Denon AVR-3808 A/V receiver

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By Matthew Moskovciak, CNET.com
Dec 17, 2007

This has been a landmark year for A/V receivers. Traditionally, receivers have just been the muscle of a home theater, but now there's no denying that they're the brain. As well, they contain more functionality than nearly any other piece of home theater equipment. The Denon AVR-3808 is the epitome of this new breed of receivers, with a high-def graphical user interface, built-in digital music player, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding, and extensive video conversion options to accommodate low-resolution signals on your HDTV. It's not skimpy on connectivity, either, with four HDMI 1.3 inputs, seven digital audio inputs, network and USB ports.

Of course, all these features are going to cost you--the AVR-3808 retails for S$2,399 (US$1,727.27). But you can take comfort that it's not a Jack-of-all-trades, master of none, as its standard-def video processing is top-notch and the sound quality lives up to Denon reputation.

Our biggest quibbles with the AVR-3808 are related to its design and usability: Denon's new graphical user interface looks great, but there are some control issues that can be frustrating. The sheer complexity of the unit may also frustrate buyers--the copious features and tweaking options will delight A/V enthusiasts, but the average buyer will likely be overwhelmed. Even with these drawbacks, the AVR-3808 is sure to satisfy enthusiasts looking for a massively featured A/V receiver that should serve them well for years to come.

Editors' note:

This review is based on evaluations conducted by our sister site. Review ratings on similar products may differ due to differences in regional market trends and competing product lineups.

Design

Let us start off by saying that pictures don't do the AVR-3808 justice. When we first saw the images for the AVR-3808, we weren't sold on the design, but it looks very stylish in person. The front faceplate is artistically designed, with subtle curves and rounded edges that make it stand out from standard boxy receivers. In the center of the receiver is the LED display, which was readable from a seating distance of about 2m. The LED display is flanked by two large knobs--to the right is the Volume knob and to the left is the Source-selection knob. Under the LED display is a flip-down panel revealing some extra connectivity along with many front panel buttons including a directional pad so you can still navigate the menu systems if the remote goes missing.

The AVR-3808 hides most of its front panel buttons under a flip-down panel.

The design of Denon's main remote is sure to be divisive. You'll probably either love it or hate it, and we're guessing more will fall on the hate side. The top half of the remote is occupied by a gel-like touchscreen, similar to the design on the old One For All Kameleon 8. When you first pick up the remote, the screen is completely dark so you'll need to give it a press for it to light up. Then you either control the receiver or press another device to control it. When you select another device, the buttons on the touchscreen change to suit that particular device--so you'll get Play and Stop buttons for a DVD player, which is a nice touch. The fact that the touchscreen is backlit is also a plus for using in a darkened home theater.

Despite these pluses, we'd rather have a standard clicker. By omitting so many buttons, controlling simple functions can become completely unintuitive. For example, when listening to Internet radio, the only way to stop it from playing is to hold down the Select button for a couple of seconds. Old-school receiver fans will also complain that by including so few buttons and instead putting the functionality in the onscreen graphical user interface (GUI), it takes more button presses to get simple actions done. We heard this same complaint with Sony's GUI-enabled receivers, but it applies more to the Denon because at least the Sony remote also included tons of hard buttons if you wanted to jump straight to a command.

Thankfully, if you can't stand the main remote, Denon includes a smaller, more traditional remote. While the second remote is intended to be used in secondary and tertiary zones, it will work just fine as a main remote as well (although it can't control other devices). Instead of a touchscreen, the smaller remote offers dedicated buttons to switch inputs. Along the bottom, it has dedicated Stop, Play, and Skip Forward/Backward buttons for streaming music. The major omission is a Page Up/Down rocker button, but you can enable this functionality by pressing several more buttons (we'll get to this later).

Denon packs in a microphone to help you set up your home theater.

The AVR-3808 offers Audyssey MultEQ XT speaker calibration, which uses an included microphone to automatically adjust your speaker levels to the vagaries of your room. Unfortunately, the system locked up the receiver during our initial tests.

User Interface
The AVR-3808 is part of the first line of Denon receivers to feature its new GUI. Receivers have long been stuck with ugly white text on a black background, but that changed with the Sony STR-DA5200ES and now Denon is taking its shot. Even though Sony beat Denon to the punch by a full product generation, Denon's GUI certainly looks good. It features high-def graphics and text, and the incorporation of more color than Sony's menu makes it feel more accessible. Another plus is that it's capable of overlaying over high-def video, so you're not totally missing out on the action if you're changing a setting (the STR-DA5300ES can't do this with HDMI inputs).

Denon's graphical user interface looks slick.
While the high-def graphics look great, the actual navigation scheme could use some tweaking. For example, when you want to select a source, you put the cursor over the Source Select button and to the right you can see a list of sources. Next you click to the right, but instead of moving the cursor into that list of sources, the row of icons you were browsing changes into the list of sources, and you lack the ability to see multiple source names at once. What you can see are some icons representing the sources, but those are not customizable and most likely don't represent the actual attached source after you've done some assigning. In reality, you'll actually need to highlight a specific source to know which device it represents--unless you memorize them all.

The AVR-3808 can play digital music files and Internet radio, but sometimes the interface is a pain to use.

The AVR3808's user interface also extends to its media-playing abilities. This is a significant step up from the Sony STR-DA5300ES, which lacks media-streaming capabilities. While the interface looks good, overall sluggishness is a drawback. One of the reasons the interface feels so slow is that the remote lacks a dedicated Page Up/Down button. It is actually possible to scroll page by page, but first you need to switch the remote into NET mode, then hit the search command, then use the right and left directional pad buttons to go up and down--not something you're likely to figure out without studying the manual. We're guessing most people won't read that section of the manual or will forget, and just normal scrolling through a healthy selection of artists takes forever.

A final note regarding the GUI is that we were disappointed to have the AVR-3808 crash on us a couple of times. We're guessing that's because the AVR-3808--more than any other receiver we've tested--feels like a computer. We love the advanced features like its streaming capabilities, infinite tweakability, remote programming and GUI, but each of these features introduces something else that can go wrong.

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