Hi! I’ve now had my Denon amp for over a week so plenty of time to get acquainted and to take notes. The 3400H is not the top of the range when it comes to Denon AVR receivers but neither is it at the bottom end, if you want a beginner level type surround-sound receiver then Denon has one for around $300 but I wouldn’t buy one of those as its extremely limited and doesn’t have much in the way of “Future Proofing” which I consider to be extremely important when shelling out on an item such as this so if you’re looking at a cheaper alternative then perhaps start with the model 2 models below mine which is aptly named the Denon AVRX1400H. Those models that end with the suffix H have the HIOS compatibility built-in which - having played with Heos and my amp for a good week now - I consider extremely important for a whole bunch of reasons. All the models of AVRX receivers from the 1400 to the 3400 are 7.2 channel compatible which I reckon is more than enough for most people. You don’t have to have an entire 7.2 channel setup of course, you might have a typical 5.1 channel setup and choose to use those extra 2 channels as a second stereo zone for another room or as part of a blimp configuration with channels 1 and 2 respectively so its go your own way with these receivers along with 105 watts of discrete amplification per channel. The first thing that needs to be done with any of these receivers is to connect the receiver to a Television and have some sighted assistance to walk you through the setup menu that’s displayed when the receiver is first switched on. The setup process is extremely comprehensive and I’d recommend visiting it at least once as the interactive tutorial - onscreen - gives you plenty of information about the receiver along the way, You’ll also need to visit this setup tutorial if you plan to use the receiver with its Web interface as you need to turn that functionality on from there. If you’re on your own however and can’t wait to get started - as was the case with me - then all you have to do is to connect a LAN cable to the LAN port on the back of the unit and start using the Denon Heos App on your smart phone which will detect the Receiver. The receivers do have Wi-Fi connectivity which can be connected to your Home Network in a variety of ways including WPS however this functionality is as far as I know only available through the abovementioned setup procedure so yep a bit of a bummer. There are 2 Apps that can be used with the AVRX3400H and I’ve mentioned Hoes which mainly controls music streaming and music services to your amp but it can do so very much more including taking sources from your Amp and streaming them to other Heos compatible devices. The other App worth mentioning is the AVRX Remote controller which gives you access through the App to all the menus and configuration settings so in effect its a mobile version of the Web Interface. So back to the Heos App which is incredibly accessible and a real joy to use I think because of the thought that has gone into the design of the App itself. On the bottom row on the screen are 3 buttons which toggle between 3 different screens, the centre button being your music services screen, the right being the now playing screen and so on. All the well known music services are here including iHeart Radio, Spotify, Soundcloud, Tidal, Pandora and Tunein Radio. The App also gives you access to any DLAN compatible servers you have on your network. One very convenient feature got my attention when I chose a station on iHeart Rai, instead of playing the station the Heos App prompted me with several actions, play now, add to playing queue or add the favourites so a very nice and convenient touch which will save me heaps of time. The swiftness in which the App works is also most refreshing, choose a radio station to play and connection time and playback is impressive, double-tap the “Play Now” icon and the station begins playing in about a second in most cases. I won’t boast about this function as there’s probably some very smart calculations going on inside that Denon that are aware of me having quite a good broad-band connection here so I’d be curious to see just how responsive Heos is with other people’s gear. So what other HEOS devices are available? Denon make a Heos Amp which can be connected to your choice of speakers. This amp has some worthy specifications including 100 watts per channel powered by 2 class D amplifiers so the whole signal path up to the speaker terminals is completely digital. If the amp isn’t your thing then perhaps a pair of Heos speakers might do the job for you in other rooms. Denon make several different models of these from the smallest portables to the bigger room filling party animals, I’m going to go down to one of my favourite Hi-Fi shops in a few weeks and test some of these models so I’ll get back to you with more on these speakers at that time. Naturally all these speakers can be controlled via the Heos App as separate speakers or in multiple groups. All the Heos compatible range can take sampling rates up to 192K 24-bit.
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