Audio's undiscovered treasure
Written: Jan 13 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Beautiful sound filters; sound quality good at both loud and heavy levels
Cons: Not as established a brand-name as Sony; you may never take full advantage of the remote
|
|
|
| Pyanfar's Full Review: Yamaha RX-V592 5.1 Channels Receiver |
You would not believe the quality of this receiver. I bought the Yamaha for one big reason: the sound filters. Does that sound odd? Listen to one and you'll see what I mean! Most manufacturers will just pre-set the ranges to simulate sound - "theatre" means this much treble, that much bass, etc.
Yamaha really did it right. They went to several acoustically-perfect locations around the world, set up 3-D sound sampling equipment, and tested the acoustics of these venues top to bottom. One place was a 13th-century Medieval church. Another (I believe) was Radio City Music Hall. Either way, you can tell. They took the waveform/algorithm/whatever the heck you call it and programmed it in. This means that your sound passes through a filter that resamples it and then puts it out.
The end result is that if you put a studio album in, hit "Concert Hall" and you've got a perfect live sound, as if the band is in a small venue. "Stadium" is perfect if you ever wondered what that unpopular indie band you love so much would sound like if they were booked at a 20,000-seat arena. "Mono Movie" salvages those old Beatles recordings, "Disco" is a tiny box-shaped room...you get the idea. Add Dolby Pro Logic and Enhanced Pro Logic and you can pretty much choose exactly how you want your music to sound at the click of a button. I almost never touch the bass and treble controls.
Now...take what I've just told you and throw in 75 watts/channel, theater surround setup, phantom center channel emulation that REALLY works, and a programmable remote that could probably do everything except pay the bills, and you have one of the best recievers I've ever heard, and I listened to a lot before deciding on this one.
It also ended up being a couple hundred dollars cheaper than the Sony equivalent. If you're the ultimate audiophile, and just HAVE to have optical outputs, you can stack on another Yamaha component (or just buy one level higher than this) and you'll get that along with couple more filters. Either way, you're buying a reciever for sound quality, so think of this one first.
On a side note, I haven't had any problems with the unit, and the service people at one of the stereo places I went to said they are not worked on anywhere near as much as the other brands they offered (and this place had the full range of products).
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Pyanfar
|
|
Location: Frankfort, KY
Reviews written: 168
Trusted by: 78 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.