Denon releases five AV receivers with HDMI 2.1 from 529 euros
Sound United has released five new, relatively inexpensive AV receivers with HDMI 2.1 support. The cheapest model of the five has a price of 529 euros. It concerns new receivers in the S series and two models from the X series.
It concerns the AVR-S760H, AVR-S660H and the AVC-S660H from the S series, which should replace the S-650 and S-750 from 2019. In addition, the manufacturer comes with the AVR-X1700H DAB and AVR-X1700H; these are the same models, the only difference being the presence of a DAB tuner. The AVR-S660H and AVC-S660H are also largely the same, although the slightly more expensive AVR-S660H is the only one to have an FM/AM tuner.
The AVR-S760H is a 7.2 receiver with support for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, among other things, so that a 5.1.2 setup with two height channels is possible. The AVR-S660H and AVC-S660H are 5.2 receivers and do not support these object-based audio formats; they do support the lossless formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. All models support Apple Airplay 2, HEOS, all major HDR standards and in all cases three of the six available HDMI connections are suitable for HDMI 2.1 with bandwidths of 40Gbit/s. VRR and ALLM are also supported.
The nearly identical AVR-X1700H DAB and AVR-X1700H are 7.2 receivers and also support Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. These two models are quite similar to the AVR-S760H, although the maximum power output per channel is slightly higher with the AVR-X1700H than with the AVR-S760H. The AVR-X1700H DAB and AVR-X1700H also have three HDMI 2.1 connections to transmit 4k120 signals, for example, and VRR and ALLM are also supported here.
Denon offers the AVR-S760H, AVR-S660H and AVC-S660H for 619, 549 and 529 euros respectively. Two of these three models are available immediately, although the official Denon website states that the AVR-S760H will be available shortly. These new receivers are the successors of the AVR-S750H and the AVR-S650H. The AVR-X1700H DAB and the regular AVR-X1700H cost 679 and 649 respectively and will be available soon, according to Denon.
Previously there were the necessary problems with AV receivers and the support of HDMI 2.1. This was the case with all kinds of brands, including Sound United receivers; this manufacturer releases models with the Denon and Marantz brand names. For some of the affected models affected by the HDMI 2.1 bug, Sound United provided an external box or motherboard replacement. The models discussed in this post should all be completely free of the issues. What is also striking is that there are three HDMI 2.1 connections in the five new models; previous models that supported HDMI 2.1 often had to make do with fewer connections suitable for the higher bandwidths of this latest HDMI specification.