Veganfloyd
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Trigger warning: this thread will be full of my subjective impressions. I would like to understand why I am hearing what I think I am hearing, if there are any solutions to make Denon AVR-X3800H work for me, and if my listening experience can be reconciled with the ASR's test results.
I hear large differences in the bass response of my front speakers (Dali Mentor 6) driven by Hypex NCore NC502MP (Nord Acoustics) between the Denons AVR-X3600H and X3800H. I find the 'sound signature' of X3600H + Hypex to be flat/balanced both with and without Audyssey's room correction, and similar to integrated stereo amplifiers that I used with the same speakers before switching to the Denon. With X3800H, the bottom end sounds to me much louder than it should be, overpowering everything else, with the drum kick seeming particularly off-balance.
I do not use a subwoofer and I care only for listening to music, primarily in surround sound formats. The bass-heaviness of the X3800H seems to be limited to the fronts. Old school-style quadraphonic mixes which were created with 4 identical speakers in mind and do not shy away from putting drums and bass guitar into the rear/surround speakers sound more front-heavy than they should and than they do with the X3600H. My surrounds are Dali Mentor 2s driven by NC502MP too, so they are not too far off from my fronts in terms of the reproduction of low frequencies.
Dirac's default post-calibration +3.5 dB bass boost in the X3800H makes music sound unlistenable and comically skewed towards the lower frequencies. Changing the curve to start at 0 dB makes it borderline listenable but still with substantially overpowering bass. The tonal balance is then similar with the Direct mode. I need to apply -8 dB (sic!) up to approximately 200 Hz to tame the drum kick to acceptable levels but this brings a perceived degradation of the overall sound quality. With Audyssey, I can achieve a similar result by applying the highest value (7) in the Low Frequency Containment option with the sound quality not suffering as much. I never bothered to use this option with the the X3600H.
I have gone over 2 other units of X3800H due to an unrelated technical issue (Audyssey introduced volume and tonal imbalance between the left and right speakers which persisted even under the Direct mode), and the elevated bass response was present there too, so I doubt that my current unit could be a dud. I just assumed that speaker calibration would automatically result in acceptable sound, with particularly high hopes for Dirac, so I decided to keep it until it was too late. Likewise, with the X3600H I had my hands on 3 different units and an early X3700H, all of which sounded the same to me.
My understanding of the review of X3800H was that I should expect a similar listening experience as with the X3600H, perhaps even indistinguishably so. Why could there be such a night-and-day difference between the two? Granted that a lot (most?) of the owners would use the AVR with a subwoofer, and I could not find similar complaints as mine online, I am wondering if there could be a technical issue that presents itself only in subwoofer-less setups that would not be captured within the standard set of tests performed within the ASR reviews. For what it's worth, the calibration sounds do not seem off bass-wise, so I would hazard a guess that some unintended sound processing is taking place when outputting the sound intended for the listening experience.
I would welcome and thoughts, comments, reports of your own experience and suggestions on fixing the performance of my Denon AVR-X3800H. Thanks for reading.
Here, another forum user reported perceived boosted bass in the X3800H compared to earlier Denon models: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ds/denon-avr-x3800h-review.38574/post-1403895
I hear large differences in the bass response of my front speakers (Dali Mentor 6) driven by Hypex NCore NC502MP (Nord Acoustics) between the Denons AVR-X3600H and X3800H. I find the 'sound signature' of X3600H + Hypex to be flat/balanced both with and without Audyssey's room correction, and similar to integrated stereo amplifiers that I used with the same speakers before switching to the Denon. With X3800H, the bottom end sounds to me much louder than it should be, overpowering everything else, with the drum kick seeming particularly off-balance.
I do not use a subwoofer and I care only for listening to music, primarily in surround sound formats. The bass-heaviness of the X3800H seems to be limited to the fronts. Old school-style quadraphonic mixes which were created with 4 identical speakers in mind and do not shy away from putting drums and bass guitar into the rear/surround speakers sound more front-heavy than they should and than they do with the X3600H. My surrounds are Dali Mentor 2s driven by NC502MP too, so they are not too far off from my fronts in terms of the reproduction of low frequencies.
Dirac's default post-calibration +3.5 dB bass boost in the X3800H makes music sound unlistenable and comically skewed towards the lower frequencies. Changing the curve to start at 0 dB makes it borderline listenable but still with substantially overpowering bass. The tonal balance is then similar with the Direct mode. I need to apply -8 dB (sic!) up to approximately 200 Hz to tame the drum kick to acceptable levels but this brings a perceived degradation of the overall sound quality. With Audyssey, I can achieve a similar result by applying the highest value (7) in the Low Frequency Containment option with the sound quality not suffering as much. I never bothered to use this option with the the X3600H.
I have gone over 2 other units of X3800H due to an unrelated technical issue (Audyssey introduced volume and tonal imbalance between the left and right speakers which persisted even under the Direct mode), and the elevated bass response was present there too, so I doubt that my current unit could be a dud. I just assumed that speaker calibration would automatically result in acceptable sound, with particularly high hopes for Dirac, so I decided to keep it until it was too late. Likewise, with the X3600H I had my hands on 3 different units and an early X3700H, all of which sounded the same to me.
My understanding of the review of X3800H was that I should expect a similar listening experience as with the X3600H, perhaps even indistinguishably so. Why could there be such a night-and-day difference between the two? Granted that a lot (most?) of the owners would use the AVR with a subwoofer, and I could not find similar complaints as mine online, I am wondering if there could be a technical issue that presents itself only in subwoofer-less setups that would not be captured within the standard set of tests performed within the ASR reviews. For what it's worth, the calibration sounds do not seem off bass-wise, so I would hazard a guess that some unintended sound processing is taking place when outputting the sound intended for the listening experience.
I would welcome and thoughts, comments, reports of your own experience and suggestions on fixing the performance of my Denon AVR-X3800H. Thanks for reading.
Here, another forum user reported perceived boosted bass in the X3800H compared to earlier Denon models: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ds/denon-avr-x3800h-review.38574/post-1403895