Denon AVC-X3800H is ROON READY now

Since the last firmware update fro Denon my AVC-X3800H is Roon ready!

:+1:

3 Likes

I wonder if the X4800H will get certified.

I can confirm the AVC-X3800H works pretty well as a roon ready device, aside from the signal path converts back to PCM after processing, even though the manual confirms the Denon can play DSD at 5.6MHz.

Ideally, I’d like to avoid converting back down to PCM and keep the higher quality DSD.

Has anyone had any luck with the settings?

My X3800H is Roon Ready as well. I found out today by accident. My X4800H is not.

Oh man I want my x3700h to be Roon ready too! Do you know what firmware you are on? I checked and I’m on
|Version|6420-1110-8172-7060|
|-DTS Version|3.90.50.82|

Thanks!
John

Version 6500-9121-6072-7760
DTS Version 4.30.10.15

If your receiver is considered by Denon as a legacy device it won’t be certified:

Thanks @JLZ_Heos - how can I tell if my amp is legacy? I’m very confused - there doesn’t seem to be a categorical list published anywhere? Or am I bad at googling / ChatGPT?

Discontinued Products, Manuals & Specs | Denon™

Current series are 800s so anything below is legacy/discontinued/archived.
That line was released over 2 years ago and wondering if and when 900s will be available.

I can also confirm that my Denon AVC x3800h became roon ready after the last firmware update.

Works well for the most part, but there are a few niggles:

  1. When the ‘Roon Ready’ playback is initiated, the volume ALWAYS resets to -40db. I have checked all the settings I can think of, but nothing seems to fix this issue.

  2. Initiating a roon stream to my x3800 when it is turned off is troublesome. Initiating the stream does cause the x3800 to turn on, but the stream never begins playing.

More details from troubleshooting of this 2nd issue:
2a) Roon inevitably displays the message “Roon lost control of the Audio device because it was turned off” (despite the X3800 being on with a solid green indicator light).
2b) Roon seems to display the message just prior the amp pre-start finishing (when blinking green indicator turns solid green).
2c) The x3800 never switches to the ‘Roon Ready’ input, but instead remains on the last used input from when it was turned off.
2d) The action menu in Roon (menu displayed after the ‘speaker’ button is pressing - lower right corner) shows a power button (left most menu icon) but it is red indicating the X3800 is off, despite it being on.
2e) Pressing the red power button in the action menu causes the button to change away from red (indicating roon knows the transport is now active, I assume). Doing this does, however, cause the Heos Music input to be selected.
2f) Finally, if you again press the ‘Play’ icon in Roon, the stream finally plays over the x3800

Besides these two issues, the Roon Ready feature seems to work well, with stable playback, no skips/lags/drops, and cover art/track info updating almost instantly when songs change. I’m very happy for all this, but do hope the two issues I struggle with are easily addressed.

Can anyone else confirm whether or not they experience similar issues with other Denon or Marantz equipment which recently became Roon Ready?

When my model 40n became RR it was a bit odd until I rebooted my Roon server and power cycled the amps after that it worked well. The amp
Takes a while to power on and playback started after it finshed. If this doesn’t fix it I would raise a support request with both Denon and Roon.

My X4500H is not Roon Ready but I noticed the same as described from point 2c to 2e when AVR is controlled with RHEOS extension.
There must be a bug in the latest firmware as that never occurred before.
Hopefully it will be fixed in future release.

  1. Isn’t that what the Source Level setting is for? I’m pretty sure that is what it does on my Marantz. If not, you could always use a Quick Select (assuming you have one free).
  2. Only thing I can think of is the Network Control settings. If you already have this set to Always On then you may be out of luck starting the unit this way (best to check with Denon/Roon support). If you decide to use a Quick Select slot for #1 you could also use it to “fix” this (you would then just be one button press away from the correct input and desired starting vol. level).

I use Smart Select (I have a Marantz) to not only set the initial volume level on inputs but to also override D&M’s annoying propensity for upmixing.

  1. No, the source level doesn’t really help, adding +12db only raises the perceived volume @-40db to -28db. It also skews the volume level for the Heos input, so when you switch to another source, the volume is -12db lower…

In all other cases (i e. sources aside from Roon Ready via Heos), the volume when powering on remains at the last level before the previous shut down. This has to be a bug in the Roon Ready implementation - it doesn’t observe the startup volume setting, and is instead fixed at -40db.

  1. I rebooted my Roon Core and did a ‘deep reset’ of the AVR (using a front panel button sequence). So far the issues with initiating a Roon stream when the AVR is turned off seem better.

Will monitor a day or two and report back.

BTW - I have also registered a support ticket w/ Denon.

I haven’t seen any commentary on how it handles different zones, has anyone with an x3800h tried different zones via the new Roon Ready?