Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I love this receiver. Does it put out good sound? Of course it does, because due to technological advances and economies of scale, ALL receiver amplifiers these days produce excellent, accurate audio. So the sound quality you hear is really determined more by the speakers than anything else. To illustrate this point, consider this: I use a pair of Martin Logan Motion 4 speakers in the front, which are truly excellent, yet moderately priced speakers. I got them off of ebay for $173 each. They're compact and quite portable, so I took these speakers to my daughter's wedding reception and powered them with a little $60 bluetooth capable, rechargeable amplifier that I can hold in the palm of my hand. We used this setup for a smart phone playlist after the live musician left. It sounded great. You do want a receiver with enough power to drive the speakers loudly. And if you're buying an A/V receiver, you want options and features. This Yamaha has all of that. It deserves the best speakers you can afford, especially the front ones. If you need to economize, you can do that initially on the middle speaker, the rears and the sub-woofer, because they are in a supportive role, and you can upgrade them over time. This receiver is my first venture into the world of surround sound and there were a lot of settings options and choices to figure out. The 82 page online manual is very thorough, but not very good at helping a novice understand how things are related . I actually bought my unit at Best Buy (for $40 more than Amazon's price), but I thought I'd write a review here consisting mainly of info and tips to help other Newbies get up to speed faster than I did. 1. The idea of an A/V receiver is that it takes audio-video signals from connected devices such as cable boxes and DVD players via HDMI cables, processes the audio portion and applies it to the speakers, and passes the video portion on to the connected TV. This means that the receiver has to be turned on in order for the TV to function. But there is an option in setup called HDMI Control which will turn the receiver on when the TV is turned on. Of course, you can also connect audio devices. 2. If you have signals going directly to the TV, like Netflix, Amazon Video, etc. streaming from a wireless router, how does the audio get to the receiver? Check your TV manual to see if it has an "ARC" enabled HDMI connection, connect the receiver to that one, and turn on ARC in the settings menu.. Done. Otherwise, use an optical cable, or, last choice, audio cables, to connect the TV's audio output to the receiver's input. 3. Most of the control of the receiver will be performed with the remote. On the remote, the most important buttons are the Source button to select the input device, and and the Program button to choose what kind of DSP (Digital Signal Processing) effects, if any, the receiver will add to the audio. You needn't be concerned with the "Scene" buttons, or the row of colored buttons when you are starting out. They are just quick ways to select source and program combinations once you know what everything means and what your preferences are. How to set them is covered in the online manual. I'll mention the "Straight" button and the "Enhancer" button below. 4. The audio signal that a connected device like a blue ray player or cable box supplies to the receiver may be a two-channel (left-right) signal, a multi-channel (left front, middle, right front, left rear, right rear, sub-woofer) signal, or, rarely, a mono signal, like from an old TV movie., 5. Now for the main topic, the DSP (Digital Signal Processing) programs which control the effects on the incoming signal and produce a particular listening environment, or "sound stage" . Repeatedly pressing the Program button steps through a sequence of DSP program choices. Most of them have descriptive names like "Sci-Fi," "Adventure," "Hall in Vienna," etc.. But there are also four other programs, called "Straight," "2ch Stereo," "5ch Stereo," and "Sur. Decode," which behave differently than the descriptive ones. I'll explain those below. When you choose one of the descriptively named programs, the receiver adds "coloring" (delays, reverberations, volume levels, etc.) to each channel of an incoming multi-channel signal to give the overall sound stage effect implied by the name. If the incoming signal is a two-channel one, the receiver detects that and first processes the two-channel signal into a multi-channel signal, and then applies the coloring to to those channels, again to produce the sound stage effect implied by the name. All of the descriptively named programs will work whether the incoming sound content is a movie soundtrack or music, but some are obviously designed for and work best with movies, while others are best for music. 6. The "Straight" DSP program can be selected either by stepping through the choices with the program button, or by pressing the dedicated "Straight" button. It has its own button because you'll probably want to use it often. The result is that the receiver will play the two-channel or multi-channel audio exactly as received from the input device. You may prefer to hear your albums played as plain stereo. Or you may want to hear a movie surround sound track with the special effects just as it was designed by the movie makers. For instance, I use the "Straight" program for the outstanding sound track for Game of Thrones. But someone else may prefer "Spectacle," or "Adventure." 7. The "2ch Stereo" and "5ch Stereo" DSP programs are pretty much what the names say. The "2ch Stereo" program will take a multi-channel input signal and mix it down to a two-channel signal, and then apply it only to the left and right front speakers. And if the input signal is already a two-channel one, it will simply apply it only to the front speakers. The "5ch Stereo" program behaves the same way, except it applies the resulting two-channel signal to all five speakers. This gives a big, pleasing stereo sound. Note that if you are listening to music from a USB stick or a Bluetooth device, the digital music files have been compressed into MP3 or similar files to make them smaller for storage. A small amount of musical detail is lost in this process. It's not very noticeable to most people, but it's there. Using the "Enhancer" button will restore most of that depth to the music. Actually, I leave the enhancer on all of the time. It doesn't seem to have any effects that I can hear on other types of content. 8. The "Sur. Decode" DSP program is for use with a two-channel input signal only. It uses Dolby Pro Logic or DTS for processing two-channel signals into standard surround sound stages without the additional "coloring" in the other programs. Tthis program will only show up as a choice with the Program button if a two-channel source is connected. The "Sur. Decode" program will apply one of six possible surround sound decoders (for music, movies, games, etc.). Which one it applies is preset via the Options menu. You can also set one of the colored row buttons to step through them. The manual will tell you how to do this and the many other things you can do. I hope this helps other novices who buy this receiver to start enjoying it quickly.