Customer Reviews

Denon AVR-1912 7.1 Channel Network Streaming A/V Home Theater Receiver

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After returning 2 failed (video problems) Onkyo TX NR609 receivers, I gave this Denon a try and am happy I did. It has gorgeous sound and was easy to set up and calibrate and has a wide array of features, including Apple Airplay.

Pros:

1) Beautiful sound! Dolby ProLogic IIz; 7 discrete amps!
2) 6 HDMI ports
3) 2 year warranty
3) Ease of setup; Audyssey automatic calibration of speakers with included microphone
4) "Airplay" for use with Apple products--this is very cool.
5) No need to buy expensive Wifi adapater. This will use any wireless bridge to allow you to connect to internet (I bought one for $50).
6) Pandora, Rhapsody, and Napster!
7) Attractive looking with rounded corners and matte black finish
8) On-screen menus and volume control (Pioneer does not have this feature)
9) USB port on front of receiver for Iphone or Ipod connection (using the Apple USB cord)


Cons:

1) Difficult to use remote control (note: You have to press the AMP button on the remote first THEN Menu button before you can access the Setup Wizard). Confusing instructions on setting up remote to work with other devices. I still cannot get the "Quick Select" buttons to work, and will have to contact technical support for advice. Will update this post with instructions when/if I obtain them.
2) No manual! Instead they give you a CD with PDF of the manual. I found this annoying since my PC is in a different room than the receiver and going back and forth to follow step-by-steps was frustrating. You can print pages out of course, but a hard copy of the manual would have been my preference. On the up side...no bulky manual to file away, and I have the CD smartly stored away and a saved PDF of the manual on my computer for future reference.
3) Front USB port is not compatible with the IPad. (Airplay does, however, work with Ipad)

The unit does not seem to run hot, and from what I have read, Denon receivers enjoy a long and stable life. Based on what I have experienced so far, I highly recommend this unit over the Onkyo TX NR609 and even the Pioneer VSX-1021-K, which I also tried. I could not tell the difference in sound between the Denon and Pioneer, but the Pioneer does not have on-screen menus or volume, which I found very annoying. Pioneer also wants an outrageous $150 for their Wifi adapter. Both the Pioneer and Denon sound better than the Onkyo.

This is a little long, but I urge you to take the time and enjoy the journey. I have owned the Denon AVR-1912 for two months now and these are my reactions to using it on a daily basis: combined with an Energy Take Classic surround-sound system, it produces a full and nuanced spectrum of sound that represents solid value for the quality level. I especially enjoy the ability to play music through the amp from my networked MacBook Pro or my iPhone (although it occasionally cuts off a tune mid-song, particularly when I'm playing classical and the song has a natural orchestral pause, and the Denon sometimes has difficulty recognizing the computer or cell at all).

That said, the equally priced competitor that I considered, a Pioneer rated its peer by CNET, dropped by $200 at Amazon three weeks after I bought the Denon, and I strongly considered going through the hassle of a return but didn't. And why not? Because the set-up of this product was mind-bogglingly confusing and I didn't expect the Pioneer's set-up to be any easier, so once was more than enough.

Some of the set-up was as simple as 1-2-3; pinging the surround-sound speakers was straightforward and intuitive, for example. But other aspects of the set-up left me wondering which alternative from the on-screen choices or the pdf user's manual to select. When I followed the guidance of the on-screen choices that Denon highlighted as the recommended setting in several instances, the amplifier was unable to produce sound from my HDTV; I was only able to resolve this through trial and error, because the user's manual is pathetically disorganized and unhelpful.

Here's what you can expect in the 129-page manual, starting with a seemingly simple, 1-page Setup Wizard. Each of six elements on the Wizard page refers you to sub-elements on an ensuing page (or more) that provide further instructions, and when you jump to those pages, they in turn refer you even deeper into the instruction manual. If you take the bait and proceed, you have entered the Instruction Manual Labyrinth to Hell (too bad the Setup Wizard doesn't include a footnote to forewarn that YOU must be a Wizard).

Example 1: "Source Setup" tells you to "Set the connecting terminals for each device to be set, and connect to the terminals." (The obtuseness of that sentence should be ample warning of what you're getting into.) It then says "These settings can be changed in the following menu..." and points you with a fickle-finger illustration to "page 97 - Input Setup" - "Input Assign." When you reach p. 97, you're indeed at "Input Assign," where you'll read about three different types of input connectors "that are assigned to the input sources in default settings." Under setting details, you'll find six bulleted items, among them instructions that send you scurrying to p. 86 to deal with the possibility that "When `HDMI Control' is set to `On,' HDMI input connector cannot be assigned to `TV'." Damn the luck! So you go to p. 86 and you will find another instruction to refer to p. 58. And so on and so on. Stick with it and you'll have read all 129 pages and finished a quart of scotch in short order, after which you'll need a nap to clear your mind before starting over.

Example 2: p. 6 describes "Connecting an HDMI-compatible device." Here you will learn that "This unit supports the following HDMI functions" (I'll only list a few):
"Deep Color (fingered to page 119)" -- as opposed to superficially inadequate color?
"Auto Lip Synch (fingered to pages 86 and 119)" -- apparently offering you the opportunity to entertain yourself with, say, Marley speaking the words of his insipidly sensitive owner, the better to make the movie tolerable?
And my personal favorite: "`x.v.Color', sYCC601 color, Adobe RGB color, Adobe YCC601 color (fingered to pages 119, 120 and 121)" -- which left me in wont of "the color my TV uses."

Bottom line: this product deserves two ratings:
4.5 for its capabilities and quality
-9.9999 for the pain its user manual puts you through.

If you are more than 50 years old, invite your grandchild over to set it up for you by handing him or her the remote and leaving the child alone with the amp for about 30 minutes; you'll thereafter be quite pleased with the product you selected. If you don't have grandchildren, buy another product.

I purchased this amp as it was time to upgrade based on the new speakers I recently ordered from Amazon. First of all I am running this receiver in a 7.1 configuration with my main speakers (FL, C, FR, SL, SR, and LFE) being the BIC Formula Line; the SBL and SBR are a pair of Bose 161's which will be replaced with BIC satellite speakers shortly...

This AVR I am replacing is a Denon AVR 591 which didn't quite push the BIC speakers where I needed them to be. The 591 uses preouts for adding SB or FH speakers in a 7.1 setup. To me, this just adds more clutter to a component rack which I really wanted to consolidate into a cleaner looking area.

The Denon AVR 1912 is definitely a decent upgrade for the money. I did not purchase this off amazon as Best Buy had it for the same price and with my rewards my price broke me right at MSRP This worked out for me as I get it have it today, instead of waiting a week to get it. Here are some thoughts I had on the amps itself...

PROS:

The amp itself is very nice looking, does not overheat (like it was aforementioned), and has some nice features which some may find useful. You will find the setup of this amp to be a breeze, it's very straightforward and you wont be scratching your head wondering what to do. That's not to say you cant get spergy over the amp and calibrate it to your liking, if you're really nutty about this stuff!

The sound quality is actually a very noticeable difference from the AVR 591 which surprised me, to be honest. I already thought the BIC Formula speakers sounded great but now I find them to be much more defined and not quite as bright as they were on the AVR 591, which is a good thing!

CONS:

The remote feels very clunky to me... It has the same general layout as the AVR 591 remote but they removed and changed the placement of buttons and added a few too. More specifically - you cannot change the turn on/off Dynamic Volume from the remote or adjust from day/evening/midnight. To adjust this, you have to go into the menus of the receiver. Some may not care about that but I kind of do. I will say, if you don't like the remote you can always try the Denon remote app for Android/iPhone. I have not tried it so I cannot comment on how it is.

This amp has the ability to steam pandora and other internet radio but it requires a hard line connection to do so - why not add wifi? This would have made me much happier.

The Audyssesy MutlEQ used with this amp seems to have a problem properly calculating LFE because it is not calculating my sub correctly and placing it to -12.0 db each time which is not accurate based on how I have the dials set on my SUB. I am very well aware of how to set the sub for proper calibration and I never had this problem on my AVR 591 but this amp seems to be buggy.

(EDIT - 10/01/2011)

Audyssey works just fine... the -12 DB per audyssey calibration was strictly user error by having the gain too high.

VERDICT:

If you're looking to upgrade from one of the older Denon amps (or any older AMP) to this mid-end amp I would suggest doing so. You'll be happy with the purchase and the sound quality. Easy setup, better sound, decent price.

Many of the reviews I read regarding the Denon receiver gave endless praise for the unit, which helped me in my decision to purchase it. I was looking forward to having a new receiver, and especially one with the AirPlay feature. Unfortunately I was extremely disappointed. I want to point out, though, that I do believe the receiver is good, but only for certain people; not including me. Considering there are many rave reviews toting all the great features, I'm only going to highlight some of the shortcomings:

- The airplay feature I was very excited to use, but it only worked correctly a couple of times. In all other instances I resorted to just plugging in my iPod or computer because getting the AirPlay to work proved too much a hassle. Though I took time to initially set everything up properly so that AirPlay worked, I lost patience when I just wanted the feature to work without spending too much time to diagnose what could be causing problems. Perhaps one could argue that I should have taken more time to figure out what was causing the problem, unfortunately it's not convenient to do so when you're cooking (or working on any other task) and just want music to play without hassle. Considering the AirPlay feature was one of the top selling features for me, this was a huge disappointment. It just didn't work consistently.

- While this is a 7.1 receiver and is capable of two zones, it can't be both. You either are able to have 7.1 channels, OR 5.1 channels and a second zone. Having both wasn't important to me as my ears aren't so picky as to need 7 speakers (though I do need two zones), but I thought it was worth mentioning as it may be important for some.

- The zone operational usage functions poorly for my setup. Changing volume, for example, requires each zone to be adjusted separately. My setup has main speakers in the living room, and the second zone in the dining room. When the music isn't loud enough, I want both zones adjusted together. It seems clunky to require both zones to separately be controlled. This may benefit other setups, but for my setup it's just a clumsy management. Same goes for changing input. If you would want to change the input from, say, internet radio to an audio input (e.g. MP3 player), the system requires you to change it twice, once for each zone.

- I never got the equalizer settings to produce good sound. I spent many hours with this receiver trying to get a good setup, and many moments were spent trying to adjust settings so that the sound output was good. It couldn't be done and I used the same speakers that were producing great sound with my previous receiver. Also, after finally settling for mediocre sound, I was shocked that the equalizer settings could only be applied to the main zone; the second zone sounded absolutely horrific.

- The menu is just haphazard in its organization of tasks and it's a pain to complete any adjustments. I could gripe on and on about this, but perhaps it would be more beneficial for a perspective buyer to download the manual and review the menu flow chart. It's disgraceful and lacks any sign of typical human intuition.

With the above said, I do still think this receiver might possibly be the right receiver for the right person. Someone who doesn't mind spending endless hours tweaking every setting so that the setup is correct; someone who is patient when at first response the receiver doesn't do what you want it to do (AirPlay). Someone who is blind to needing intuitive operations (e.g. menu flow and remote). The receiver on paper has some great features, but it just doesn't meet my needs of a simple yet feature-rich, easy-to-use receiver.

I bought this to replace my old onkyo receiver. I just bought a 3d plasma tv and so needed an updated receiver that supported the newer hdmi. This denon has multiple HDMi inputs. I like it, it sounds great, the setup is easy, and the video quality is great. This is my first devon, previously I had Harman Kardon (sucks!), and Onkyo which was ok, but ran really hot. So far so good, I highly recommend, can see CNET.com review too.
Only thing I don't like is the mute button. If you are using OSD, which I assume most people would and you press mute, it puts this mute icon on the tv screen which pretty much just sits there. So if you mute it and step away from a while, I would be afraid of burn in.
Hopefully they will fix that with future firmware.

My review is early but after a week it does exactly what I wanted. I was looking for a receiver that was airplay compatible and reasonably priced. I plugged it in out of the box and within minutes I had pandora streaming from my ipad to the denon. Sound is great and easy to set up.

The only complaint I have so far is when you use the Denon app to turn on/off the unit it stops sending the airplay signal to the ipad so you have to restart the whole receiver. Hopefully something they can fix with a software update but really not a big deal as you just get up and turn it on and then turn it off.

I recently decided to replace my 10 year old JVC 1100W 7.1 surround sound receiver because of it's lack of HDMI functionality. I did a lot of research and read that the Denon AVR-1912 receiver was the best all-around system. I bought mine through Amazon.com Wharehouse Deals and have no regrets. The system is installed and works perfectly with no issues whatsoever. Here are my Pros and Cons for this product:

PROs

- Best value vs. quality of product and set of features
- Easy to setup and use within 15 minutes
- Excellent sound reproduction and clean channel separation, especially when listening to 5.1 and 7.1 surround
- Internet enabled - allows for updating firmware quickly and for listening to internet radio
- Very light for a 860 Watt receiver
- Surround sound calibration microphone is included for conducting initial setup of your surround sound speaker system

CONs

- Only has one HDMI main output (two main output HDMI ports are becoming the standard)
- For internet firmware update to work properly, I had to manually set my router's MTU value to 1460. This is apparently an issue with the Japanese firmware update servers being incompatible with the default 1500 MTU settings that most routers are set to by default.
- Can only update firmware via internet connectivity - no ability to flash the firmware using a USB stick
- Built-in equalizer is not as good as the higher end Denon models, but is good enough for my needs
- No 7.2 capability, but I knew this when I bought this receiver

BOTTOMLINE: This is a great receiver for a great price. If you can, I highly recommend you trying to get this 'open box' like-new condition like I did. Saved me $150!

Bought this as a replacement for my Onkyo HTIB system after the receiver conked out in less than two years (kept the speakers though, they're quite good for the money). Running the setup wizard made hooking everything up/calibrating the speakers a breeze. Right away I noticed a subtle improvement in the sound of my system. It's hard to quantify exactly, but I'd say the imaging of some mid to high frequencies has improved. It does an outstanding job with movies, and a much better job than my Onkyo ever did with making music sound great.

The coolest feature by far has to be the ability to stream audio over any apple airplay supported device directly to the receiver. I'm still geeking out over the ability to be playing a song from my iphone in the car, walk in the front door of my house, and with a tap on my iphone screen have it begin playing on my sound system, awesome. Occasionally I'll get hiccups in playback, which are usually due to reception issues, or if I switch apps on my iphone in rapid succession (i.e. between youtube and itunes), but eventually it resumes normally. Very rarely, I'll need to replug the receiver's ethernet cable to my router to resolve network issues, but again this is rare. I spoke with Denon's customer support by phone about this, (which in my experience was excellent) and they explained how the reciever could be given a static IP address (rather than dynamic) on my home network to prevent this from happening. I'm sure it would, but given that it happens so infrequently, and that I generally live in fear of troubleshooting network issues, I haven't bothered to yet.

The Denon remote app for the iphone (which lets you control the receiver from your iphone) is admittedly a little clunky. I tried it for a few days but ultimately decided it wasn't for me. It's kind of a gimmick, really. I mean, anyone with a home theater knows that the name of the game is to try to consolidate and reduce the number of remotes in your setup, not add more. Not a deal breaker for me, but anyone expecting to use their iphone as the primary controller for the receiver should be forewarned (but really, who does that?)

Using Denon's included remote for my other components (as well as the receiver itself) works great. It's far from a universal remote, but at least I don't have to reach for 3 other remotes to turn my other components on/off and access their basic functions. Why separate buttons for on/off though, I wonder? Kinda' weird, but not especially important in my humble opinion.

The internet radio features are outstanding. Pandora syncs flawlessly, and I was immediately able to find and add all the streaming versions of my favorite local (and non-local) fm stations using the receiver's search function. Someone obviously spent a little time getting this right, and I'm grateful.

If you like listening to music as well as watching movies on your receiver, and you appreciate a well-designed product with a two year warranty (very rare these days), good customer service, and the ability to stream sound from your apple devices, then buying this receiver is in my opinion, a no-brainer.

*Update* Just a bit of helpful advice to those who use older Roku Netflix boxes and plan on connecting them to this receiver: The older Roku boxes are not HDCP (the copyright protection protocol built in to HDMI components) compliant devices, and therefore will not work on this receiver. The newer Roku boxes are, and will work fine. To my delight, my new blu-ray player works as a Netflix streamer and is HDCP compliant, so no worries for me. Just thought I'd mention that to any potential buyers.

I've had this receiver for a couple months and overall am very pleased. The sound quality is great (although that's highly dependent on the speakers as well), and they've done a nice job keeping the functionality simplified. The one-touch buttons on the front of the unit and the remote are great.

Pros:

* If you use digital music at all I highly recommend hooking this receiver up to your home network using the ethernet jack on the back. The ability to stream directly from iTunes, AirPlay, Pandora, internet radio, etc. is awesome and is probably the most-used feature for me.

* Solid construction, ample inputs, decent iPhone/iPad remote control functionality, Audyssey microphone and calibration included.

Cons:

* Not a passive HDMI solution - you have to turn the receiver on to route the signal through to the monitor. Not a deal-breaker by any means for me, but if you're sensitive to power consumption it may annoy you a little.

Important things to know:

* If you're going to stream to it be sure to go into the setup and set Network Standby to On. This keeps the built in NIC talking to the network so that you don't lose your IP address when the unit is in Standby. By default this setting is off, and unless you turn it on you'll have endless problems with AirPlay refusing to recognize the unit, long power-on times, etc. I was almost ready to send the unit back before I discovered this menu option and once I turned it on I've had zero problems streaming.

* The speaker connectors are remarkably sensitive to how you wire them - any stray strands of wiring whatsoever will cause the receiver to go into Protection mode (similar to the XBox red ring of death, but not as fatal). I used 14-gauge wire and wouldn't go any thicker, I doubt you could wedge 12-gauge in. Wind the ends tight and be very careful with the hookups, otherwise you'll end up redoing them. Banana plugs or some other type of dedicated connector would also work well.

Pros: Sound quality of Audyssey EQ calibration
Full-featured (though not perfect) Android App
Highly customizable (thanks to Audyssey EQ)
Respected brand with 2 year warranty
Best sounding AV receiver around $500 (it is widely sold for $550 today)

Cons: Interface is crap
Streaming is buggy (very slow and unresponsive...and the Android app doesn't help)
Airplay is buggy and absolutely requires an Apple device (no Android or Windows workaround)
Cheap built (made in China) and Denons are known to break

Summary: Okay, so I set out to make my home theater for for the first time. I am a technology geek (work as an network admin) and do my research before settling on purchases.

I tried all of the popular AV receivers and was able to hear the sound difference. All the middle-class receivers I tried were able to produce great, but they sounded different when they did their processing. Using "(pure) direct" sound made all of the receivers sound VERY similar. Thus, it really boiled down to what receiver was able to do its magic to make my speakers sound better in my home theater room. Audyssey EQ hands down did the best job.

My grip with this review is that they fail to mention you are able to get the Denon AVR-2112CI for $440 (you have been able to get this price since it came out and still can) and AVR-1712 for $400 and BOTH of them have a better Audyssey EQ (XT) that will make the receiver exponentially better at making your speakers sound good.

CNET is for some reason obsessed with AirPlay. which the 1712 doesn't have, but 2112ci does. I have tried using this fear on the 1912 and found it did not work flawlessly for my Ipad. Sound quality was better plugging in my Galaxy SII via MLA convert to HDMI...so much so that I think it is silly to use Airplay. Also, Sonos CONNECT has much better sound quality and features if you want to use your phone as remote to play music.

Thus I don't give the 1912 5 stars because it does not have Audyssey EQ XT (it has Audyssey EQ). This techology is the single thing that makes the receiver great and having better makes it even better, but CNET seems to think dropping XT and getting Airplay is worth it (that or playing more to not have XT and Airplay). Ironically, if you do a little research, you can get XT AND Airplay on the 2112ci for $100 less than the 1912!

Either way, Denon is making the best AV receivers hands down but be mindful of the cons I list. Yamaha deals with the cons, but their EQ technology is far worse than Audyssey EQ and it sounds worse (different maybe a better way to put it). Some claim Yamaha makes music sound better (less tiring because sounds don't jump out at you), but I would counter this the flexibility of the Denon can make music sound the same or better with manual tuning.

The difference in Yamaha and Denon sound can be described that Yamaha sounds 'loud and wide' and Denon sounds 'localized and fine tuned,' which is what I want from a 5.1/7.1 system.

Denon isn't a perfect brand and there is a lot I don't like about them, but for under $500, the sound quality they produce is hard to argue against when looking at the competition,