Denon AVR-985S 7.1 Channel Audio / Video Surround Receiver

Rating:
Summary: New to surround sound
Review: This was my first purchase of a surround sound system. I did a bit of research before deciding on the Denon AVR-985S and am quite pleased with the result. The build quality is excellent and the system is extremely flexible. Flexibility of course can make the setup more daunting. The auto-setup feature where you place a microphone (included in the package) at your most frequent listening position and press start makes the speaker set-up (a time consuming experience and then you're never sure you have it optimized) a piece of cake. That said however if you are just looking for a system you plug in and it works, this is not the system for you. It takes time and patience to hook different brands of equipment together and have them function as expected.

The On Screed Display (OSD) is pretty straight forward but fortunately is not required to set the system up. I say fortunately because my HD monitor is only capable of displaying 1080i or 480p on its component video input and the OSD appears to be 480i. It therefore is unreadable on my monitor in setup mode. I have a composite cable connected to another composite input on the monitor and it works fine there but requires the additional step of switching the monitor input if I want to use the OSD. All the setup options appear on the Denon's front display one option at a time but it helps to have the manual in front of you with the menu tree so that you can quickly navigate to the option you want to change.

The biggest drawback I have experienced so far is the remote. I was hoping that the macro capability would give my technically challenged wife (if she could hold it to her forehead and have it do what she was thinking we might have a chance) one button to turn everything on and set the system to watch her favorite program that is recorded on the VCR everyday. Unfortunately the monitor requires several seconds from power on until it will respond to any other commands and the macro capability only stores ten commands without a pause. Ten is not enough to program dummy commands while the monitor warms up. It does have a large set of pre-programmed codes for other equipment and using those I was able to control everything in my system. It will learn other remotes but the buttons available for learning are limited by the type of remote it is learning and the lables on those buttons don't always correspond to the function you want it to learn.

All in all it is a great system and sounds fantastic hooked to my Infinity TSS450 speakers. If you live in an apartment don't buy this system, your neighbors will hate you. At 100W per channel it will crack the plaster and sound great doing it.