Yamaha RX-V663 Receiver Thread

[bigmod]

Got my Yamaha RX-V663 a week ago . Thought I'd let anyone thinking of getting one know what to expect. I'll be comparing it mainly to my old Onkyo HT-R508 (5.1 version of the TX-SR505).

First of all the Yamaha was pretty simple to install. Plenty of analog inputs but only 2 HDMI. Manual is pretty comprehensive, not very well organized, but still gives you all the information required to make it work.

Auto-calibration, aka YPAO, is pretty simple. It asks you to choose between 3 EQ settings before it starts. I tried them all and found "Natural" to be, well, the most natural sounding one. But you can still disable the EQ later or use the graphic EQ to adjust the sound to your liking. Calibration takes about 2 minutes. It is very fast since YPAO only takes measurements from one location unlike the Audyssey 2EQ which takes from 3. The results were pretty accurate, measurements of distance and sound level differed a little bit from actual results.

Next step was setting the "SCENES". I personally like this feature a lot. My Onkyo allowed me to assign inputs and outputs for DVD, CD, TV, etc... The Yamaha lets you do the same but with the additional option of adding DSP effects (or not). Example: you might set up CD with HDMI 1 as input and with DSP as Dolby ProLogicII Music to Scene 2. So when you press Scene 2, HDMI 1 is selected and played in Dolby ProLogicII Music mode. You can assign 4 scenes only.

The On-Screen Display is more Commodore 64 than Sony XMB. But it is simple and well organized with plenty of options to play with. Yamaha provide their own DSPs with a plethora of options to tweak. Personally I didn't modify any, but they're there for anyone who wants to adjust reverberation times and delay, etc...

Sound quality improved over my Onkyo . Bass is tighter, highs are brighter and mids are clearer (though a bit smeared at higher volumes). The music enhancer does wonders to mp3s and other compressed music. And uncompressed blu-ray movie soundtracks sound incredible .

Yamaha rates the RX-V663 at 95W/Channel. I certainly felt it compared to the 130W/Channel of my Onkyo. But it still is powerful enough to fill a mid-sized living room. However I did notice an increase in distortion at higher volumes. Seems like to Yamaha runs out of power pretty quickly. And the volume control is kinda weird. You can adjust the volume from -80db to +16.5db ! Why +16.5 and not just stop at 0db. What's weirder is that in the setup menu you can choose it to stop at 0db. I hope someone can explain this to me.

Overall it is a pretty decent receiver with good sound quality and plenty of features. However if your speakers can handle more than 80W, I recommend a more powerful one.


Pros:
- Good sound quality
- Accurate auto-calibration
- Scenes are very useful
- OSD menu
- Uncompressed audio

Cons:
- Runs out of power quickly
- Distortion at high volumes
- Auto-calibration not as good as Audyssey 2EQ
- No dimmer button on remote. Must go into setup menu to adjust it
- Going to the menu when HDMI inputs are selected interrupts playback