On the front panel of the AVR are four Scene buttons: BD/DVD, TV, CD and radio. These presets not only select the required input, but plot in whatever post processing you assign. One stab at the radio button, for example, selects the correct input and, should you choose, applies five channel stereo processing – have speakers, will use them.
A calibration mic is supplied for use with the YPAO (Yamaha Parametric room Acoustic Optimizer) set-up
Alternatively, hitting the TV button might take you to a satellite or cable feed where a Sci-Fi DSP post processing mode is applied for wide stereo separation. It’s in amongst these DSP presets that you’ll also find a Compressed Music Enhancer, which endeavours to restore tonal richness to squished MP3s and WMA files.
Yamaha continues to offers some of the best DSP post processing modes in the business, and they’re worth exploring. Included are some acoustic patterns taken from actual venues. You may not be able to drop everything to pop over to The Roxy Club in LA for a set from Motley Crüe, but hit this preset, dim the lights and pour yourself a Jack Daniels and it’s a pretty close approximation.
On the scene
Verdict
For a feature-laden home cinema receiver, the Yamaha RX-V471 can be considered ridiculously good value at £300. FLAC support may be conspicuous by its absence, but the fact that this AVR is so agreeable to live with seems reasonable compensation. ®
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Yamaha RX-V471 5.1 AV receiver
COMMENTS
I'm sorry, but can we stop using airy-fairy words like "polite" when talking about audio, as an engineer it depresses me when I see the use of audiophile phrasing instead of clear definitive descriptions like "distorted", "non-linear", "lacking bass response" and I will accept "clean" to mean undistorted, but not "tidy" to mean anything other than for functional elements.
Eh? The Squeezebox decodes the FLAC and outputs PCM.
I don't think it makes any sense for a receiver to be able to decode different audio (or video) formats unless you also want it to be a media streamer. To my mind that's currently a step too far. Receivers should accept standard input streams. Let the device sending them that stream handle any format specific decoding.
Make everything wife/mistress proof
... buy a Logitech Harmony, even a fluffy brained barbie can cope with pressing the big touch screen option for "Watch TV" or "Watch DVD"...
Made my life much easier and less filled with whinging!
Simply not enough I/O...
A good receiver shouldn't have that many square inches of empty panel space on the back. It should be at least 50% connectors (by area) on the back, preferrabley 75+%. I've seen some that were nearly 100%, but I can't afford them.
should be ok....
my mrs could use my old yammy.
admittedly my denon has 3 preset quick buttons that we use for ps3, audio and virgin. the bdr is clever enough to auto control the amp and it remembers its settings too.
