PSA: Denon's "Direct" mode can be a misnomer

[Nathan Raymond]

I never paid much attention to the four colored buttons at the bottom of my AVR-X3700H remote:

At some point my household, the yellow "Pure" button was accidentally pressed while the receiver was playing back content from an Android TV box where I had previously had a Roku Ultra plugged in. The "Pure" button put the receiver into "Direct" mode for that input, as per: https://manuals.denon.com/AVRX3700H/NA/EN/GFNFSYrhzdncbw.php

The manual is very lacking when it describes what this mode does: https://manuals.denon.com/AVRX3700H/NA/EN/DRDZSYyrtgycpw.php

All it says is, "This mode plays back audio as recorded in the source."

What it doesn't say is that if the source is delivering Dolby Digital Plus content with Atmos over HDMI, you will not get Atmos at all in "Direct" mode. If you press "Info" the on screen display will show a DD+ 7.1 signal and the channel mappings will indicate it is coming in as 7.1 with an SBL and SBR (which is not how the signal is actually coming in). You have to press the "Movie" button to restore the receiver's ability to see/recognize the signal correctly and play back Atmos content.

This situation confused me for a solid week before I got to the bottom of it because it coincided with me swapping out devices, so I thought I was dealing with an Android TV issue, not a receiver setting issue. Denon really should improve their documentation. I also learned that those sound mode buttons are remembered not just per input, but per bitstream type per input. I just wanted to point this out in case anyone else ends up in the same pickle I was.

 

[Audio Science Pal]

The manual is very lacking when it describes what this mode does

That can be said for many owners manuals. And some of the AVR functions seem to be variable depending on the input source selection, making it more complicated to choose the desired settings. Other than that, modern AVRs continue to impress me.

 

[Nathan Raymond]

That can be said for many owners manuals. And some of the AVR functions seem to be variable depending on the input source selection, making it more complicated to choose the desired settings. Other than that, modern AVRs continue to impress me.

Yeah there is a ton of functionality they are squeezing into one box, and the number of audio and video formats they have to cope with is large. I'm sure it's a design nightmare because on the one hand they don't want to limit functionality, but on the other hand they don't want to confuse people with too many options, too many buttons, or too much information. But I think they've leaned a little too hard into making things look simple on the remote and the manual, when in fact there are important hidden implications to simple button presses that are not obvious. Doesn't help either when they label a button "Pure" that activates a mode called "Direct" and the front of the receiver has the word "Direct" on it but nowhere on the receiver display or on screen does it mention "Pure" - how is a user expected to associate those, other than by memorizing the manual? And I never dreamed in a million years that a "Direct" mode would modify an incoming signal (or at least how it was being depicted in the user interface).

 

[SKBubba]

Direct/pure mode disables all dsp and decoding.

 

[Nathan Raymond]

Direct/pure mode disables all dsp and decoding.

Not true. In "Direct" mode, the receiver does in fact receive the Dolby Digital Plus signal, decode it, and map 5.1 channels of audio. I have a 5.2.2 setup, and the Atmos part of the DD+ signal showed up as SBL and SBR as I mentioned (which is not correct), and then appeared to be discarded so there was no height (elevation) signal or sound field being sent to my speakers when in "Direct" mode but the embedded 5.1 signal was being decoded and sent to my speakers (confirmed via the "Info" button and observational fact). That is what is so confusing.

As mentioned the manual has just this description for "Direct" mode:

This mode plays back audio as recorded in the source.

And then there is "Pure Direct", which I didn't mention before because it wasn't a mode my receiver was in, but sure it's worth mentioning too, and has this description:

This mode plays back an even higher quality sound than the “Direct” mode.
The following circuits are stopped in order to further improve sound quality.

• Display indicator circuit of the main body (display will go off.)

• The analog video input/output switcher and processor is disabled.

Nothing about DSP and decoding being disabled (and in practical fact they are not disabled, rather the DSP/decoder behavior is modified in undocumented ways as I've outlined for at least DD+ Atmos, not sure about other formats).