Steve Guttenberg sold Denon amplifiers as a hifi salesman in the 1990s, and he remembers the sound as "buttery smooth." When a PMA-1700NE arrived for review decades later, he found it had "still got that sound." Denon's integrated amplifiers pair that ease with plenty of current. Where many amplifiers share the work among several pairs of output transistors, Denon uses a single pair of very large ones per channel, which it says supply far more current with a minimum number of parts. Guttenberg ran the 1700NE into KEF Reference 3 Metas and Magnepan LRS+ panels, two demanding loads, and it drove both very well. Dennis Burger of SoundStage! Access played the Dave Matthews Band loud through Paradigm towers and wrote that the Denon "practically dared me to keep cranking it louder and louder." Andrew Robinson found the midrange of the smaller PMA-900HNE "smooth, smooth, smooth." Denon suits listeners who want a relaxed sound with real drive behind it.

The PMA-900HNE and PMA-1700NE look nearly identical but suit different buyers. Start with the 900HNE if you want one box that does it all, since it has HEOS streaming, a DAC and a phono stage built in. Robinson enjoyed it most with forward or treble-leaning speakers. Step up to the 1700NE if your speakers are hard to drive. It leaves out streaming but has more power, a phono stage for moving-coil cartridges too, and what Burger calls "a much beefier power supply." Hi-Fi News notes that a matched amplifier and disc player, such as the 1700NE with the DCD-1700NE SACD player, is "very much a Denon thing." For vinyl, the DP-300F is fully automatic with a phono stage inside. If you choose the classic DL-103 cartridge, know that it puts out a very small signal, so it needs a moving-coil phono stage or a step-up transformer. Paul Seydor of The Absolute Sound prefers it loaded at no more than 100 ohms.

Denon's story begins with an American. Frederick Whitney Horn imported tools in Yokohama, moved on to gramophones and records, and by 1910 had formed the Japan Recorders Corporation, Seydor writes. The name Denon is short for Nippon Denki Onkyo, the Japan Electric Sound Company, and Denon built Japan's first professional disc recorder, which recorded Emperor Hirohito's surrender broadcast. Work with the broadcaster NHK produced the DL-103, a moving-coil cartridge made as a reference for playing stereo LPs, and Denon brought it to consumers in 1970. Seydor says it is still made the same way, by hand, with each one measured and its frequency-response graph printed and packed in the box. Denon also helped start digital recording. Its first digital tape recorder, the DN-023R, was ready in 1972 and weighed 400 kg. Today's DP-3000NE turntable has an arm that designer Ryo Okazeri intended as a faithful re-creation of Denon's DA-309, and Guttenberg, who played a DL-103 on it, gave the deck "two thumbs up."