Somewhere deep in the midst of Denon's bulging 10-strong AV receiver catalogue, a new contender has emerged into middle of the mid-range. That's about £600 to you and me.

The Denon AVR-2309 is very much the middle child, too. It lacks its more pricey siblings' power and ultra advanced features, and doesn't have the gleeful 'must buy' price tags of the lower-end of the Denon's range.

So it's pretty dull then? Actually no, because quite a few of the minor tweaks and enhancements here are rather interesting.

Dynamic Volume

First to catch the eye, or indeed ear, is Audyssey Dynamic Volume – a feature not yet present on the company's flagship £5,000 AVP-A1HD pre-amp.

Like the similar-sounding Dolby Volume, it promises to scupper the well-known TV advertising ploy of boosting the volume of commercials relative to the actual programme material; however this new Audyssey package also includes Dynamic EQ, which maintains the dynamic bite of a soundmix even as volumes are lowered.

Turn down the level during a late-night viewing of Battlestar Galactica and you still might hear Tricia Helfer's Six whispering into Baltar's ear but you'll lose the bass effects when Starbuck leads an assault on the Cylon Resurrection ship.

Engage Audyssey Dynamic Volume and all the relative balance of the soundmix will be retained even if you have cranked it down to avoid disturbing the sleeping kids.

Impressive feature set

Audyssey's processing monitors the sound in real time and adjusts the volume to a uniform level without sacriï¬cing balance. This is quite an upgrade over traditional dynamic compression techniques (or 'night modes' as they're often known) and it combines with the original measurements and tweaks wrought by the 2309's Audyssey MultEQ system to ensure the adjustment is relative to the liveness and natural acoustics of your room.

Also on the hot upgrade list is the 4-in/1-out HDMI arrangement with full 1080p scaling of all incoming video by Faroudja. This extends to the otherwise dull black-text onscreen menu, which, if nothing else, is crisp and stable when viewed in 1080p.

You also get Audyssey MultEQ with ADLF (Advanced Low Frequency correction), a compressed music enhancer and an iPod Dock terminal. The HDMI ports will, of course accept bitstream or LPCM input and decode all of the new HD-audio formats from DTS-HD Master Audio to Dolby TrueHD, and pretty much everything in between.

On the downside the remote is no longer an EL backlight version but Denon's flip-flop double sided beast, and the receiver as a whole has shed half a kilo in weight – although, for most standard kit racks, I'm not sure if that's a bad thing.

Powerful audio

Despite this successful diet the AVR-2309 is not short of weight, muscle or clout. A romp through my expanding Blu-ray collection had this mid-ranger easily embodying the new Denon 'sound' – weighty and powerful yet fast and crisp all at the same time.

Experienced AV type I may be, but I'll admit I accidentally set the volume to 0dB before hitting play on National Treasure 2, and the opening 'fireworks over Disneyland' clip gave me immediate ï¬rst-hand experience of the Denon's dynamic capabilities.

The fireworks exploded with a sharp-edge percussive crack and resounding boom that was spectacularly realistic – and my dogs agreed, hurtling out of the room and seeking shelter under the kitchen table.

Fine detail

While National Treasure 2 might be all but a verbatim replica of the original movie and is without doubt Cage's most dubious and unbelievable role to date, it does have its sonic merits. Its Dolby TrueHD soundtrack crafts the scene ambience like few other movies to date and the AVR-2309 rises to
the challenge admirably.