Living on the ceiling
It was weird. I’d pretty much got used to living with a 5.1.2 Dolby Atmos system with a Denon AVR-X3500H AV receiver at its centre. I’d gone from 5.1.4 to 5.1.2, and felt there hadn’t been much difference. But when I switched over to the Denon AVR-X6500H, wow. Those four ceiling channels added something I’d been missing. And the receiver added a little something further extra...
Equipment
Indeed with 11 amplifier channels on offer, you can go full 3/4.1.4 (3 front, 4 surround, 1 subwoofer, 4 ceiling) with this receiver. Even kind-of 3/4.2.4. The receiver supports two subwoofers and can have different delay times and EQs for both, though it can’t assign them separate signals (like front/back or left/right). So the two subwoofer outputs both reproduce the same signal, except that it has been optimised for each.
While we’re on the subject of optimisation, this receiver incorporates that extremely useful feature provided by higher-level Denon receivers: a separate speaker set-up for stereo signals. With my system I prefer to have my front speakers set to ‘Small’, crossing over to the subwoofer
