If you happen to’re attempting to get as shut as doable to re-creating a real movie-theater expertise at house, there’s no alternative for an excellent AV receiver. Soundbars are a terrific step up from built-in TV audio system, however an AV receiver provides you considerably extra management over the way you arrange, use, and improve your property theater system.
For most individuals, the Denon AVR-X1700H affords every little thing needed—now and for the foreseeable future—to get pleasure from a premium film, online game, TV, or music expertise. All it’s a must to do is add some audio system.
Our choose
The AVR-X1700H is a great-sounding, easy-to-use, 7.1-channel receiver that has all of the wanted options to fulfill film followers, music lovers, and avid gamers alike.
The Denon AVR-X1700H is our best choice as a result of it’s a great-sounding receiver that holds your hand via the setup course of and delivers glorious worth. It options seven amplifier channels that may energy a surround-sound speaker system or a Dolby Atmos or DTS:X house theater setup with two overhead audio system.
It has six HDMI inputs, three of that are HDMI 2.1 suitable and assist the superior gaming options discovered on the Microsoft Xbox Sequence X and Sony PlayStation 5 consoles. You possibly can stream music to it wirelessly by way of Bluetooth and Apple AirPlay 2, in addition to the Heos wi-fi streaming platform (a competitor to the Sonos platform).
It additionally affords good room correction, which lets you fine-tune your speaker system’s efficiency to fit your room. Our assessments constantly present that, on this value vary, the effectiveness of the room-correction system is the differentiating think about sound high quality between AV receivers.
Our solely minor qualms with the AVR-X1700H are that the distant management’s infrared sign may be finicky and the receiver can run a bit heat whenever you’re pushing your speaker system to excessive volumes.
Improve choose
With higher room correction, extra amplified channels, and a number of superior options, the Denon AVR-X3800H is a good choose for the house cinema fanatic who desires a step-up possibility—nevertheless it’s additionally an enormous step up in value.
For the film lover prepared to spend extra for higher sound high quality, extra amp channels, and a few fairly tweaky customization capabilities, we advocate the Denon AVR-X3800H. This receiver sounds higher than the under-$1,000 fashions we examined, thanks largely to its extra superior Audyssey MultEQ XT32 room correction.
The 9.4-channel AVR-X3800H contains two further amp channels that you should use to energy extra audio system, and it will probably course of sound for as much as 4 subwoofers independently. All six of its HDMI inputs are HDMI 2.1 suitable and assist 8K video and superior gaming options. It additionally affords higher multiroom audio and video assist than the AVR-X1700H.
However all of its options and efficiency benefits come at a a lot increased value.
Funds choose
Easy to arrange and use however missing in options, the Denon AVR-S570BT is a strong alternative when you simply wish to put collectively an excellent 5.1-channel speaker system.
If you wish to assemble a easy 5.1-channel surround-sound system—or you have already got a 5.1-channel system and have to improve to a receiver that helps 4K, 8K, or excessive dynamic vary video—the Denon AVR-S570BT is an effective possibility below $500.
It’s simple to arrange and use, and it performs fairly effectively for the worth, though it will probably energy solely 5 audio system and lacks the Audyssey room correction that you simply get on the dearer Denon fashions. It affords 4 HDMI inputs that every one have HDMI 2.1 compatibility, so it really works effectively for avid gamers. However it will probably stream music solely over Bluetooth, not Wi-Fi–based mostly platforms like AirPlay 2.
