Denon 2900 - the best thing since sliced bread?

[annex666]

According to Denon's marketing hype (and to be fair most of the comercial reviews - all be they thin on the ground), the new DVD-2900 is the best multi-format player on the market (give the price range naturaly).

Has anyone had any experience of the player - any feedback would be great as I'm considering auditioning one for my system.

[A 8]

I got mine in May.
Its not a revolution though, it is good and as good as it gets for the money but I am sure the successor of the 3900 will be better.

Are there any particular aspects of the machine you're interested in.

[annex666]

Thanks for the reply.

I was interested in the main qualities of the player naturally - for example the sound quality of the high-res formats.

Also day to day things like build quality (although I'm sure this wont be a problem for the Denon, given their reputation) - for example is there a spinback noise problem? how smooth is the loading tray, etc - those type of things.

Any general comments would be good, for example any problems you may have had with it, pro's and con's etc.

You say the 3900's succesor should be better, but is that not a DVD-V/A only machine, i.e. no SACD playback?

Thanks again for the feedback on the player.

[A 8]

It is on all counts, in its price segment a very good player.

It will however not beat a Krell or any other highend gear.

On dvda and sacd it is good enough to get me exited about the formats and the fact that it aslo does PS PAL makes it a no brainer for me.

It is solid as rock, quite, very smooth nice feel, NO layerchange!, will play mp3 and jpegs, great picture, sound is smooth, clean, very dynamic can however get a bit crushed and lack foundation when pushed, again in its range very good.

It has a silicon Si 504 for I/P conversion and ADV 7300 da for svideo and component. Sound is decoded by a analog devices melody 32 bit dsp and da conversion is done by 3 burrbrown DSD/PCM1790 (cant find data sheets on these) and opamps are a 2068 type and ad825. Not more then one pair in parallel (balanced) and another for buffer.
Regulators are your average 78xx and some sharp lowdropout version for 3.3, 2.5 and 1.8 voltages

Powers supply is in general a bit weak which is why I think the successor of the 3800 will be much better.
I am pretty sure it will include sacd and a few other nice features.

If you are into heavy tweeking this will be a rewarding candidate.

It is difficult to give any good advice unless you give me a reference.

[annex666]

...ok after hearing all this good of the Denon the killer question has to be what it looks like inside.

Is there any chance you could post some pics of the player to further whet my appetite?




Cheers for all the response thus far.

[Freddie]

Here's a picture.

[A 8]

Thats it,

The two boards in the left section are the video and audio boards, the upper one is the video board and contains all processing after the mpeg decoder.

easy to get to in other words.

[annex666]

Looks very promising - am I right in thinking that the power supply is a SMPS and that it's replacable (should I want to make a linear one instead for example)?

It looks like theres enough space in there to beef up the PS a bit - if that's the PS on the left of the picture?

Cheers again for the post - nice player.

[annex666]

..any chance of some close-ups?

[A 8]

I might do some closeups next time mine gets taken apart.

Yes the ps is on the left and it is a switch mode supply, lots of space to beef up..hehe.
The A1/9000 has the same switch mode supply for all functions but the audio and video analog supplies.

I quickly found that I needed to beef up the analog video supply a bit.

Have not touched the audio side yet, still trying to figure out the best strategy.

It gets pretty hot and to much tweaking without considering heat dissipation could potentially get you into problems.