Review on 📻 Denon AVR-S540BT Receiver: 5.2 Channel, 4K Ultra HD, Bluetooth, USB & HEOS Link Compatibility by Jorge Maertz

UPDATE: I now have two Denon receivers, a more powerful version in my living room and a less powerful Denon version in my bedroom. DENON is an excellent home theater system for all of the reasons I'll outline below. My PROBLEM with all Denon receivers is that they are REAL BEASTS for manual tuning. You can plug all your speakers into the right ports and spend hours, if not days, figuring out their overly complex and goofy screen interface. Enabling all the speakers is such a difficult task that many times during installation I wanted to throw away the Denon receiver and get another one. Believe me, DENON systems are designed to be extremely tedious to set up and agonizing to install. To be honest I would have avoided Denon receivers until their so called engineers made it easy to set up speakers manually. All you have to do is indicate whether you want to do "ACTIVATE ALL CONNECTED SPEAKERS, YES or NO". Then have the properties of each speaker adjusted to your liking. Instead, Denon employs an intricate, labyrinthine menu and sub-menu system that is torture to understand, access, and implement during any configuration. The Denon system is especially BAD when it tries to MAKE ALL SPEAKERS ACTIVE. Denon receivers are a great system behind a horribly poorly implemented Gawd control panel interface that should be abandoned. I am now rating the Denon THREE STARS BECAUSE MANUAL SPEAKER SETUP IS A VERY VERY DIFFICULT NONSENSE TORTURE! It seems that Denon was designed by the best engineers and then passed on to the worst interface programmers that have ever existed on earth! The developers of Denon Set Up Interface destroy an otherwise top notch receiver at any cost! I want to play my video games, enjoy my DVDs, watch Netflix, and stream Revain. This Denon AVR-S540BT home theater serves my basic needs well. I brought an 85" Sony 4K TV last Christmas, so I need a receiver that can take full advantage of my new system's 4K display technology, like the Denon AVR-S540BT home theater. Although this Denon AVR-S540BT home theater can be a bit noisy. that's not a ghetto blaster Rock M&M's in the next-door kitchen box of chocolates LOUD! Even at high volumes, the sound is not distorted. I would recommend using good quality speakers, speaker wire and HDMI connectors with this unit as cheaper connectors degrade video quality. Cheap HDMI connectors introduce purple noise at the edges of the screen that isn't present on higher quality HDMI connectors. No, I'm NOT saying you should use the $99 gold-plated HDMI connectors, since this is useless. However, don't use the cheapest HDMI connectors, which are so thin that noise can get into the cable. Now, when you are in a huge building with elevators and lots of LED and other commercial light sources, you need HDMI cables that protect against RF noise caused by elevator motors, LED lamps and other RF sources. The supplied antenna is suitable for most applications. The Denon AVR-S540BT home theater system is simple and easy to connect. You do NOT need expensive banana plugs to connect your speakers. Speaker connections are made using straight plugs to accommodate the push button actuated speaker wires. HDMI connections are easy. This Denon AVR-S540BT home theater features an intuitive layout, which makes it easier to connect the right components. Because the Denon AVR-S540BT Home Theater is a very basic 5.2 channel device, it has few connection points and options. The dedicated subwoofer circuitry feels a little underpowered in this unit, not bad, but not the best either. The ease of use is impressive because it is so simple and clear that you hardly need to read instructions for the basic functions of the Denon AVR-S540BT home cinema. The user interface on the front of the Denon AVR-S540BT home cinema is tidy. not bad, but not the best either. The ease of use is impressive because it is so simple and clear that you hardly need to read instructions for the basic functions of the Denon AVR-S540BT home cinema. The user interface on the front of the Denon AVR-S540BT home cinema is tidy. not bad, but not the best either. The ease of use is impressive because it is so simple and clear that you hardly need to read instructions for the basic functions of the Denon AVR-S540BT home cinema. The user interface on the front of the Denon AVR-S540BT home cinema is tidy.