How to Setup 11 Channel Atmos on Denon AVR-X4400H

How are you doing today? Channa D here and I’ve got a quick setup tutorial for the Denon AVR-X4400H.  Now in this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to go from a 9.1 channel set up to an 11.1 channel setup and I’ll be using the Outlaw Model 5000 Amplifier for this demonstration.  Either read the article below, or watch the video.  The Denon X4400H is on sale right, now so it’s a good time to pickup a GREAT AVR!

Denon AVR-X4400H – $899: https://amzn.to/2ps0nGY

Outla Model 5000 – $599: https://amzn.to/2psWzFg

Alright, so here we are in the Denon menu. So what we’re gonna do is go into speakers, go down to manual setup and go into amp assign. Now here we have the 9.1 channel setup. This is what I’ve got in my living room. I’ve got five ear level speakers and four height channels. What we want to do here is add the surround back channels to bring this up to 11.1.

So in assign mode we go from 9.1 to 11.1. At the bottom you see it says “Assigns all nine internal amplifiers to the main zone for surround sound speakers, must use external amp for two channels”.  Now first let’s go check out the terminal configuration. As you can see the surround back-right and surround back-left are grayed out and not being used. Currently we have nine speakers being used by the AVR-X4400H.

Let’s back out of that and now add the surround back channels, and when we go into layout we need to change five channel to five channel and surround back.  Now if you notice a pre-out section appears at the bottom and it says rear height and if you look at the diagram, the rear height channels now say PRE. So this is set up to where you need to connect the 2-channel amplifier for just the rear height speakers. This is not what I recommend. If you’re going to take that step and get a 2-channel amplifier, you’re better off powering your front speakers. So here we can change the pre-out from the rear height to front. So now the Denon will be powering all the height speakers and your surround speakers, your surround back speakers and your center channel, but it will not be powering the front two speakers.

Alright so now we go into terminal configuration again and you see now the surround back right and surround back left are in service. The front right and front left are not in service, and you can see the front left and right pre-outs have been highlighted or turned on. Alright so now if we were to change it to the height 2 as the pre outs, you can see that height 2 is grayed out on the far right. Both the height 2 right, height 2 left, and in the pre-out section the high to left and right are highlighted or designated as on, and all the pre outs are already on so you can actually plug in a three channel amplifier.  You could power your left front, your right front and your center with an external power amplifier, or you could take it a step further and get a five channel amplifier and power your five main speakers and let the Denon power the other six speakers. So you’ve got a little bit of flexibility, not total flexibility because this isn’t a full-fledged pre-amp/processor where you can configure your power any way you want.  At least they give you a little bit of leeway and you’re able to power the front and let the Denon power the rear heights, so that’s pretty cool.

Now one thing we have to remember is we need to go into speaker config. If you add speakers in the amp assign section, we always need to go to speaker config and double check to make sure that those new speakers that we just added are on. As you can see here, surround back is set to none. So anytime you add anything in amp assign, you always have got to come back to speaker config and set it up properly. So here we have small and we can choose between one speaker or two speakers. Well we want the 11 channel, so we set it to 2 speakers and now if you plug speakers in you’ll get sound out of it. When surround back was set to none, you wouldn’t hear anything. So don’t ever forget this step!

Alright, just so you guys can see once again I’ve got front left, front right, center, surround left, and surround right plugged into the Outlaw Model 5000 and this amplifier is $599 and it’s doing a great job paired up with this Denon X4400H. Now if you wanted to purchase an 11 channel AVR like the Denon X6400H, but  just didn’t have the money, you can could get the X4400H and then down the road get a 2, 3, or 5 channel amplifier to get all 11 channels running

Well that’s pretty much it for this tutorial, I hope you liked it and I hope it was helpful.  Don’t forget to pickup your Denon X4400H and Outlaw Model 5000 Amplifier today!

Denon AVR-X4400H – $899: https://amzn.to/2ps0nGY

Outla Model 5000 – $599: https://amzn.to/2psWzFg