Denon AVP-A1HD Brochure

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Denon AVP-A1HDCI Surround Sound Processor and POA-A1HDCI Power Amplifier - Page 3

A1HDCI amplifier that is designed to be

paired with the Denon SSP. The 12 outputs

are Front Left, Center, Front Right, Surround

A Left, Surround A Right, Surround B

Left, Surround B Right, Surround Back

Left, Surround Back Right, Subwoofer 1,

Subwoofer 2, Subwoofer 3. The Surround A

and B are if you want to have two sets of side

surround channels, such as in a very large

home theater room. The three subwoofers

can be configured for left, right, and LFE.

You can reconfigure any of the outputs to

be any of the other outputs (if you want to

duplicate an output channel).

The A1HDCI is organized around six input

sets (marked on the photo below). It is

assumed your sources are digital, perhaps

even all HDMI output, and the A1HDCI is

principally a digital audio processor.

So, looking at the photo, you can see the

HDMI inputs highlighted in red. They are

DVD, HDP, TV/CBL (this was changed

to SAT in the final release version), SAT

(changed to VCR in final release version),

DVR-1, and DVR-2 (you can change the

names to anything you prefer). To the right

of these inputs, highlighted in green, are

the HDMI output jacks for connection to a

projector and TV monitor. Below the HDMI

inputs are coaxial and optical digital inputs

associated with the HDMI inputs of the

same name. You can connect sources to any

or all of the inputs, and when you select one

particular input from the front panel, there is

an option to use any one of the sources you

have connected to the HDMI, or coaxial, or

optical jack associated with that input. In

other words, you can have a lot of sources

sharing each of the six main input sets. Each

HDMI input will have either a coaxial digital

or optical digital input associated with it, but

not both.

In the middle and down at the bottom are the

analog input sets assocated with each input.

They include component video, S-Video,

composite video, and stereo analog audio.

For CD, you can use either a set of fully

balanced XLR inputs or the usual RCA

inputs. You select whether you want XLR

or RCA from the on-screen menu setup

options.

“I must say that I have never had so

much enjoyment from a surround

sound system.”

Denon has a proprietary connection called

Denon Link. It is present on the A1HDCI,

as shown below. If you have a Denon player

with a Denon Link output, you can play

SACDs and send native DSD bitstreams to

the processor for decoding. The DSD remains

in that form all the way from the disc to the

processor decoding circuits , instead of being

converted to PCM like many other players

and processors do.

The A1HDCI has four zones. Zone 1 is the

principal one with the 12 output channels.

Zone 2 (marked in red) has component

video, S-Video, composite video, stereo

coaxial analog, and Toslink optical outputs.

Zone 3 (marked in green) has composite

video and stereo coaxial analog outputs.

Zone 4 just has Toslink optical output for

audio. So, basically, you could have audio/

video in three zones and audio in a fourth

zone, all playing at the same time in different

rooms of your home.

For my setup, I connected a Denon DVD-

2500BTCI Blu-ray player to the DVD input,

a Denon DVD-2930CI DVD player with

Denon Link to the HDP input, a DirecTV

satellite box to the SAT input, a Toshiba HD-

A1 HD DVD player to the VCR input, and

my media server to the DVR-1 input. All

of these are HDMI connections. My media

server has a DVI output, which I connected

to the DVR-1 HDMI input with an adaptor

cable for the video, and a Toslink optical

cable to the DVR-1 optical input jack just

underneath the DVR-1 HDMI jack. When

I selected that input, the SSP recognized

that video was coming in via HDMI and

audio via Toslink. This is one of the things

that most impressed me about the SSP. The

thing just worked, without any hassles trying

to decipher input configurations. The photo

below shows the media server connections.

I also have an old JVC VCR that I use to

play some instructional video tapes. I

connected this to the DVR-2 jacks, but used

the composite video and analog audio jacks

instead of the HDMI jack. This is shown in

the photo below.

So, all my sources are digital, connected via

HDMI (and Denon Link), except for the

JVC VCR which is analog.

I decided not to change the names of the

inputs as displayed on the front panel (because

they would then not match the names of the

jacks on the rear panel), but simply taped a

printout of the connections to the top of my

equipment rack which lists each input and

what is connected to it.

I used the SSP for several months with a Classé

CDP-502 five-channel power amplifier and a

two-channel amp for the sides, but recently

got the Denon POA-AH1DCI ten-channel

power amplifier and connected that to the

SSP. Here is a photo of the rear panel. (Click

on the photo to see a large version.)

The amplifier is modular, with all ten channels

arranged with their inputs and outputs across

the rear panel. At the top of each module are

RCA and XLR input jacks, and at the bottom

of the modules, you have to use a slider

switch to select which type of input you want

to use. The Denon SSP has XLR outputs,

so I used the XLR inputs on the amplifier

(Nordost cables). Also at the bottom you can

see switches to select whether the amplifier

module operates individually or bridged with

the adjacent module. If you select bridge or

bi-amp, the input to the right module of the

pair serves as input to two modules. For bi-