Denon AVR-3808CI Not Enough Bass (1 Viewer)

[MustangChris04]

Hey guys,

Just picked up the 3808CI at best buy for $970 and hooked it up to my klipsch speakers. Everything sounds great when playing a blu ray or the Eagles with a DTS cd. the bass from my sub woofer is overwhelming and has to be turned down when playing from a dvd or blu ray.

When I plug my computer into the receiver via toslink or rca, the music is mellow and not much bass at all. i maxed the sub woofer out and its not hitting hard. This is even when I use the internet radio or stream from my computer.

I dont know what could be making the subwoofer so weak when using 2 channel audio, or even when its 2 channel but replicating surround.

My yamaha rx-v2700 sounds amazing when I play music from my computer through optical but the denon seems to sound like crap.

Has anyone experienced a similar situation..? Thanks!

 

[JohnRice]

Chris, it is clear you haven't learned how to set up the receiver. There is no guessing involved, but you need a couple pieces of equipment. A calibration DVD such as Digital Video Essentials (emphasis on essentials) or Avia and a sound pressure level meter, which you can get from Radio Shack for about $40. You use them to calibrate the output of all the speakers. Alternatively, I'm sure the receiver has it's own calibration, but you may have to get a mic to do it.

As far as there being no bass from the computer, the Denon does not sound like crap. Don't blame the Denon. You don't have it set up right. The basic setting you need to change is to set all speakers to "small" so the receiver routes all the bass to the sub. Right now they are probably on "large" and the sub only receives bass when you play a DVD.

Once again, calibrate the system and experiment with speaker and sub placement. This stuff requires careful adjustment. You can't just throw everything in a room and expect it to work properly

 

[MustangChris04]

thanks for the advice. When i first installed it, I used the microphone it came with and calibrated that way. I seem to get more bass with speakers set to large and subwoofer set to LFE+main.

 

[JohnRice]

You could get "more" bass on DVDs with the receiver set that way, but to get bass from the sub with analog you have to set the speakers to small.