I don't buy into Denon sounding better than Yamaha. Has anyone honestly ever put a Yamaha receiver side by side with a Denon and tested them with the same speakers and room or are you going by your memory?

Audyssey MultiQ xt 32 is sooooo far in front of ypow. Don't trust your ears? Set up a mic and take some measurements. I setup an A3070 a couple weeks back and ypow was so bad I got better results with it turned off.

Actually, yes I have.

It is amazing to me that no one here has mentioned speaker tonality. Some speakers sound bright, some warm, etc. Amps are the same way.
Historically Yamaha has been a bit bright. Some would describe that as sharp or raspy sounding. Other might just say extended highs. But the context is lost unless you talk about the speakers connected and their tonality.
Putting Klipsch speakers (which are very bright to begin with) on a Yamaha amp, would make you ears bleed. That would be a bad combo, although I have seen a dealer on here say they use that very setup - got to wonder how tone deaf they are.
A better fit for those speakers would be Denon, which have a more laid back, warm, (insert other synonym) sound.
At the same time, putting a Denon on Phase Technology speakers (which are also very warm sounding), results in a system that sounds lifeless & dull. However a Yamaha on those same speakers, sounds more pleasing to the ear.

Can't have a discussion on the sound quality of the amp, without a discussion of the speakers involved.

Speakers vs. amp influencing the sound is at least 80/20 and maybe 90/10.

Re: listening to YPAO vs Audyssey...
I am yet to find anyone who is installing the kit and seems to know where to place the microphone during a multi-point measurement! The guys in retail stores know (but only a few of them)... so to me many, many amps from all brands are not being installed to their full potential.

Of course, if the amp is in a rack 50 meters from the speakers the calibration microphones cable obviously won't reach the theatre... meaning it becomes a little academic and that some features of the AVR (Audyssey volume etc) can never be utilised by the end user.
If you want better room EQ, go ARC (Anthem etc), if you want the next level, go Dirac Live (Arcam / NAD / Emotiva). These aren't tied back to the receiver so can come in handy... but theu most certainly don't control as well as the other brands out there.

Interestingly Yamaha have pushed 'English tuned' sound for 2017 AVR's, which historically will sound different to the Japanese tuned units.

Yamaha definitely sounds better then Denon.......since they actually work whereas Denon becomes a large dead paperweight. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 17 times, shame on me :-o

Interesting. Do you have a link or can tell me where on the Yamaha CI site I can read up on that?
Very unusual for an amp manufacture to 'deliberately' tune their output. The tonality is usually a result of the overall design of the amp. More inductance in the output, resulting in slightly rolled off highs (warm sounding). Etc.

It's really a bad situation when you have to sell what a vendor has forced you to buy instead of what's best for the customer.

The first Denon I ever saw had a remote with two slide switches on it, which had to be the most confusing thing ever for a civilian!


Let me run with this for a moment: Back in the late 70s I ran into this thing called "Touch For Health." They came up with a "stress test." You'd hold your arm out to the side, then bend your elbow 90 degrees so your hand was in front. The stress test involved someone pushing down on your forearm.

The magical part was this: if you could resist the downward push, then you were in contact with some good vibes. If not, then you were in contact with some bad vibes. This was actually recommended as, for instance, a way to see if the veggies at the store were healthful for you or not. Hold a veggie in your left hand and have someone push down on your right forearm...

Back when CDs were new, people said they sounded harsh. I had, more than once, been in the presence of a violinist who was practicing, and MAN that sounded harsh! So...

When you say some music sounds harsh (be it speakers or amplifier or the combination), are you saying that they sound accurate or that they sound wrong? If you have not heard those exact instruments live, how would you know? A violin at four feet can drive you nuts from the harshness! But a recording that doesn't have harshness of violins has lost something of the actual sound.

This is like science. We can argue all day about whether an amp is harsh or not but none of us seem to be in a position to know if that harshness is accurate reproduction or not. Likewise, science has rules as to how it proceeds, starting with a hypothesis, then creating repeatable tests, but the very bases of science cannot be tested and must be assumed -- how can you test whether the sun will EVER not rise? You can't set up a test!

Before Columbus, a smug European statement of reality was the phrase "as white as a swan." That's like our science of today, all derived from assumptions of things we've seen repeated without exception. When our types then found Australia, birds were found that were swans, and were black. Hundreds of years of settled reality were reversed in an instant.

Me, I like the way Yamahas sound.

What it can come down to is more about how we as individuals "hear" things and the sounds we like.
A combination of amplifier and speakers can and will vary from one manufacture to another. Some combinations will be perceived as being better for Jazz, movies, Heavy Metal etc.
Some people will say these speakers with that amplifier or receiver sounds harsh or another word used is bright.
To me that might indicate they feel the highs are accentuated.

How can 50 meter speaker wire runs be justified? That's the last place long distance is desired, other than phono or highZ unbalanced signal.

It's definitely not on the CI site.

I used to think Yamaha sounded a bit thin, but it's no big deal when there's nothing to compare it with or if some kind of EQ is done.

To make it worse, those remotes and many later ones had a set of buttons on the back with a secret door that was almost always removed.

Lots of instruments are harsh in a live situation, to put it mildly. Drums? Absolutely not something I like to be near, but they sound far different on recordings. Electric guitars can be piercing- it's usually referred to as 'ice pick in the ears'. Most likely to be a Telecaster through a Black or Silver face Fender amp or any single coil pickup through a badly set Tweed Fender amp- Rory Gallagher, Albert Collins and Buddy Guy are good examples.

I used to get a kick out of people whose answer to "What do you want the system to do" was "I want it to sound just like it did in the studio when they recorded it". Ugh. OTOH, JBL speakers were sold on the basis that they were studio monitors so,...... They were so disappointed to find out that their favorite recordings are just an illusion. When they tell me they want accuracy, I tell them "No, you don't" and then I explain about ear fatigue.

When I started out at Ultimate Electronics ages ago, their most popular combo was Yamaha + Klipsch. It hurt my 22 year old ears. In fact, nothing we sold at that store cut it for me....Def Tech, Boston, Infinity....our store did not have Martin Logan. So with all the stuff I could have gotten at cost, I ended up buying a set of speakers from the hi-fi store down the road, at which I later became an employee...I paid retail for them.

Fast forward that many years, and my current employer uses Klipsch with Yamaha quite frequently. In fact, my system at home right now is a Yamaha AVR from a few years ago (RX-V1400....freebie from an upgrade job), and some Klipsch speakers from many more years ago (KLF-20, C7). It sounds great! Go figure. Maybe I am just old...or maybe they changed their sound....either way, I like it.

On a side note, when I worked at the hi-fi store, I never could get myself to like any of the B&W speakers....from the cheap ones all the way up to the Signature 800D. We had them on all kinds of electronics from VTL tubes, Krell, Musical Fidelity, Theta, and others along the way. The only B&W speakers that ever made me drool were the Silver Signature way back in '92.

Excellent observations all.

Hands down Yamaha over Denon across the board

Regarding tuning, when they developed the Aventage line 8 generations ago they changed the sound to be more universally accurate (based on using better quality and designed sub-component parts)

The better design and sub-component parts conversely greatly improved Yamaha AVR performance AND reliability.

I'm a bit biased as I've been pro Yamaha for almost 20 years now...but the track record speaks volumes. I have sold and installed over 1000 units since the Aventage lauch in 2010 (plus almost as many V series) and have had a total of 7 defective units in that time. 2 of which were customer caused problems, 3 were bad HDMI boards (1 7 series aventage and 2 V3/4 series) after 2 years and 1 740 and 1 pre Aventage RXV1400 that were both first shipment units with bad ground solders that died (within 6 months) and were repaired under warranty.

Make the switch and you'll probably wonder why you didn't do so sooner.

From a control perspective occasionally the do change the input selection codes and some use an "AV" input where as others in the line use "HDMI"

IR and IP control are rock solid and drivers work great.

* only other gotcha is on the component video upconverting units sometimes the resolutions are limited to 480i...though if youre still dealing with a lot of component video sources your client might be due for some source device upgrades :)