Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Many of the reviews I read regarding the Denon receiver gave endless praise for the unit, which helped me in my decision to purchase it. I was looking forward to having a new receiver, and especially one with the AirPlay feature. Unfortunately I was extremely disappointed. I want to point out, though, that I do believe the receiver is good, but only for certain people; not including me. Considering there are many rave reviews toting all the great features, I'm only going to highlight some of the shortcomings: - The airplay feature I was very excited to use, but it only worked correctly a couple of times. In all other instances I resorted to just plugging in my iPod or computer because getting the AirPlay to work proved too much a hassle. Though I took time to initially set everything up properly so that AirPlay worked, I lost patience when I just wanted the feature to work without spending too much time to diagnose what could be causing problems. Perhaps one could argue that I should have taken more time to figure out what was causing the problem, unfortunately it's not convenient to do so when you're cooking (or working on any other task) and just want music to play without hassle. Considering the AirPlay feature was one of the top selling features for me, this was a huge disappointment. It just didn't work consistently. - While this is a 7.1 receiver and is capable of two zones, it can't be both. You either are able to have 7.1 channels, OR 5.1 channels and a second zone. Having both wasn't important to me as my ears aren't so picky as to need 7 speakers (though I do need two zones), but I thought it was worth mentioning as it may be important for some. - The zone operational usage functions poorly for my setup. Changing volume, for example, requires each zone to be adjusted separately. My setup has main speakers in the living room, and the second zone in the dining room. When the music isn't loud enough, I want both zones adjusted together. It seems clunky to require both zones to separately be controlled. This may benefit other setups, but for my setup it's just a clumsy management. Same goes for changing input. If you would want to change the input from, say, internet radio to an audio input (e.g. MP3 player), the system requires you to change it twice, once for each zone. - I never got the equalizer settings to produce good sound. I spent many hours with this receiver trying to get a good setup, and many moments were spent trying to adjust settings so that the sound output was good. It couldn't be done and I used the same speakers that were producing great sound with my previous receiver. Also, after finally settling for mediocre sound, I was shocked that the equalizer settings could only be applied to the main zone; the second zone sounded absolutely horrific. - The menu is just haphazard in its organization of tasks and it's a pain to complete any adjustments. I could gripe on and on about this, but perhaps it would be more beneficial for a perspective buyer to download the manual and review the menu flow chart. It's disgraceful and lacks any sign of typical human intuition. With the above said, I do still think this receiver might possibly be the right receiver for the right person. Someone who doesn't mind spending endless hours tweaking every setting so that the setup is correct; someone who is patient when at first response the receiver doesn't do what you want it to do (AirPlay). Someone who is blind to needing intuitive operations (e.g. menu flow and remote). The receiver on paper has some great features, but it just doesn't meet my needs of a simple yet feature-rich, easy-to-use receiver.