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Some folks can't get straight with the fact that these receivers are just small computers designed to do one thing. I cannot be happier with it. There is also a surround sound system I purchased mail order from The Speaker Factory. The original reviews of the Yamaha receiver were not good because some owner could not figure out how to work the tone controls. One has only to look in the instruction manual to find out how to re-configure two of the buttons on the front of the machine ( or just use the plainly marked buttons on the remote ). I felt that the sound was too boomy for a television program. At first I paired it up with my full size Sony floor speakers.
I settled on a pair of small Sony's I had purchased some time ago from Amazon. They have three and one half inch woofers and a small tweeter. It's been two years since I installed this receiver in my system. With the controls on the Yamaha, I can adjust all speakers individually to the highest or the lowest output as needed. It works well. They are there. The Yamaha has proven to be a worthy receiver. Remember.alt+1, ctrl+9.etc.
It does not have all the bells and whistles of more expensive machines, but I do not need more than good stereo or good surround sound. Some of the controls have multiple uses. It is NOT polk quality, but it is very good enough for me to isolate the actors in the center speaker and be able to differentiate them from any other sounds around them. The speaker factory's budget system also includes side speakers which look the same as the center unit. I remember this vividly as I come from the school of computer users who remember the days before mice. When I am ready to trade up, Yamaha will be on the short list.
I burned out a Pioneer before this. When I installed the Yamaha I noticed a much richer sound. It isn't super powerful but sounds good in an average (medium sized) viewing area. Many features and simple to install.
Well the reason why I gave this product 4 Stars is because it was at first complicated to equalize the speakers. But I ended up figuring it out myself without the manual(its a guy thing) And the sound is GREAT, my subwoofer that I thought wasnt that good ended up sounding a thousand times better with this guy, than my previous unit. It hits ALL of the lows when I want to get a little urban, and nice with Rock music(my favorite). The Highs that this unit produces is great, while watching a movie it had me looking around my room because it sounded so real.But the silver color is a little hard to find matching equipment, but i'll work it out.Overall, nice job Yamaha.
Another difference was the lack of a jog dial to cycle through inputs and other menu options. Overall, for $155.00 I am pleased with the purchase. It was model HRT-5640, and throughout this review I made various comparisons to it, for it was the first Yamaha receiver I had experience with. The thing that led me to this receiver was past experience with Yamaha home theater products, price point of this unit, and the audio-delay feature, also known as lip sync correction.
Finally, this unit did not have binding posts for all the speakers, just the main A and B. The reason I decided to look for a new receiver was because many of the HD channels from FiOS TV would have terrible lip sync issues when running the optical signal directly to the receiver and the HDMI cable from the receiver directly to the TV. It was not nearly as heavy as the Yamaha receiver it was replacing. I purchased this receiver about a month ago for use in a home theater set up which consists of 2 Polk R50 floor standing speakers, a csi3 center channel, and no surrounds (they will be added at a later date, and most likely be Polk monitor 30 2-ways. Part of the initial setup includes telling the receiver how many speakers are in your setup, what the size of the drivers is, whether or not you want bass to be played through all the speakers or just the front, and then the speaker distances from the listener position. I give this unit a 7 out of 10, which would have been higher, had I not been in a position to do A-B sound comparisons with another Yamaha unit. It does not sound as crisp, is not as accurate, and one must push up the bass and treble to make up for this.
panels).My first impression when I took the receiver out of the box was the weight. The display on the receiver notifies you of the type of signal it is receiving when your input is digital, whether it is a coaxial digital connection or through one of the two optical inputs the receiver has. After that is complete, you are only left with bass and treble adjustments. After hours of research I found out that this was a common problem among HD broadcasts and LCD TV's (I have a Sony 46V3000 which I love and prefer to the ever popular Samsung x61 x65 etc. I actually had been using a Yamaha receiver in this set up, which I purchased from Best Buy a few years back when I worked their my freshman year of college. I have played around with the various surround modes and I have come to like the traditional pro-logic setting the best. When a digital 5.1 signal is detected, the screen changes to read Dolby Digital. It is counter intuitive in many instances and navigating through the menu options is quite annoying at times.
This worried me, as weight is sometimes an indicator of performance and sound quality in a receiver/amplifier. Setup on these Yamaha receivers is tricky at first. The whole wattage rating system in consumer level home theater receivers is not all that it is cracked up to be. Signal is optical running directly from my FiOS receiver. Compared to the older unit, which was rated at 75 watts per channel, the sound quality is definitely not as good.
Most prime time TV shows are broadcast in Dolby Digital. Many other factors come into play which will have more of an impact on sound quality than nominal wattage figures. With 1 coax digital in and 2 optical, there is room for a digital tv receiver, a dvd player, and another digital device (blueray, hd dvd, ps3 etc). Compared to the menus used a few years back, they are actually improved. It was priced at 299.99 when I purchased it, and is a 6.1 channel home theater receiver.
Also, the audio delay circuit which allows the user to delay the sound from 1 to 100 milliseconds in one millisecond intervals works as advertised. The surrounds and center were left with cheap feeling clip-in terminals, which did not easily accept my Monster Cable XP speaker wire. After a day or two of playing with the menus, they become slightly more user friendly. However, the silver lining on all this is that the receiver does sound good for its purpose as a home theater reliever. At that price, when the 7.1 channel receivers with full 1080P HDMI connections and all that fun stuff come down in the next few years, it will not be as hard on the wallet to replace this one.
You can only adjust the bass and treble on the two front speakers. I was excited when I ordered this amp, great price free shipping. But it has a huge flaw. 5 speakers and you can only add bass or treble to two. I hope all your source material is perfect or you will feel like I do and never buy Yamaha products again.
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