I listened to my SACDs mostly in
the Direct mode, I did occasionally change
over to a mode where Audyssey EQ was in
the path. Perhaps a little bit of accuracy was
sacrificed by going through the additional
processing, but the improvement in overall
natural tonality was worth it. At the end,
I was playing SACDs with Audyssey. It is
addicting.
Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio
movie soundtracks are a big, big jump from
"old fashioned" DD 5.1. There is an obvious
fidelity improvement that can be heard even
in human voices, and the surround channels
sound much more detailed.
Overall, the sound was very clear, detailed,
without midrange mushiness (congestion)
or other noticeable distortion, and I never
had to turn the volume up anywhere close
to 0 dB. With two-channel music, played
in stereo (rather than processed with DTS
Neo:6 for example), the sound stage was
distinct, with instruments clearly placed.
With multi-channel music, the discussion of
sound stage becomes more difficult because
there are so many speakers, but, it always
sounded glorious, especially with SACD.
I connected the SSP to the Internet using a
CAT-6 cable rather than using the wireless
capability. When I tried the wireless setup,
I was shown a list of six local networks,
as SSID-1, SSID-2, etc. Normally, on a
computer, the network names are displayed,
such as SMITH-OFFICE, so you can easily
determine which one is yours. On the SSP,
the network names are not displayed, so you
have to guess which one might be yours.
If you have a large WEP password, such as
I do, it takes a long time to scroll through
all the capital letters, lower case letters, and
numbers, one at a time to input the complete
password. So, it was the hard wire network
connection for me, and as soon as I plugged
in the CAT-6 cable, the SSP made the proper
connections and I was on line. I listened to
some Internet Radio stations, but the sound