Denon has historically set the pace in AVR development, swapping its position on top of the technology mound with Yamaha and Pioneer every so often.

But 2007 has been a year of profound change, with Onkyo moving into pole position both in terms of feature-count and units sold. So can this new flagship from the 3800 range redress the balance?

A time for change

Possibly. The AVR-3808 has grabbed nearly all of the goodies from the range-topping AVR-4308 for itself. The groundbreaking GUI, the networking functionality and HDMI 1.3a switching are all here, making this 3800 look like the best deal of the year from the Japanese brand.

If you judge receivers by size, the Denon won't impress, as it's actually one of the smallest in its class. Significantly though, it is conspicuously heavier than its larger rivals. That's because Denon has quite radically remixed the entire 3800 series, redesigning it from the ground up to give it an even more robust chassis, reinforced by the so-called 'wave' industrial design of the aluminium face plate. Rather than being mass-produced in China, the 08 ranges are manufactured in Denon's high-end plant in Shirakawa, Japan.

The build quality can be considered suitably above average.

Set in the middle of the silver fascia (black is also available) is a big, clear display. Below that is a drop-down flap that reveals the main controls, a set of front AV inputs and a USB port that can be used to play back MP3 files on a USB device.

The 3808 also has an eye on the network future, courtesy of its Ethernet LAN port, which is used to stream internet radio as well as access music files on a PC. If the idea of hooking up your home cinema to a network and streaming music from your PC or Mac sounds compelling, this could be an attractive feature.

Link to your PC

Like so many convergence products though, the reality of trying to introduce a PC to your main entertainment system is often painfully long-winded and unreliable, and the results are rarely worth it. To my mind, the worlds of PC and CE are still just too far apart.

Still, if you manage to join a network, the Denon will seek out all of the music files on your PC and show them to you in the onscreen menu. It also scrolls track information if you've remembered to label the MP3 files. The AVR even has a 'Compressed Audio Restorer', an algorithm that makes crummy MP3 and WMA files sound slightly more acceptable. But not that much more.

The latest version of Denon link is built-in, but it's only of interest if you have another Denon link product.

There is, of course, provision for an optional iPod dock. Nearly every AV receiver on the planet now has some facility for connecting the ubiquitous Apple device. With the 3808, you can either jack into the line inputs as usual, or splash out on a dedicated dock. Do the latter and you get total control of your tunes via the receiver's OSD.

The dock comes in black or white, takes any iPod, except the Shuffle, and charges it too.

Power house

Beneath the hood of the AVR-3808 are seven discrete amplifiers rated at 130W into 8 Ohms, with nine sets of speaker terminals allowing you to bi-wire the front pair. The rear surround speakers, if you are not running a 6.1 or 7.1 system, can be configured to drive speakers in another zone.

A Faroudja Genesis video chipset takes care of all the scaling and de-interlacing duties, while Analogue Devices' third-generation SHARC processor decodes the new breed
of HD audio formats.