I was thinking of upgrading my stereo setup from Dolby 5.1/DTS 5.1 to Dolby Atmos 5.1.2 and I was looking at the new 2020 Denon receivers that seem targeted at gamers as they support HDMI 2.1 and Atmos (and a ton of other esoteric audio formats), specifically the AVR-X3700H/4700H.
Does anyone out there have one of these? How well they work with your Xbox? I’ve seen some videos online of people setting up their new receivers, but nothing about any
problems they have run into specifically with consoles. I’m thinking of games, media streaming, Blu-ray playback.
I have a X1X right now and am planning on upgrading to XSX as soon as that becomes possible.
They play great with this generation’s box, and cannot wait for Series X. I didn’t realize how antiquated my Marantz preamp was until it went out and I replaced it with the 6700H, and added some ceiling speakers for ATMOS. Seriously, the 1S is great at audio, and my wife even commented on how much better our theater sounds these days. I’m driving a 7.2.2 setup in the theater room, and UHD movies in both ATMOS and DTS are night and day better than the PS4. If my wife can tell the difference, it helps to outline the gap. If you have any questions, I will be more than happy to try and answer them - I’ve read the entire manual from front to back before installation. Replacing my old system, running Odyssey for speaker setup, and even connecting the external 12-zone amplifier to the precouts for HEOS took a total of maybe an hour and a half …
A few things of note
The Xbox one and PS4 were both automatically recognized by the receiver when plugged in
It is best to reconfigure the 1S to allow the receiver to do everything audio, though I haven’t played with video settings other than natural quite yet
The receiver recognizes and automatically adjusts to every type of audio. Everything can be done on the phone from HEOS to configuration of the receiver
It’s honestly set it up and forget for the most part. Odyssey mike setup is hassle free
I have the X3700H and it has handshaking issues that I’m sure you’ve seen mentioned around the 'net. Any device that you plug directly into the AVR takes minutes to get a good handshake with. And if I play anything that has Dolby Atmos, it’ll drop the handshake completely.
Turning on your components in a certain order “fixes” it, but you shouldn’t have to worry about such things. Going through my projector removes the handshake issue but it sucks that it’s there. Denon knows of the issue and is supposedly working on a firmware update.
It’ seems to be limited to the 3700 though. Other than that, it works fantastic.
It’s not super-widespread, but it’s being well-documented with the 3700H. If you go directly through the AVR, it can have handshake issues with your A/V components. My FireTV Cube and Xbox One X have these issues. It takes about a minute for it to handshake with my cable box.
Hopefully they fix it soon. To be fair, I wouldn’t really notice the issue anyway since I have to turn on my projector when turning everything else on right now. I’ve been REALLY impressed with the audio capabilities of the 1S with UHD and this receiver
I hadn’t heard about the handshaking problem. Can you elaborate? If you don’t turn on the components just so and you try to use Atmos content, suddenly no audio and/or video?
I saw some reviews that indicated they had “flaky HDMI”, I guess.
When you say you go through the projector, do you mean you connect the video up separately?
Thanks for the feedback, btw!
That is true. In my case that’s not a huge problem as I am only expecting to hook up a X1/XSX to the receiver. I think they expect you to connect other devices to the TV and use ARC to send the data back to the receiver.
No, the components can take 30 seconds up to a minute to actually complete the handshake with the AVR. After that, if you try to play anything with Atmos, it drops the connection. That’s if you run the component directly through the AVR. If you go through your TV/projector, then from there to the AVR, you’re fine.
As I said, I’m seeing this reported mainly with the 3700. Reaction from Denon ranges from “it’s a defective unit, send it back” to “a firmware update is coming”.
Well, with the AVR app on the phone, I can literally watch it go from Multi (default on 1S) to Atmos or DTS when I turn on the Blu Ray app, or something like a Disney+ movie. Sorry to hear about that
Sorry if I am being obtuse, but you mean to get Atmos to work you need to connect the xbox or what have you to the TV and use ARC to get the signal back to the receiver? That would be a problem since I currently have an old Plasma that doesn’t have ARC. (I was planning to upgrade just the audio part for now and get an OLED if/when my Panasonic dies.)
I guess I would have to send the receiver back to Denon in that case.
Handshaking can be a nightmare, whatever devices you use. We have Yamaha Aventages with our old XB1 and LG LED upstairs and an X1X and PS4 and Samsung QLED downstairs. Both have gone through stages where they’ve worked flawlessly for months and them somehow “forgotten” how to speak to each other, entailing hours of full resetting, head scratching and socket swapping to get working again, which invariably happens suddenly and after you’ve gone through exactly the same processes as before.
