Yamaha RX-V1900 7.1 Channels Receiver

***IMPORTANT UPDATE***
I just discovered this unit suffers from what is being coined the "DTS Bomb" - which seems to effect only Yamaha and Onkyo receivers. I didn't have a clue what the "DTS Bomb" was until watching the Blu-Ray Night at the Museum. 1 hours, 6 minutes and 30 seconds into the movie (just after Ben Stiller comes in from watching the caveman turn to dust) there is a terrible noise sent to your speakers. This can damage your receiver AND speakers, so be VERY careful.

This problem only happens via HDMI on DTS-Master Audio tracks. Once again I'm thankful that my Panasonic BD-10 has 7.1 analog outputs and I'm back to analog for sound and digital for video.
***END IMPORTANT UPDATE***


Why Buy the RX-V1900?

More like why did I buy the RX-V1900 - which was for one thing - HD Radio. Supposedly HD-Radio is as good as CD quality, but I only heard it from my in-laws Sony clock HD-Radio, which makes no sense to me because you can't tell regular radio from HD-Radio through a cheap speaker built into a clock.

I also like the RX-V1900 because it's Yamaha's lowest cost receiver that doesn't collapse like a house of cards under 4 ohm speaker loads (I'll get into this later).

Overview
This is a 130 watts per channel receiver which means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. People who read this, please understand that these ratings are meaningless except from a very select few companies (Marantz, NAD, Outlaw and that's about it). Reality is it will produce much less due to cheap power supply and putting a real speaker load on it. Sadly my front speakers are 4 ohm rated, which many receivers choke on, but Yamaha insists their front three speakers can be 4 ohm rated if you use the switch on the back.

It has 3 zones for sending sound to two additional locations (but zones 2 & 3 are only stereo, so don't buy this hoping you can listen to full surround sound in multiple locations).

Set Up

Yamaha has a speaker setup utility, but I never use these things because I'm an audio geek and tweek my settings using my SPL meter, RT60 meter and pink noise frequency response graphing tool.

Once I hooked up my speakers I attached the HDMI cable from my Panasonic BD10 blu-ray player and waited (I'm pretty skeptical that HDMI will work flawlessly). The HDMI handshake worked perfectly and my audio and video worked. Now for the 0.0001% of the population who has a Panasonic BD10 and an HDMI equipped A/V receiver that can handle DTS-Master Audio be aware you are NOT going to get DTS-Master Audio. The BD10 can't even send it via PCM, so all you'll get is the DTS-Core.

Projector/Video
There is no reason not to use the Yamaha as a video switcher and then output everything via one HDMI cable. This receiver can even take a 1080/24p signal and forward it on to my projector natively. The bad news is my BD10 can't output such a signal, but I am planning on getting a new Blu-Ray player that can, so I'm very happy with this feature.

The Yamaha will also convert all analog video inputs and output them via HDMI - which is great for people with VCR's, DVD players that use component cables, or even people with cable boxes that don't have HDMI.

Audio - Sound Quality
Before I go into sound quality, let me say that Yamaha allows the use of the RX-V1900 as a pre-amp. So if you decide you want a very high quality external amplifier, you don't have to throw this unit away.

Now lets begin with Yamaha's heavily marketed Compressed Music Enhancer. This is supposed to make poor recordings on MP3 players sound significantly better. So I took out my trusty Dark Side of the Moon CD and burned it a second time - this time in lossless. This gave me one perfect copy on my iPod and one heavily compressed copy (128 kbs). I listened to both copies and could clearly hear the difference, so I did it again, but this time I engaged the Compressed Music Enhancer when listening to the compressed version. I wasn't "wowed" by the quality increase, but there was a more full sound. So without Compressed Music Enhancer I'd say the compressed copy was as good as 70% of the uncompressed version, with Compressed Music Enhancer I'd estimate it was up to 78%. The key is that it was better, not worse.

Onto the amplifier. Remember I have 4 ohm speakers that are hard to push (about 87 spl), and I've been greatly disappointed with offerings from Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer and Sony in the past. I pushed the amplifier hard for about 1/2 hour and then put my hand to the top. It was noticeably warmer than my NAD would run, which is to say NAD put in better heat sinks and power supplies, and I was VERY disappointed in the sound. To get the speakers to the volume levels I wanted, the Yamaha was nearly all the way to max volume - a level I knew would blow the unit after long hours and days of listening to music and movies. I called Yamaha and they said that was normal behaviour with 4 ohm speakers. I went to my dealer (yes I still buy local because the money you save on the Internet can't make up for the headaches of trying to get equipment to sound right - seriously, I don't want to preach here, but people are paying over $1,000 for this unit and they want to spend $150 less then suffer with inferior sound until their next upgrade?). One thing I did learn was I didn't have to go to my dealer, I should have just called. He told me to IGNORE the ohm switch on the back of the unit and run the speakers as if they were 8 ohms. The switch is only to reduce power by 1/3rd. That way if you DO turn the unit to full volume for 24 hours it won't overheat and blow - but if you turn the switch off you won't have to go to more than 1/2 max power. If the unit DOES overheat, due to prolonged use, it will shut itself down. This is done becaue UL won't approve the receiver for 4 ohm use even if it has protection circuitry.

Back to the listening and my dealer was right, not even 1/2 max volume and my Totem speakers were singing. To top it off, the unit wasn't getting anywhere near as hot as with the switch for low ohm speakers. So after all this, how good was the Yamaha amplifier - it was very good though not excellent. My Totem's sounded better with the NAD - not by a lot, but the highs were a little thinner than when the NAD was running them (of course, that's from memory and a little psychological effect could be the cause).

Movie Modes

If there's one thing I hate its fancy "sound modes" that try to make stuff sound different. I don't use them so you'll have to take Yamaha's word that they will change the way you listen to music. IMO, if I wanted to listen to 5 channel sound via my phonograph, I'll listen to my SACD instead. Sorry I can't give you insight here - it wouldn't be positive if I did.

Satellite Radio or HD Radio?

My neighbor gets XM so we got it set up using his account. We listened to lots of different music, mostly classical and jazz, and HD Radio blows satellite away. A quick A/B just blew us away, and for the time being HD Radio is commercial free, but there's no telling how long it will last. The fullness of HD Radio was so superior to XM that we tried an A/B comparison to CD. We switched to a classic rock station assuming Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven song would come on shortly and I had the CD player pre-loaded with the remastered version from the LZ 4 pack that came out in the late 80's. To make a long story short, we were wrong - never did hear it until four days later and by then, the CD was long ago put back on the shelf. The point being that HD Radio is definitely good enough to be compared to CD - so the hype is correct.

Remote Control

I use a UR MX-850, but the remote that comes with the unit is decent and has learning capability. I just wish I could save the $30 it probably costs me to get a remote that I will never use. Anyone need one?

Conclusion
With 3 zones, adequate power, complete codec support of DTS and Dolby, 4 HDMI inputs (all version 1.3a), 5 optical inputs and a HD-Radio tuner, this is one great, though not perfect, piece of equipment.