Depending on your perspective, 800 bucks is either a whole lot to spend on an A/V receiver or very little. Compared to the mid-four-figures flagships designed for the price-doesn't-matter crowd, it's mere flowers-and-champagne money. But measured against the $200 to $300 a bare-bones but quite functional entry-level box might cost, to the average Joe it's a serious budgetary uptick that had damned well better pay off.
Denon sure is trying to make it so with its new AVR-2307CI. The Denon AVR-2307CI A/V receiver boasts all the latest goodies, including XM sat-radio expandability, an optional iPod dock, and a customizable RS-232 serial input, plus 12-volt trigger and IR-signal features intended to wow custom installers — hence the "CI" in its model name. More important to many of us, it promises strong performance on the basics of power, surround, and video — qualities that Denon's receivers have consistently delivered.
The Denon accepts only two HDMI sources, about the bare minimum most folks will need today (surely three such will rapidly become the norm even for fairly affordable receivers), but delivers 1080p pass-through on them and can convert any composite-, S-, or component-video sources to HDMI, permitting a one-cable link to the screen. My Comcast cable box still refuses to pass signal to any component identifying itself as an HDMI repeater (will they ever deliver the promised firmware update?), and since the 2307CI does so, like nearly all A/V receivers, I was restricted to the set-top's component output, giving me an excellent opportunity to try the receiver's component-to-HDMI conversion.
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The Short Form |
| Price $800 / usa.denon.com / 800-497-8921 |
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Snapshot
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| A solid mid-price receiver that offers superb audio and video performance and valuable features such as XM and iPod options — but not video deinterlacing or scaling. |
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Plus
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| •Top-shelf power, audio quality •HDMI switching, and converts analog video to HDMI •Available iPod dock (optional extra) |
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Minus
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| •Only two HDMI inputs •Does not scale video •Onscreen displays only in 480i, even via HDMI |
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Key Features
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•100 watts x 7 channels |
Power? Check. The Denon's rated 100 x 7 watts easily drove my medium-sensitivity speaker layout to fully cinematic levels, and even a slightly less sensitive suite waiting its turn in the test-report queue.
Clarity and definition? Check-plus. Denon lists the 2307CI as employing a new-generation audio digital signal processor and 192–kHz/24-bit D/A converters. Whatever the case, the receiver sounded first-rate on every music or movie program I tried: clean, dynamic, transparent. Top-quality recordings — sadly, even today this usually means specialty "audiophile" productions — sounded simply superb via Dolby Pro Logic IIx Music. On one occasion I found myself checking to see if I weren't accidentally playing a disc's SACD-multichannel layer direct-in rather than stereo via the digital input — high praise indeed.
Video performance? Check. The 2307's HDMI paths will accept and switch signals from 480i right up to 1080p. My 50-inch Samsung DLP cannot handle either extreme, but every other format looked great via both HDMI and component video. The Denon converts incoming analog video to digital HDMI output but does not scale: What comes in on composite-, S-, or component- goes out on HDMI in its original resolution. (This is not necessarily a cause for sorrow; there's no guarantee that any individual scaler will be an improvement over another, and your system probably has at least one already in its cable/HD and DVD signal-chains, in addition to the one in your HDTV itself.)
It does, however, limit HDMI utility with those TVs (mine included) that cannot accept 480i over HDMI. Even this would be unimportant, given the ubiquity of 480i-to-480p deinterlacing, except that the Denon's onscreen displays travel in 480i over all outputs, including HDMI. Result: no onscreens via HDMI in my system, requiring a component-video (or S- or composite- video) connection as well, with accompanying toggling TV inputs, to view them. Furthermore, since my set will not display picture-in-picture with HDMI (as I believe is quite generally the case), I couldn't even use the PIP-menus-window trick I learned back in those halcyon days when many component outputs lacked the onscreen graphics. Ah, progress.
Direct comparisons of my best video sources on their component outputs direct-to-screen versus the Denon's converted-to-HDMI version showed the converted image to be slightly — very slightly — softer and, I felt, a hair less saturated. Not enough in either case to dissuade me from using a single-cable setup — at least not if I had been able to get onscreen displays.
HUMAN FACTORS A/V receivers are complex, and getting more so. Designing one to be easily operable by mere humans is no trivial task, and so far, nobody has done a perfect job of it at any price. So salt the following niggles accordingly.
Denon's onscreen menus and displays for the AVR-2307CI are complete and informative; they're also straightforward and text-based for the most part. Unfortunately (as I've already mentioned, and as is true of many or most receivers at this level), they display in 480i only, which in my A/V life means a screen re-sync whenever invoking or releasing the displays. Under ideal conditions, my screen itself requires about 2 seconds to re-sync: painful but bearable. But with the Denon in the loop, onscreen appearance/disappearance when watching 720p or 1080i sources induced a blank screen for 5 full seconds, every time. Perhaps more seriously, I encountered HDMI-audio and even PCM dropouts when bringing onscreen menus up or down. When a source's HDMI link was connected and selected as the digital-audio source, bringing the OSD up or down caused digital audio to mute altogether for as long as 4 or 5 seconds; even with a coaxial digital input selected, if HDMI was connected from the same source, audio still muted for a second or two.
The remote packed with the 2307CI is new and quite clever. It seems to offer just a basic set of keys, well laid out and ergonomically sized, textured, and located (though with dismally small black-on-silver graphics). But flip the handset over and pry open its right edge and you reveal a whole new remote, with buttons for setup, Zone 2 operations, selecting surround modes and adjusting channel levels, numeric keys, and more. This is a novel solution to the too-many-buttons syndrome and one with real potential. But relegating such important functions as surround-mode selection or numeric-key input to the secondary remote might require a rethink, though I concede that you can't have all things all ways. At a more personal level, the left-hinging door discriminates against lefties (I'm consulting my attorneys about possible class action ...).
Okay, this is too much negative talk for a receiver that I consider to be fundamentally highly excellent, so don't hear me as discouraging any potential owners from scoping it out. (The stronger the core performance, the more you tend to poke and prod the performer.) In most real-world operations the Denon AVR-2307CI A/V receiver acquitted itself very well indeed, and its audio and video quality are solidly above reproach.
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