One of the phenomena that most fascinates me is the weird dissonance that results from a significant disconnect between perception and reality. For most areas of interest or influence, it’s easy enough to chalk it up to cultural hegemony, but when it happens in the domain of A/V, I’m not sure what to call it. Whatever the cause, though, there’s this perception that home theater is dead and dying harder every day—that A/V receivers like Denon’s new AVR‑X2900H (US$1349, CA$1799, £899, €1000) are a relic of the past and just barely hanging on. That pretty soon you just won’t be able to buy a mass-market one at all.
In the face of that, the AVR guide I maintain for Wirecutter is the one assignment my editors won’t let me structurally tinker with whatsoever, because it’s so successful, and the comments section used to be full of just regular old people grateful for the buying advice before we recently scrapped the old comments to switch over to the system used by the rest of the New York Times. So, to paraphrase no less than Sieur Louis de Conte himself, the rumors of the AVR’s demise are greatly exaggerated.
But the AVR‑X2900H falls into weird territory in Denon’s overall X‑series lineup, and it’s odd (to me) that in revamping the core lineup for the first time since (I think) 2023, Denon aimed for the middle of the pack. It’s odd because, in my experience, a heat map of overall interest in the X‑series would show some bright spots around the level of the X1800H (US$849) for normies and the X4800H (US$2799) for enthusiasts, so I would have expected Denon to start revamping there first. But given that I’ve never run an A/V company, and given that I write for two very different audiences, you can decide exactly how many grains of salt to take that intuition with. The company’s sales figures certainly outweigh my best hunches.
If you’re not as familiar with the X‑series line and how its offerings stack up, it might be useful to point out that what we’re talking about here is a “7.2-channel” receiver rated to deliver 95Wpc (into 8 ohms, full bandwidth, two channels driven, with 0.08% THD+N) or 125Wpc (into 6 ohms, measured at 1kHz, two channels driven, 0.7% THD+N). It features six HDCP 2.3-compliant inputs—three of which will support 4K signals up to 60Hz, and three of which will handle up to 4K@120Hz or 8K@60Hz. It’ll also pass through 1440p video, making it a good option for PC gamers who route their audio and video through an AVR.
It sports two HDMI outs, one with eARC, as well as stereo RCA inputs for four line-level sources, an MM phono input, one coaxial and two optical digital ins, preamp outputs for the front two channels, as well as a zone-two stereo pre-out, AM and FM radio antenna connections, ethernet, and several control connections: RS‑232, IR in and out (3.5mm), and a 12V trigger connection. There’s also 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi‑Fi, as well as a Bluetooth connection that only supports the SBC codec.
But to make up for that, there’s AirPlay 2, as well as Sound United’s own HEOS multiroom audio app, which brings with it support for all the Connects (Spotify, Tidal, and Qobuz) as well as in-app support for Amazon Music, Pandora, Deezer, TuneIn, iHeart, SiriusXM, and SoundCloud. It’s also Roon Ready.
For room correction, Audyssey MultEQ XT is baked in—you have to step up to the X3900H to get MultEQ XT32, which in my opinion is the one you want. You can also buy an add-on Dirac Live license, which will run you US$259 for the band-limited version (which is all you really need, to be honest) or US$349 for the full-bandwidth version. Bass Control and ART are not supported at all.
All of which leads to an obvious question: what differentiates the incoming X2900H from the outgoing X2800H? Denon touts the move to a new 32-bit, 8-channel Cirrus Logic DAC chip as a big selling feature. Much more meaningful, in my opinion, are an improved backlit remote control, support for the new Denon Home 200, Home 400, or Home 600 streaming loudspeakers as wireless surrounds, the aforementioned 1440p video pass-through and support for AMD FreeSync technology (noteworthy if you’re using an AVR with your gaming PC rig), Dolby Atmos via AirPlay (a huge addition, in my opinion), and a feature that I had every intention of ridiculing to my heart’s content but actually ended up loving: an optional onscreen channel level monitor.
Perhaps of less consequence to many but of interest to me is how Denon packages and presents the receiver. There has definitely been a meaningful improvement in the pack-in materials, the layout of the packaging, and the overall unboxing experience. The X2900H just feels more special coming out of the box, and its faceplate has also been subtly redesigned, with beveled buttons and a more instantly readable control panel overall, all of which just makes the thing feel nicer in a way that warms my heart.
Setting up and dialing in the AVR‑X2900H
I know I say this pretty much every time I review a mid-priced Denon AVR, but I will never, ever get tired of how well the company’s setup screens hold your hand through the installation and configuration process—if, that is, you want your hand held. Denon gets that consent is important. If it’s far from your first rodeo and you simply want to go straight to the speaker-assignment, input-setup, and network-configuration screens, you can totally do that. But the setup wizard strikes a really nice balance between walking you through each step in order and not making you feel like a mouth-breather. So I use the wizard despite the fact that I could set these things up on Ambien if I needed to.
The wizard asks you, one at a time, what speakers you have, then kindly shows you which terminals to connect them to. It’s worth noting that, even though this is listed as a 7.2-channel receiver, it only asks if you have a sub, then tells you to connect it to the subwoofer output, your first clue that the dual sub outs are not independent and that this thing only processes 7.1 channels. But that’s not a deal-breaker at this price point.
I also really like that the setup wizard makes it abundantly clear that if you’re using Atmos speakers, you can only have two, and it makes a difference whether they’re installed toward the front or middle of the room in-ceiling or, conversely, if they’re up-firing modules connected to your front or surround speakers.
It’s such a lovely and intuitive setup wizard overall that even the most minor inconsistencies—the sort of stuff you’d likely otherwise just gloss right over—kinda stand out. For instance, it gets to a point where the onscreen menus ask if you’d like to continue onscreen or in the app. If you select the app option and you already have the HEOS app installed, the receiver will find that, and the app will launch into a firmware update if one is necessary. That sort of thing might panic or confuse the very uninitiated. Although, to be fair, the very uninitiated are unlikely to already have the HEOS app installed with an associated account logged in.
Another quirk—and something I’ve harped on any number of times, I know—is that when you enter the onscreen menus for Audyssey setup, there’s no indication whatsoever that the MultEQ Editor app exists and will allow you to dial in the performance of your system much more precisely. It’s not referenced in the manual, either, which I find doubly strange. The MultEQ Editor app is the only way to customize your target curve and, more importantly, set maximum filter frequencies, and I relied on the X2900H’s speaker preset capabilities to set up both full-range and band-limited room correction filters for my system, the results of which we’ll dig into in the performance section below. I guess Denon assumes that if you know what to do with the MultEQ Editor app, you know it exists and don’t need a pointer? It’s just odd to me that it’s not even referenced in the manual, as far as I can tell.
Details are also scant on Dirac Live setup, but I made the controversial decision not to run Dirac for the purposes of this review.
Put down your pitchforks. Let me explain why.
As mentioned above, band-limited Dirac Live (the version most people should probably run) is a US$259 upcharge on paper. But it’s actually costlier than that, because Dirac won’t run with the included Audyssey mike connected to the system. You’ll need to add a USB mike, and Denon recommends the miniDSP UMIK‑1 (US$79), which brings the upcharge to $338, or $428 if you know for sure you want full-bandwidth filters.
I’ve argued in the past for the value of Dirac’s pricey upgrades, especially Bass Control, but in this case, we’re talking about expensive upgrades just to bring you up to the level of the Dirac capabilities baked into much less expensive AVRs. I just don’t see many people willing to shell out $1777 for a 7.1-channel mass-market A/V receiver, and had I gone to the lengths required to drag a computer into that room and use my own mike to run Dirac setup, I’d be much more inclined to gripe about how nobody in their right mind would do this.
I like Denon. I want to say nice things about Denon. My overall impressions of the AVR‑X2900H were quite good out of the box. I just didn’t want to spoil that by spilling a lot of ink over an upgrade I don’t think anybody is going to do. So all of my listening impressions were done with Audyssey MultEQ XT, with one setup run full-range (shown above) and another band-limited (shown below) at a little over 900Hz or thereabouts, which is about two octaves above the transition between the modal region and the ray region of my room.
I relied on two different speaker configurations during my evaluation. At the core of both was a 5.1 setup including my RSL CG3 and CG23 bookshelf speakers and center, as well as the RSL Speedwoofer 10S. I also added a pair of GoldenEar Technology SuperSat 3s overhead to test out the unit’s Atmos capabilities, but removed the latter for most of my testing and relied on a simple 5.1 setup. As I’ve said before, I find most Atmos movie mixes distracting, and one thing I definitely don’t want to do when I’m evaluating a piece of gear is introduce distractions. So once I was satisfied that the AVR‑X2900H could drive seven speakers at a time sufficiently, I reverted to a wholly ear-level setup.
For whatever reason, MultEQ XT wanted to set the crossover between my sub and surround speakers at a wholly inappropriate 60Hz, despite setting the crossover for the fronts at a more sensible 90Hz. (All four are CG3 bookshelf speakers, by the way.) I left the 80Hz crossover for the center as it was and bumped the surrounds up to a 90Hz crossover manually, which resulted in acceptable integration overall.
Speaking of integration, but of a wholly different sort: if you’re in possession of an advanced home-automation system, you’ll be happy to hear that the X2900H is as easy to automate as you’d expect a piece of Denon gear to be. Upon launching Composer Pro, the programming software for my Control4 system, I saw the driver for the receiver waiting for me in the Discovered tab, meaning that the only “programming” I had to do was to drag the driver into the appropriate room, drag and drop the source and display connections, and high-five myself for a job well done. Sources for this review included my Roku Ultra streamer, as well as my Oppo UDP‑205 universal disc player and my iPhone 16 Pro Max.
In day-to-day use, I mostly just used the Control4 remote to fire up my system and switch to the appropriate input. The remote that comes with the X2900H is thoughtfully laid out and ergonomic enough that I found it easier just to use it for most of my testing, since I was doing a lot of fiddly tweaking and not using the receiver as a consumer would.
Interestingly, installing the SDDP driver for the X2900H also automatically added the HEOS Network driver to that room, which allows you to log into your account and seamlessly integrate any HEOS devices into your Control4 whole-home control system.
How does the AVR‑X2900H perform?
By some miracle, as I was diving deep into my review of the AVR‑X2900H, my long-awaited UHD Blu‑ray copy of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair arrived from Lionsgate Limited well ahead of its intended release date. I’ve been champing at the bit for 22 years to see this cut of the film, so against all better judgment, I popped in the first disc and devoured it via the Denon instead of in my reference home-theater system, which will have to wait a week or so.
This wasn’t pure indulgence, mind you. I watch Kill Bill: Volume 1 at least three or four times a year, and I find the ultimate showdown at the House of Blue Leaves—the climactic fight between the Bride and O‑Ren Ishii—to be a very revealing demo track. The audio may be 5.1 DTS‑HD Master Audio only, but it’s a masterclass in atmospheric mixing, especially in the earlier, talkier bits of the showdown, before steel starts to clash against steel.
There’s this delightful period sound effect that accompanies the fountain in the courtyard. It’s called a sōzu, if you’re curious, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that there’s a bamboo rocker that fills with water from the fountain and rotates to clack against a stone and then clock back into place. That clack-clocking sound shouldn’t come from the front left speaker, precisely, but it should be close to it. In fact, the clack and the clock should come from ever-so-slightly different places near but not directly tied to the front left speaker, and the reverberance of the sound effect should be slightly disconnected from the direct sound. If it works, you don’t think about any of those specifics. Your brain just places a little sōzu off to the side of the space in a way that helps build the reality of this wholly unreal film.
I was a little worried that in re-cutting the two volumes together to restore QT’s original vision for Kill Bill as one film, not two—although in this case still spread across two UHD Blu‑ray discs—somebody might tinker with the sound mix and destroy the delicate ambiance of this sound effect. But via the X2900H, I heard exactly the spatial placement I expected, as well as exactly the right balance between direct and reverberant sound. And when the talky bits wrapped up and the fighting began, I was impressed by how well the receiver handled the aggressive surround mix of Santa Esmeralda’s cover of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”
10/10, as the kids say. No notes.
Another sound experience that I love for its delicate atmosphere and overall sense of space is the Atmos mix for the theatrical cut of Guillermo del Toro’s remake of Nightmare Alley. Mind you, if you want to watch the superior version of the film, check out the 159-minute monochromatic director’s cut found on the Criterion 4K Blu‑ray release. But the mix for that one is 5.1 only, and it shames me to admit this, but the Atmos mix for the theatrical cut is better. Keep in mind, I say that as an Atmos-movie-mix hater for the most part.
The thing is, as I’ve said before, there’s this scene in the first act of the film in which a thunderstorm mutters and grumbles on the horizon, and it legitimately feels like the sound is coming from miles away, not mere feet. As it turns out, that effect works even with only two overhead speakers, as long as they’re configured correctly. Brilliantly, in fact. The X2900H proved its ability to deliver delicate nuance while crafting the illusion of a huge perceptual space.
And with that out of the way, I disconnected the overhead speakers and focused my energies purely on a 5.1-channel setup, so I could concentrate more on pure sound quality and the integration between satellites and subwoofer.
A great test disc for this is the UHD Blu‑ray release of Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones, especially the opening scene in which Senator Amidala’s gleaming silver spaceship whooshes across the screen on its approach to the planet-city of Coruscant. It was with this scene that I found the X2900H’s limits, at least when driving my RSL speaker system in my 12′ × 15′ media room/bedroom.
With the volume set to deliver peaks of around 109dB from my listening position, there was a brief moment when I actually pushed the left surround channel into clipping. It didn’t trigger any sort of fault-protection mode, but had that intense peak lasted more than another second or so, I imagine it would have, or perhaps even fried a voice coil. But bringing the volume down to the point where peaks were below 105dB allowed the scene to play with no clipping. Integration between the sub and satellites wasn’t exactly perfect here, but it was good. Very good.
It was the next chapter of Episode II, though, that really let me evaluate the MultEQ XT room correction and the effects of full-bandwidth correction versus a band-limited approach. I’ve described this scene before, I know: a bunch of Jedi Masters sit across the desk from Chancellor Palpatine, gabbing about galactic geopolitics. What makes it a neat test scene is that the dialogue of all the characters is mixed pretty dry into the center channel, whereas the reverberance of their voices gets pushed to the left and right extremes of the front soundstage. If everything is firing on all cylinders, you don’t really notice. If something is wrong, though, the mix sounds contrived, congested, and artificial.
With MultEQ XT running full-bandwidth, I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call the sound wholly contrived, congested, and artificial, but it was certainly trending in that direction. Switching to my band-limited filters, with the max filter frequency set to (I think) somewhere around 955Hz, everything fell right into place and the mix became the sort of thing you find yourself lost in rather than scrutinizing, which is exactly as it should be.
The pudding that really proved the superiority of this approach to MultEQ XT setup was “The Seed” from Aurora’s A Different Kind of Human (Step II) (24‑bit/48kHz ALAC, Glassnote Entertainment Group LLC / Apple Music) streamed via AirPlay. With the room correction run full-range, the precise attack of the percussion and the room-penetrating stereo mix of the music really took a bit of a hit. It sounded constricted and bound compared with the same song played through the band-limited room-correction filters. With the latter, every ounce of space in the mix was rendered perfectly and precisely, and that whole clichéd “did I accidentally turn on surround sound upmixing?” sensation kicked in hard. With the former, it just sort of sounded flat and uninspiring.
The truly meaningful point of distinction was in the rendering of Aurora’s vocals, though. If you’re not familiar with her voice, it might help to know that she doesn’t sound entirely human. She doesn’t sing with much if any vibrato. Her voice doesn’t seem to come from her throat or her chest as much as it does with most mortal creatures. Even when doubled and doubled and doubled again, stacked and processed and drenched in reverb, there’s a purity of tone to her voice that’s unique, or at the very least incredibly distinctive. And with MultEQ XT running full-range, her voice just didn’t sound right. At all. It didn’t sound ethereal; it sounded alien.
I’ve heard full-bandwidth MultEQ XT32, the step-up version of Audyssey, render her voice faithfully. Ditto Dirac Live. Double-ditto Anthem Room Correction. But MultEQ XT either doesn’t have enough filters or enough DSP horsepower to process her vocals without doing harm, so it’s best employed in a more targeted manner, in my opinion.
And I’m glad the X2900H lets you do that via the MultEQ Editor app. I just wish it would alert you to that capability in its manual, or its otherwise delightfully comprehensive setup wizard.
On the other hand, with Audyssey turned off completely, the bass performance of the system lost consistency, control, and authority across the board. The flyover of Amidala’s ship in Episode II sounded bloated and warbly. The bass line of “The Seed,” which really kicks in at right around the 1:00 mark, lost a lot in terms of note-to-note and seat-to-seat consistency. So I don’t want to give the impression here that MultEQ XT is without merit. It is. It improves bass performance appreciably, which is what you really need room correction for to begin with.
What alternatives should you consider in this price range?
Comparison, they say, is the thief of joy, but I’m not here to spark joy; I’m here to help you decide how to spend your money. So comparisons must be made.
And I think if you’re considering the AVR‑X2900H as your first—or your next—AVR, you’re likely also eyeballing the Onkyo TX‑RZ30, which technically retails for US$1199 but streets for between $899 and $1099 most of the time. It’s a 9.2-channel receiver with nine channels of amplification and 9.2-channel preamp outs. It’s rated to deliver 100Wpc versus 95Wpc, it has more line-level RCA inputs, it comes with a license for band-limited Dirac Live (up to 500Hz), and can be upgraded to full-bandwidth room correction with Bass Control. It has dual independent subwoofer outputs and a much beefier power supply (750W versus 500W).
Then again, it lacks wireless surround speaker capabilities, isn’t anywhere near as nice looking, and is about as beginner-friendly as Absalom, Absalom!, which is to say not at all. If you’re not well-versed in AVR setup, and if you’re not very well informed about the fundamentals of room acoustics and the strengths and weaknesses of room correction, you’re not going to get the most out of the RZ30. I’m sorry, you’re just not.
On the other hand, I feel like anyone who can read and follow directions can get good sound out of the X2900H, and if you snoop around the internet enough to learn about the unadvertised MultEQ Editor app (or, hey, if you read this review), you can get really good sound from it with minimal effort and no real understanding of what you’re doing.
TL;DR: Is the Denon AVR‑X2900H worth the money?
As to the question of whether or not the X2900H is a good value in and of itself, ignoring the competition—because performance isn’t everything, and if you value aesthetics, good setup menus, a nice remote control, and interoperability with the HEOS multiroom ecosystem, then the X2900H should climb a few notches in your rankings—I’m still a little torn.
I think most people who don’t need more channels of amplification or dual HDMI outputs would be better served by the far more affordable AVR‑X1800H (US$849). Or maybe you should wait for the inevitable X1900H.
On the other hand, anyone who’s really interested in doing Atmos right and who wants to stick with the Denon brand would almost certainly be better served by the X3900H, which sells for a good bit more at US$1849, but delivers nine channels of amplification and 11 channels of processing, with 105Wpc of rated output, and—most importantly—a massive upgrade to Audyssey MultEQ XT32 room correction, with all the bells and whistles that come along with it.
Let’s get down to brass tacks here: in our extensive blind-panel testing for Wirecutter, we learned a long time ago that the room correction is what really differentiates the sound of two level-matched AVRs. And XT32 simply whips the snot out of XT every day of the week and thrice on weekends. Yes, with Dirac Live I can, with a lot of effort, get better results than Audyssey MultEQ XT32. But with the latter, I feel like anyone can tune a system to very nearly the best their room and their speakers are capable of.
So don’t think of the upgrade from X2900H to X3900H as an upgrade from a $1349 receiver to a $1849 receiver. If you really want a fair comparison, the X2900H upgraded with fully unlocked Dirac Live room correction—which is miles better than MultEQ XT but in most people’s hands roughly equivalent to XT32—is more like $1777. To me, it’s just a no-brainer that the X3900H is worth the extra $72.
But maybe you don’t want to use room correction of any sort, in any implementation. And maybe seven amplified channels with no upgrade path for outboard multichannel amplification is all you want or need. I’m not here to tell you you’re wrong. If that’s the case, the AVR‑X2900H is a wonderful AVR with setup menus and a back panel layout that every other AVR manufacturer should be ripping off as much as they can within the constraints of all the relevant intellectual-property laws.
. . . Dennis Burger
dennisb@soundstagenetwork.com
Associated Equipment
- Loudspeakers: RSL CG3 and CG23
- Subwoofer: RSL Speedwoofer 10S
- Sources: Roku Ultra 4802R, Oppo UDP‑205, iPhone 16 Pro Max
- Speaker cables: Monoprice Choice Series 12AWG
- Power conditioner: SurgeX SX‑AX15E Axess ELITE
Denon AVR‑X2900H A/V receiver
Price: US$1349, CA$1799, £899, €1000
Warranty: Two years, parts and labor
Sound United
5541 Fermi Ct.
Carlsbad, CA 92008
Phone: 1-800-497-8921
Website: denon.com
