This Denon can play loudly too, certainly enough to fill all but the largest of rooms. The bear fight is delivered with plenty of enthusiasm and no shortage of punch. It all helps to draw the viewer more into the action on the screen.Īs the film approaches its finale, the amp is happy to move up through the gears delivering a spacious soundfield packed with stable and precise movement of growls and screams. Low-level dynamic shifts are delivered with skill and without overstatement. There’s weight, natural warmth and articulation in the midrange that leaves most rivals sounding mechanical in comparison. We start off with a Blu-ray of Pixar’s Brave and like what we hear. We use it in a variety of modes – 5.1, 7.1, stereo and Dolby Atmos 5.1.2 – and it never fails to impress. Once up and running the X2300W sounds beautifully balanced. Epson’s EH-TW7200 projector carries out display duties. Our reference system is made up of Cambridge’s CXU Blu-ray player, the Panasonic DMP-UB900 4K Blu-ray player and PMC’s Twenty 23 7.1 surround package, coupled to KEF R50 upward-firing Atmos speakers. MORE: Dolby Atmos: What is it? How can you get it? The latter is closer to the way measurements are taken with traditional two-channel kit. That output drops to a claimed 95W per channel into an eight ohm load, measured across 20Hz-20kHz with distortion held at 0.08% and two channels driven. Impressive, but it should be noted that – just like every other major AV amp manufacturer – Denon is quoting figures measured under very generous conditions (six ohm load, 1kHz, 1% THD and only one channel driven). The X2300W’s power output is unchanged from the last version and rated at 7 x 150W per channel. The latter, along with the ability to stream AIFF files, is new for this model. The 2300 will stream just about every format across a network including 24-bit/192kHz PCM and DSD in both single and double speed form. Even so, given a choice we would still stick to using an Ethernet cable for the extra stability it provides. Helping matters is a new-found ability to work in the 5GHz waveband along with the 2.4GHz of its predecessor. Denon has tried hard to make this amplifier stable when using wi-fi, even in electrically noisy environments, and it works well in our test rooms.
#DENON AVR X1300 MANUAL BLUETOOTH#
Spotify Connect, Airplay, Bluetooth are all supported, as is Internet radio and streaming from a NAS device on your home network.
#DENON AVR X1300 MANUAL SOFTWARE UPGRADE#
The ability to handle DTS:X is a software upgrade away, expected later this year. It will decode all current home cinema sound formats from Dolby and DTS, including Dolby Atmos in 5.1.2 form. Elsewhere this amplifier is about as loaded as these things get.