Seek advice from the experienced AV players here for the following:

I am looking to upgrade my AV set up to Atmos, from 5.0 channel old school Dolby surround / prologic/ DTS/DD. So I have a set of 5 speakers already in place.

I recently acquired a Denon X4300H, ultimately I may upgrade all the way to 11.0 (no sub for now). My question is below if anyone can give some ideas:

1. Now I have 5.0 speaker set up, to calibrate the denon, from what I read, I should set the front LCR channel to 0db, then fine tune the surround by ears, before using the Audyssey to fine tune, is that a correct sequence?

2. One pair of surround back speakers are on the way (imported from China, just a typical stereo speakers) which I will set up as rear surround, most likely to be set as Rear Height in view of the pre-existing wiring in place.

3. Another 4 Ceiling speakers will be imported from China too, obviously it will be used for ceiling set up unless the situation demand, I can mod it with a DIY casing as Front height and Surround Height.

4. All the above is because I have two options: either I can use all speakers to set up pure Atmos (which use 4 ceilings) or Auro-3D, which uses 2 Front Height and 2 Surround Heights. My question is, from your own experience, it is worth setting up Auro-3D speakers location for BOTH Atmos and Auro? It can be done by setting the rear as rear height for Denon.

Or I should just focus on Atmos alone. I need to pay extra to download Auro-3D firmware to allow Auro playback.

Finally, I have Mi Box S as Kodi playback, now can't really do passthrough for Atmos etc, so any other media box should I change to, eg. Mecool KM2, or others. Any other box I should consider?

Thank you all for advice.

This post has been edited by peter32: Jan 3 2022, 04:45 PM

Noted. Sound quality is important to me. Thanks for sharing.

SSJBen, thank you very much for your precious info.

1. Indeed your info, esp on the area of Auro-3D would be important. Its not cheap to purchase the licence for it, so for that matter, I will more likely to study the placement of speakers in greater details before digging holes on the ceiling for sure. My existing L/R surround is about 2-3 feet above ear level (when sitting down) because thats how the earlier surround speakers are being placed. Its also a Bipolar unit too but apparently it can still be used, Dipole would have problem with Atmos, but not Bipole.

2. Room is not an ideal room, its a sitting room but in 3-4M x 7m length, not acoustically ideal for sure, but its a rectangular room in 2/3 of the space, another 1/3 is an opened space. Not perfect but have to live with it.

3. I will be using my old AVR as power amp to drive the front 2 speakers. So I can fix up all 11 channels of speakers from the Denon. Most likely I won't drive vol up most of the time unless there is some odd explosion here and there from the scenes.

4. Yes the amp does run hot after a while. What active cooling tools would you recommend?

5. Question: Is the Denon Pre-out active all the time ? Or I need to select Speaker configuration to allow Pre-out at certain channels?

6. Final Question: Is there a way for me to select digital optical input for the same video channel? eg. channel 1: media box with HDMI audio default intpu. Channel 2: Media box video input via HDMI but audio using Optical in.

I tried but does not seems to work this way.

Your input will be greatly appreciated.

1. Tks for the idea. Bipole does give the faint surround sound when it works, so slightly higher is better. Will see if I will need to adjust the height when it runs atmos.

2. Never thought of acoustic treatment for sitting room. Option is quite limited.

3. Old AVR is an NAD with torroidal transformer with 7 channel power amp capability, so its rather handy in times like this. Its also reasonable to drive all three front channels via this as well. This is why I opted for Denon 4300 that specially comes with Pre-amp out and capacity for 11 channels processing.

4. Pre-outs are active will be good, I can mix and match which channels to outsource ext amps so to speak.

5-6. : I was thinking of linking audio optical output from Media box when listening to music, send to another DAC for processing (third party SMSL DAC) and send analogue audio signal to Either Denon or my old Amp for amplification. Thats for pure music listening to only front 2 dhannels. Looks like I will have to shut off video signal to listen to the music if I still want the denon to amplify it. If not, I will have to opt for old AVR for that function. That makes it complicated for user (my wife) if she want to listen to music alone.

Did it work for you? I tried to set up another HDMI 5 but using Opt1, but it can only set up one HDMI 5. Once you set up, eg. AUX as HDMI 5 with Opt1, the original HDMI 5 (Media Player) will be deleted. So I can't set up one for movie, another one for music (optical in).

Edit:

In this set up of yours, what happen when you switch to Media Player? Do they adopt HDMI as default audio input or others? Is there a way to set up priority on which audio input will be adopted?

This post has been edited by peter32: Jan 4 2022, 08:59 PM

Just realised that my unit of the same setup page does not come with Input Mode, only the hdmi, digital, analog, composite and video.

Edit: Confirmed. Input select is a common button that enabled me to select either digital audio input, analog or HDMI for any channel that I am in. Its troublesome to go into Setup to do that whenever I need to select audio input but the option is there. There is no such INPUT Select button on the remote that I knew of.

This post has been edited by peter32: Jan 5 2022, 12:00 AM

I like subwoofer in general, esp those with controlled bass. I actually have one cheap infinity sub lying around without being used, because its bass is not well controlled. So for now simple stereo speaker bass should be sufficient for own use.

I finally ordered a Mecool mk2 online to replace the Mi Box. Only recent few days I got to know about the zidoo (like you mentioned) and another high end media streamer. Not cheap at all... For now I will stick to budget set up and see how it goes.

You are right, its only capable of doing Lossy audio passthrough, not lossless. Besides, my Tv is still an old LED, not yet the newer type, but serves us very well so far. Until we got a new one, then I will consider an upgrade. Now our usage is still on local playback, but mostly on disney hotstar, astro playback, youtube viewing & bluetooth music playback.

I still do not have 4K TV as yet.. but no harm getting something future proof somewhat.

My Denon x4300h - exhibit lip sync issue for both Media player and Astro.

Both Media input lip sync setting has been set off or zero. This is definitely due to the Amp. While I can set the amp to auto lip sync, which still failed to sort the problem out, is there anything I need to look at from the Amp or this is a common issue for Denon?

Any feedback from the anyone will be greatly appreciated.

You mean from Source to Amp, or Amp to TV, or both?

Local playback - minor lag noticed.
Astro ultrabox HDMI connection: lagged.
Media box: Youtube, Kodi, etc, lagged as well.

I test both media player and astro ultrabox using old amp, connect only by Optical cable for audio, but direct Video connection from source to TV instead (my old amp has no HDMI in/out), there is no lag.

So the issue must have been from the Amp or HDMI cable. Recently I upgraded HDMI cable betw Media box and Denon using high speed rated one. So cable maybe unlikely.

I didn't know Denon player can test cable. How to do that ? Or maybe later I google and see.

Edit: Found the shortcut for HDMI test from youtube, will try that tonight and see if that helps. Thanks for the heads up.

This post has been edited by peter32: Jan 13 2022, 01:29 PM

Do look into used market. Its very much worth it.

Its possible, but need to go for used AV Amp, and used speakers. If not, import small size speakers from China. Spend more on front 3 speakers (LFC), the rest can be of lower quality.