Denon 3805 zone 2 or 3 difficulties

[sacbratboy]

I've been trying to set-up my system to drive a pair of speakers on Zone 2 or 3. The main room is configured at 5.1 and would like to be able to drive a pair in another zone. I've read the manual and there is not an example of type of application. Does anyone have some ideas on what I can do to get this accomplished?

[elapsed]

I found this on AVS Forum, using Google Cache, give this a try and read on in the cached thread for more tips :)



I thought I'd try to post a quick Denon 3805 Zone 2 setup guide in the hopes that it might help someone out - I've seen most of this posted here and there, but not all together in one place. Note that in my case I have a 5.1 setup in my main listening room, and am driving a pair of patio speakers in Zone 2 via speaker-level outputs, as opposed to the pre-amp outs, so that I don't need a separate amplifier.

1. Connect the speaker pair to be used in Zone 2 to the Surround Back speaker terminals (should be to the far right when looking at the back of the 3805).

2. For any source that you wish to hear in Zone 2, connect L/R analog audio cables between the source and the appropriate inputs on the receiver, as digital audio will not be passed to Zone 2 or 3.

3. In System Setup, go into Speaker Setup, select Speaker Configuration, and set Surround Back speakers to "None".

4. Back in the main System Setup menu, go into Option Setup and select Power Amp Assignment, and set to Zone 2.

5. Select "Zone 2" from the list of sources towards the top of the remote, and then select "source on" at the very top of the pad to "turn on" Zone 2.

6. Select an active Zone 2 source from either the front panel or the remote (on the remote, select the Zone 2 component button, then choose the source below).

7. Here's the part that had me pulling my hair out - you MUST turn up the volume from the remote with the Zone 2 component selected, as it defaults to -70 dB.

According to a newsgroup post I finally dug up, the Zone 2 volume can't be set from the front panel, you must use the remote. I had done everything else correctly and still didn't get anything out of my Zone 2 speakers until I performed step 7 above. I have a separate volume control on my patio, so I set the Zone 2 volume to 0 dB via the remote, then adjust my outside volume control to the proper volume (EDIT - the 3805 will actually send a fixed volume level to Zone 2 even when using the speaker outs - details in posts below).

I had thought that my problem might have been related to volume level, but I noticed that once you assign the power amp to Zone 2, the Zone 2 volume level option disappears from the list, as this seems to apply to the pre-amp/low-level outs rather than the speaker terminals.

Hope this helps someone, please feel free to add or correct if necessary - as has been stated many times already, the Denon manual occassionally leaves something to be desired, and it would have been nice to find a step-by-step Zone 2 setup section to avoid this type of frustration... so if I left anything out or got something wrong please let me know...

Descolada

[EDIT] Inserted instructions to "turn on" Zone 2, which is required to avoid the "Zone 2 No Power" message that ramosma ran into several posts down... thanks tvromero for figuring this out!

Source: http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:2U5hcYv03NIJ:www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php%3Ft%3D412318+denon+avr-3805+zone+2&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=5&client=firefox-a

[sacbratboy]

Thanks for the thread, I've been able to get sound now. My next challenge is to be able to listen to different outputs. Thanks again for the help!