NETWORKED AV RECEIVERS DENON AVR-X2200W/AVR-X3200W

Things just won’t stand still, but Denon seems up to the challenge. Affixed to the sides of the cartons of Denon’s nifty new AVR-X2200W and AVR-X3200W networked AV receivers are stickers proclaiming these units to be ‘DTS:X ready’. ‘DTS:X’ is DTS’s answer to Dolby Atmos, providing objectlevel surround sound and a sense of height. ‘Ready’ means that a firmware update will be arriving after a while — probably by the end of 2015 — adding this feature to these receivers. Until then, we have to make do with mereDolby Atmos and Dolby Surround. Poor us!

EQUIPMENT

We are combining two reviews here, since there are many similarities between these two units, both 7.1-channel home theatre receivers with, as you’d expect, the more expensive AVR-X3200W offering somewhat higher specifications and a larger feature set than the AVR-X2200W. Which is not to say that the X2200W is particularly short-changed. For example, the ‘W’ at the end of both monikers marks the wireless network capability built into