Review: Denon AVR-2106

Introduction
In January I posted about my home theater setup and I mentioned I wanted to upgrade my aging old Kenwood receiver with something newer and better. Well a few days ago I passed by the Denon dealer in Salmiya to check out some AV Receivers and I ended up buying one. I did a lot of research online before I decided to upgrade my receiver and I came to the conclusion that for my budget and my needs, the Denon AVR-2106 fit the bill perfectly. I had previously seen the receiver when I tagged along with K.TheKuwaiti when he was getting a Denon for his living room and I remember the price was around KD175 since they were having discounts. So I passed by the Salmiya dealer and I looked around and I couldn’t find the Denon AVR-2106. I asked the salesman about it and he told me they were out of stock but he would check to see on the computer if any of the other branches had any left. Two minutes later he tells me he found one more piece left, but its the display model in the Hawalli branch. I am not good at price haggling at all, in-fact there is only one person I have ever met that was worse then me and thats TivoGuy, but I went ahead and asked the guy how much discount extra would he give me since it was the display model. He checked on his computer and told me the lowest he could give me the amp was for KD161. I was like stunned, I wasn’t planning on getting the receiver, I was just checking on the price, but now with this special price it was just soo fucking tempting to resist. So I tell the guy OK and he was like give me a minute to call the Hawalli branch and make sure they still have it. Five minutes later he comes back to me and tells me that the receiver they have in stock is actually not displayed and is still brand new in the box. I was like thats great but I still just want to pay KD161. The salesman laughed and said that wouldn’t be a problem since I was a good customer. I couldn’t believe what a good deal I was getting, I quickly paid the money and went and picked up the receiver from the Hawalli branch.

What I Was Looking For
My old Kenwood KRF-V8881D receiver was rated at 130w when listening to 2 channels. In the specifications it never said how many watts it would be giving out if I was listening to all 5 channels but my guess would be it would hit around 80w if not less. My new amp had to be more powerful then that and preferably one that would allow me to bi-amp my front speakers. The Denon AVR-2106 are rated at 90w when listening to 7 channels at 8-ohms and 125w at 6-ohms. Now my front speakers are 4-ohms so my guess is they would pull even more power like 150w or something… if thats how it actually works. The AVR-2106 also allows me to bi-amp the front speakers although I have yet to try that since I need to get more cables. What is bi-amping? Simply put, some large speakers allow you to connect two separate inputs for better power output. My speakers are rated at 200-watts for example but my amp outputs only 90. Because I am only using 5 channels from the total of 7 the Denon can handle, I can connect the two extra channel outputs to power my main front speakers. So, instead of powering it using 90-watts, I am now powering it using 180.

My second requirement was the receiver had to have Dolby Prologic IIx so it could take the stereo audio signal of a TV broadcast and up-convert it to 5.1 surround sound. I also wanted a receiver that could convert video signals inputted as RCA to convert to S-Video for output. The reason for that is my DVD and Xbox both connect to the receiver via S-Video cables while my Tivo connects with an RCA cable. My old receiver couldn’t convert one signal to another so I had two video cables going into my TV, Video 1 and Video 2 and I had to keep swapping between them everytime I wanted to go from Xbox to Tivo or vice versa. It was a real pain. A receiver that would convert the RCA input to S-Video would mean only one cable out to the TV and only one video input no matter what I am doing. Finally my last requirement was a receiver that would allow me to rename the input functions. By this I mean with my Kenwood I had my xbox connected to the receiver through the VCR input and when I wanted to select the xbox I had to click on VCR. My Tivo was connected via the Tape input and to select it I had to select Tape. I wanted to be able to rename these generic names to keep things tidier and easier. The Denon allows me to do that, I renamed the VCR input on the Denon to Xbox and now when the Xbox is in use it shows Xbox on the receiver not VCR.

The Cool Extra Stuff it Does
Other then the stuff I was looking for in a receiver the Denon AVR-2106 also does some other cool stuff I wasn’t really looking for but I am glad it turned out to do. For example the On Screen Display. I can setup and change the settings of my receiver using the TV. Thats very practical since it means I could adjust the receiver from my couch and I could see all the settings very clearly on my large TV. Another cool thing is the receiver came with a special Mic which allows me to auto-setup the unit. When I first installed the receiver I setup the mic on the couch where I usually sit and I clicked the auto-setup button. After a couple of tones and white-noise, the receiver automatically determined the optimal settings for watching a movie while sitting in that position. Very cool stuff. Finally another cool thing is the way you connect devices to the receiver. The video inputs and audio inputs are not connected, you connect them manually on the receiver. Meaning I can connect the DVD video cable to the “VCR-3” port on the receiver while I connect the audio cable to the “Optical Cable 1” input. Using the menu system I tell the receiver that the audio for the input “VCR-3” is “Optical Cable 1”. Its a little thing but it makes life a lot easier.

What I Didn’t Like
One thing I was hoping the receiver would do was convert S-Video and RCA inputs to output as Composite. Sadly the receiver will only convert S-Video to RCA and RCA to S-Video but will not convert anything to composite or composite to anything. The higher end Denon’s can do it but their prices are also a lot higher. The second major disappointment was the remote. It has to be the most unergonomical, unlogical and super confusing remote ever. Its just terrible, I hate using it and lucky for me I won’t be using it EVER since I have the Harmony 880 universal remote. Other then these 2 issues I wasn’t able to find any other downside.

The Result
The Denon AVR-2106 is amazing and its such a huge upgrade over my old Kenwood. The sound ofcourse is just incredible, I watched bits and pieces of the movie The Core just to see how well the sound effects sounded and it was a difference of night and day compared to my old Kenwood. The Dolby Prologic IIx also is working really well in decoding the stereo sound from my downloaded TV shows. So far I am very impressed and I can’t wait to bi-amp my front speakers for even more power. For the price I paid and for what I am getting in return, there is absolutely no competition. I always wanted a Denon receiver and now I am one step closer to getting my perfect home theater setup. The final score for the receiver is a 4.5 out of 5. The crappy remote and the lack of Composite conversation brought the score down.

Update: I finally got around to bi-amping my front speakers and wow what a difference. The sound is even better now with soo much power!