I just got this product from 4elctronicwarehouse.com and love it!!! I got great service and it arrived promptly. I've had it for about a week now and just can't believe how pure the sound is!!! It even sounds better than my $10,000 rack of separates. I recommend this to everyone!!! The salesman at 4electronicwarehouse.com really helped in choosing this receiver. Give them a call at 217-224-6171.

I've had the 5700 hooked up to a new home theater system for a few weeks now....I am very pleased with the product and highly recommend it. I use the Denon for about 60%/40% music and movies. Clean and crisp power is how I would describe it. I believe its the best receiver available on the market today.

Stellar!!! Anyone who doesn't give this thing 5 stars is absolutely crazy. I've had mine for a month and I'm amazed. I hear NO hiss whatsoever. This thing makes my Monitor Audio Silver Series Speakers sound like a gift from Heaven. This is no joke. I spent many months researching and auditioning recievers. I must say that I would of bought the Dsp A-1 if my local retailer would not have came down to $2300, but he did!! Boy was I happy. Don't get me wrong, the DSP-A1 is great, but the Denon is by far that much better. Please give this thing a SERIOUS auditioning at a reputable dealer. This thing is the best thing that has happened to my home theater and music listening experience.

I recently purchased the 5700 and am very happy with it. I listened to other units including the Yamaha DSP A1. What can I say? I liked the Denon. I feel the extra dsp modes on the Yamaha were not all that useful to me. The Denon has a bit more power and in my opinion a more pleasing sound. The THX is a plus as well as the A,B A+B surround speaker setup. More useful to me than the extra 2 speakers at the front that the A1 supports. All the digital inputs on the 5700 are adressable, don't remember if they are on the A1. Also the display is blue which matches the rest of my stuff, a small point to be sure, but when your blowing your brains out on equipment small things do count. The orange display on the Yamaha turned me off. I am not knocking the A1, it is a very nice piece, but maybe just a little over the hill. It was in my opinion the best last year, but this year? The tuner, which the A1 lacks, is also a small plus. A lot of people talk about remotes, the remote on the Denon works for me. I was able to program it to work everything,TV,DBS,DVD,CD,and LD. Finally, one remote instead of "The Pile". Can't get it to work on the turntable or coffee machine!
I would like to thank the people at East Hamilton Radio for showing me the various units I wanted to audition. Very helpful and not pushy! Anyone in the Golden Horseshoe Area should check them out.

I don't see how anyone can give this receiver less than 5 stars ("*****"). While I have only owned my 5700 for a week, I have been very happy with my purchase, and I would buy this receiver again notwithstanding the fact that my friend has the Y... DSP-1. I have listened to both, and I like the Denon. If you have to ask how much the receiver costs or if you are worried about a few hundred dollars, then you probably shouldn't buy this receiver as you are not an audio enthusiast or an audiophile, who only cares about the quality of sound from the product (but simply a wantabe audiophile, who has to balance the price vs. sound from the product --- for those of you in this category, you should go to the drugstore and buy one of those battery operated units which costs $5.00 as the price per sound ratio will be good enough for you). But, if you want to own a great receiver which is Lucasfilm THX(r) ultra certified, then you should definitely consider the AVR-5700. You will not regret your purchase of this receiver.

Enough with the trashing and bashing of the AVR5700 and DSP-A1. These two pieces are BOTH top notch, and the closest you'll ever get to separates. I've been selling Denon and Yamaha for several years and also do training on their product lines. I hope I can clear up some of the confusion of "which one to get." Personally, I'm a Yamaha fan, but that does not mean I don't like Denon. Mostly every customer that is looking for a reciever/amp always has "power or watts" in mind. Just for fact, power ratings are the most overrated aspect in recievers today. Yes the 5700 puts out 140w compared to 110w of the A1, but that does not mean you should buy it. Power has COMPLETELY NOTHING to do with sound quality. The only thing power will give you is a very slight increase in dB level and dynamics. You'll proably notice a 0.3 dB increase in volume level in the 5700 over the A1. So, if you want it louder, get the 5700.
Sound quality wise, you have two different types. The 5700 will give you an almost nuetral freq response with a slight emphasis on midrange, while the A1 is more prominent in the brightness and detail aspect. The 5700 will give you naturally deeper base while the A1 is slightly recessed and tight. To whom say that the 5700 gives a warm sound, it is hardly achieved in any reciever of any sort, including the 5700. Make sure you choose speakers wisely.
For processing, Denon does have an edge for straight D/A conversion with their proprietary 24bit SHARC/alpha converters and does make a slight difference in sound. For surround sound purposes, I would give an edge to the A1 for its capabilities and quality. Imagine sitting in a dark room and virtually making the walls sound like 50 to 100 feet away from you, from all four sides! The DSP modes are almost lifelike. You can create THX-like simulations with the built in and adjustable Cinema EQ, Center EQ, and surround parameters. In addition, you have a 7-channel effect speakers which expand the front surround field, and a better bass managment system. On the other hand, the 5700 provides pure THX processing (also simulates a movie theater environment) and a 5-channel stereo, which almost sounds like DTS sound discs. Music surround modes don't work as well as the A1s. The choice of having two types of surround speakers is a nifty idea.
For convinence, the 5700 offers a Personal Memory Plus which remembers settings for each individual input and a slightly better remote. On screen displays are almost equal in quality. You cannot do any adjustments on the front panel on the 5700 compared to the A1.
Build quality is almost the same. Both built on rock solid chassis with logical placement of components due to their specific functions. The 5700 does have a 8 channel input and RGB switching which the A1 lacks, but lacks a front AV input that the A1 has.
Reliability wise, I have to give a big edge to the A1. Typically, Denon recievers get serviced by us almost 3 times more than Yamaha. Since the 5700 is still new to the market, services for this model are rare. The previous model, the AVR5600, and the sister model, the AVR3600, are both design nightmares. These models tended to overheat, overload, or blow. It looks like Denon did their homework, but only time will tell. For Yamaha, I only see problems in the orange display in the fron burning out, but that's it.
I hope I cleared up some of the confusion. If you're shopping, I would seriously consider going to a place where they sell both, and demo them in the same room. Try to avoid retail establishments where they tend to be biased towards certain product lines. If unavoidable, ask for the most knowledgeable sales person there. Small specialty shops tend to be more honest, so check them out first.

I bought this receiver couple of weeks ago and I tell you it does everything so well, its remote is so good you can do with it so many things, also I think the sound quality is so great that sounds almost like a separate.
I compared the 5700 with some others but non of them called my attention in the way DENON did!

I don't understand how anyone can listen to high-end units at a retail store and make enough of an informed judegment to review a product. In my opinion, you have to live with an integrated amplifier in your home setup for some time. Get used to it. Let it "burn" in. If I had believed what I read from reviews on this site, I would have presuppossed that the Denon was a cheaply built, low quality, hissing, fan noisy, "upfront" unit. I practice what I preach. I took it home, and I love the Denon 5700.
I've had two 5700's, in succession, for 3 months now. In that time I have never heard a hiss on any channel on either unit. As a matter of fact, crank it up with the source as a CD in 5 channel mode and listen attentively at the silent passages. You'll have to listen attentively, because all speakers will be dead silent. If you have a hiss, check your cables.

The fans are silent. I even wondered if they were there, and had the occassion to check...

Why did I have one, then another? I think this is testimony to the build quality - my house was hit by a massive surge in June. I was in my home theater at the time and the Denon came on. My external surge suppressor died. The only damage the surge did to the Denon was the OSD (On Screen Display) - it did not work after that. Performance was not affected. I peeked inside to see what else might have been fried. The amps are massive, the power supply is massive, the power cord is heavy gauge, I saw no last minute engineering changes (telltale wire jumpers on circuit boards), the connections are all gold-plated, Burr-Brown DACs, the fans ARE there, etc... Nothing was damaged, by the way.

My old unit and the new one had metal drop-down panels on the front.

I use this unit for music video surround first, home theater second and for music third. All sound exceptional. DVDs like James Taylor's and the Eagles come alive. The soundstage is not "upfront" - it is as spread out as the sound producer probably intended. For instance, the Eagles DVD has the sound upfront when the band members are lined up on stage on stools, the surrounds have crowd applause, percussion and some reverb effects. Orchestral passages open up quite nicely. The Karajan DVDs (once I got over the quirky video) sound spacious and clear. I hope DVD concert music videos become more prevalent - when they do the Denon 5700 gives me the flexibility to use direct radiating rears to focus the rear sound at the listening position. I can also keep my Mirage omnipolar speakers connected for movies. The Denon remembers the speaker setup for each source you have - a nice feature.

The Denon gave my home theater some serious punch that my previous decent Onkyo did not have. Some setup is necessary - I doubt many people have rears that are as efficient as their fronts. After setting my rears to the right level using the test tones and a Radio Shack meter, and setting the distance parameters in the OSD, the speakers disappeared. I can't watch Jumanji with my kids without feeling like the animal stampede is in the room. Dialog in the center is fresh, none of that TV speaker harshness, but no introduced muddiness either (some people call that "warmth"). Transitions around the soundfield are perfect. Quiet passages are silent - I had to remove the aquarium because that became a distraction in those quiet times. Again, no fan noise. Some time spent in proper setup of sound levels and a well-produced DVD made the movie experience immersive. I pay $7 for a movie now just to get the kids out of the house - the movie theaters have inferior sound compared to my 5700.

I must profess that I like the 5ch stereo mode for music. For rock music, this fills the room with sound. I have good rears, so almost any location in the room sounds good. The only time I use another DSP mode is with jazz recordings - the Jazz Club setting makes Charlie Parker recordings feel like you are (or "were") there - only there is none of that acrid cigarette smoke in my house. Direct 2ch mode, when using an analog source is warm - probably because of my omnipolar fronts. The bass crossover (is it Linkwitz-Riley?) that drives the sub does its job quite nicely, Latin albums will make even a couch potato like me jump up and dance because of the bass rhythms. I am convinced that music audio quality is most driven by your speakers, and the Denon has the power to drive anything except maybe the most current hungry maggies (I don't know, though - I haven't tried maggies).

I had a Denon 5600dts before the 5700. I liked having the ability to cleanly biwire my fronts to the 5600dts. That feature was removed on the 5700, probably to add all those digital inputs, 7 ch inputs and component video switching. I can still biwire with the right banana plugs, but it is not clean. The 5700, though, gave me true DTS (the 5600dts never indicated it was in DTS mode). The 5600dts had a better visual display of volume level, the 5700 is much too small because of that DTS indicator (win some, lose some). I do not like the OSD on either 5600dts or the 5700. The panel indicates a change only AFTER you have made the change on the screen. If you don't want to switch your video source, making an OSD parameter change is an exercise for your visual memory skills and remote calistenics (sic). I rationalize this by telling myself that at least the remote lets me set most anything with one button, and it is not as tied to the screen as the B&K units. The manual is pretty good.

Overall, I love the Denon 5700. I'm going to keep it and make it the centerpiece of my evolving home theater.

Don't make up your mind by what you see in a store. Take it home and try it. You might like it too.

My review equipment:
Denon 5700
Pioneer PDF1007 CD Jukebox
Phillips 850AT DVD (equivalent to Toshiba 3109)
Onkyo DX-C310 CD Changer
RCA DS5451RB DSS
Mitsu 50603 DiamondScan RPTV
Mirage OM-10 Fronts
Mirage OM-C2 Center
Mirage FRx-R Rears
HSU Research TN1225HO Sub (which I highly recommend)
Cabling is simple 10-AWG twisted pair (no name)

I hope that none of you who own the Denon 5700 consider it an audiphile piece of equipment. I took one of the first ones home, and was horrified to hear what it was doing to my B&W Matrix 804's. There was a ton of hiss, through all channels, with no input source being fed. It wasn't a ground problem, or a interconnect problem, it was the 5700. That was about three months ago, and I am still waiting for Denon's customer service people to get back to me. Way to go DENON!! That is the way to treat your customers. It had its moments of greatness. Movies sounded great (so I thought, til I upgraded to seperates). Music on the other hand was harsh, brittle sounding, with a lot of metallic background noise. I took the Denon back, after waiting for the "break in period" to end, and no change, I upgraded to seperates. I spent more than twice as much as the Denon, but to be honest, I got MORE than twice an improvment in the sound quality. Movies now sound clearer, and more dynamic, with MUCH better controlled bass, and music is amazing. Huge soundstage, outstanding imaging, and very natural sounding without any hint of harshness like the Denon gives you. If your truly interested in getting as close as you can to the best, check out just about any seperates instead of the Denon.
Denon =1 star
Denon customer service= 0 stars!!

My System:

Proceed AVP
ATI 5 Channel Amp
Sony DVP S7700 dvd player
B&W Matrix 804's
Matrix HTM Front channel
DS6 Surrounds
Pioneer Elite 50" TV
Audioquest Indigo Speaker cable
Audioquest Ruby Interconnects

Simply the best unit in the market. It does everything well. I have this unit for the last two months and still have not found anything wrong, I'm amazed with its performance.
THX, 5 channels stereo @ 140 watts with the best remote I've ever seen!