05.27.2008 — Denon refuses to let audio take a back-seat to video, as the company announced during its line show for sales reps and the press in May.
"In years past, we talked about attaching audio to video sales," said vice president of sales ad marketing Joe Stinziano. "That's not good enough. People are not satisfied with the profit in video."
He added that audio should be a "standalone category" and "in the forefront of dealers' minds."
During the event, Denon announced the introduction of 10 new A/V receivers ($299 to $1,199) and pledged to establish the company as the "number one A/V 
receiver brand in the U.S.," Stinziano said.
Denon is adding more HDMI inputs to most of the products, and will feature Audyssey's Dynamic EQ on all of the receivers, "all the way down to the $299 product," said Jeff Talmadge, director of product development and systems.
But the key new feature is the new Dynamic Volume from Audyssey, which Denon is the first to bring to market. The technology equalizes the volume across different types of content, and optimizes the dynamic range to preserve the impact, even at very low volumes.
Talmadge pointed to the "major annoyance, and the wild [volume] changes" evident through cable and settop boxes, particularly between programs and commercials.
Dynamic Volume alters the volume in real time in both stereo and multichannel applications—which line show attendees could hear for ourselves during the event.
There, Audyssey chief technology officer Chris Kyriakakis demonstrated the shift from movie to commercial with and without Dynamic Volume, and the technology clearly provided vast improvement.
In another demo, a shooting rampage overwhelmed the dialog with Dynamic Volume turned off; turned on, the dialog was clearly understandable amid the ruckus.
"You never have to touch the remote control," Kyriakakis said.
He explained that Audyssey analyzed a vast amount of data from TV watchers who were asked to adjust the volume of their sets when listening to different types of content in different listening environments. Algorithms were created so that volume adjustments would automatically mimic users' listening habits.
Audyssey uses "look-ahead" technology to "know what's coming in the next frame," Kyriakakis said. "There is a half-frame delay, enough to catch something sudden."
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Thanks to Julie Jacobson, CEPro