Yamaha 2024 range, A8B, A6B, A4B 2024 announcement...!!??

[rana_kirti]

Now that the current Yamaha have been around for 3 yrs which is a eternity in the AVR world, how soon should we expect the announcement of the 2024 models?

Will they showcase same at CES 2024?

Excited and looking forward to what Yamaha brings in the new series....!!!

 

[Maccie]

Now that the current Yamaha have been around for 3 yrs which is a eternity in the AVR world, how soon should we expect the announcement of the 2024 models?

Will they showcase same at CES 2024?

Excited and looking forward to what Yamaha brings in the new series....!!!

Agreed! I have an A6A and it is indeed a very solid and good performing AVR with suberb usability.

As an A6A owner I'm also looking forward to any news on upgrades to the A6A and A8A models. Yamaha made a big deal about how upgradable and 'future proof' these models are, I have not seen much of that yet unfortunately. Really hope they will stick with their original claims and selling points.

 

[Miker 1102]

What are the a6as like? I have a 1080 advantage and it's built very well. I found the room correction useless tho. I think it sounded very musical with simple manual adjustments. I keep it here as a back up but honestly prefer the Denon.

 

[GXAlan]

Agreed! I have an A6A and it is indeed a very solid and good performing AVR with suberb usability.

As an A6A owner I'm also looking forward to any news on upgrades to the A6A and A8A models. Yamaha made a big deal about how upgradable and 'future proof' these models are, I have not seen much of that yet unfortunately. Really hope they will stick with their original claims and selling points.

Hard to know. Their old product cycles were 2 years or so, but they REALLY went all in on their integrated amps lately.

Yamaha is siting on great technology:

New Contents Coming to Yamaha Super Surround Theater on April 26

News Releases - Yamaha Corporation

www.yamaha.com

 

[Maccie]

What are the a6as like? I have a 1080 advantage and it's built very well. I found the room correction useless tho. I think it sounded very musical with simple manual adjustments. I keep it here as a back up but honestly prefer the Denon.

I came from a decent two channel system and choose the A6A to build a multi channel system. Main competitors for me at the time was units from Marantz, Denon, Onkyo and Pioneer.

I was, to be honest, a bit worried about sacrificing 'sound quality' but the A6A surprised me in a positive way when I first ran it with my fronts. I had an ESS Sabre based DAC in my old two channel system. The A6A utlilize two ESS Sabre DACs (ES9026PRO for the mains and the ES9007S for the rest). I don't know to what extent that influence my opinion on the sound, but I am very happy with the sound, I find it neutral, clean, detailed and rhythmic to drop a few buzz words. It doesn't have a distinct sound character, it is neither warm nor bright.

I have only limited experience with other room correction systems like Audyssey and Dirac and I have never experienced the old YPAO version. As far as I can tell the new YPAO version is a new design and quite different from the older versions. I like YPAO in the A6A, it does a good job of making the system sound coherent and it takes care of the most important room issues automatically. The manual PEQs are there after calibration if needed.

I'm way more into audio than video, but as far as I can tell the video section performs well and I have had no problems or complaints there.

In general I find the A6A well engineered with a high degree of usability. It seems however, to be somewhat underrated in social media and such imo.

Some of its strengths:

+ Very solid build. It has a sort of no-nonsense approach to it, focusing on stuff you actually use instead of a lot of bells and whistles (well, the DSP modes are a bit superfluous to be honest...)

+ It works nicely with 2 channel music as well as multichannel content

+ To have 8 scenes (user-defined presets) is absolutely awesome, you can define almost every available setting per scene (and there are a lot of settings ...)

+ YPAO room correction is simple to run and works very well imho

+ The web-based GUI is a superb way of fiddling with the myriad of settings available, I never use the front controls or the remote for that. Btw: The display of the unit is rather small, but it is actually a good thing in my mind, it is less intrusive that way and I don't use it for navigating settings anyway.

+ The PEQs and other manual controls for the speaker patterns are great if you want to make manual adjustments per speaker

Might as well take this oppertunity to list some improvements I would like to see from Yamaha for the A6A:

* Now there are two separate speaker patterns available holding calibration data, speaker levels, manual PEQs etc. It would be great with one or two more speaker patterns to be able to taylor the sound to more than two usecases

* I would like to be able to run YPAO for a subset of all speakers or for individual speakers. It seems unnecessarily cumbersome to have to run YPAO for all speakers if I have only added, changed or rearranged one or two speakers.

* HDMI pass-through when in stand-by seem to use the latest used HDMI input. It would be of great use for me to be able to set a default HDMI input to be used for HDMI pass-through when in standby. E.g. my wife does not want to fiddle with the home theatre system at all when just watching TV, but the digital TV-box is not always the last HDMI input used when setting the A6A in stand-by.

* Adding a low/high shelving filter option to the PEQs

* Would be nice with a biquad filter option for all speakers and subwoofers to be able to import filters directly from e.g. REW for the tinkerers out there

* I do not use the DSP options much, for me other functions could probably use that space better

* MQA support!

* I like to uncluttered front, but for future versions of the HW, a HDMI input on the front would be nice

 

[Miker 1102]

Thank you for that breakdown. Like you, I am into avrs for the audio. I am always astounded how good multichannel music sounds on avrs. The Yamaha I have has an ess dac in it. It had a very poor review on here and was trashed as a product. I can't find anything wrong with the sound, tho. I never put it thru a lot of rigorous testing.
I was curious about the new Yamaha line initially but felt like it was priced kinda of high. I thought you did a good job on highlighting the pros and you are right about it seeming a little underrated. I never read anything about them. I have used Dirac on amps that were cheap (Onkyo) and was excited about the capabilities coming up with room correction. I thought I would wait until it came out on Denon. The 3800 was thr possible solution that offered everything in one package. It's a nice piece of engineering but the music was off to me. So I using a previous version I think had better dacs. If Yamaha updated would they ever get Dirac or Auro? I almost thought maybe the a8a had auro as well?

The dsp modes on the Yamaha are so nuts that I wonder if people use them really get into it. I had a very good time messing with them one night.

 

[rana_kirti]

now that Yamaha didn't announce any thing at the CES 2024, would it be safe to assume that there is not going to be a A6B,A8B for another year?

 

[kibs]

now that Yamaha didn't announce any thing at the CES 2024, would it be safe to assume that there is not going to be a A6B,A8B for another year?

There's still CEDIA to look forward to

 

[GXAlan]

The Yamaha I have has an ess dac in it. It had a very poor review on here and was trashed as a product. I can't find anything wrong with the sound, tho. I never put it thru a lot of rigorous testing.

I really respect what Amir is doing. I think the Yamaha does really well "in the first watt" but this is based upon my CX-A5100.

I was curious about the new Yamaha line initially but felt like it was priced kinda of high. I thought you did a good job on highlighting the pros and you are right about it seeming a little underrated. I never read anything about them. I have used Dirac on amps that were cheap (Onkyo) and was excited about the capabilities coming up with room correction. I thought I would wait until it came out on Denon. The 3800 was thr possible solution that offered everything in one package. It's a nice piece of engineering but the music was off to me. So I using a previous version I think had better dacs. If Yamaha updated would they ever get Dirac or Auro? I almost thought maybe the a8a had auro as well?

The dsp modes on the Yamaha are so nuts that I wonder if people use them really get into it. I had a very good time messing with them one night.

I own the HTP-1 which is one of the top performing AVPs on the market and I love my CX-A5100 as well. Auro is in the latest A8A-era products. Dirac has more power and control than YPAO RSC, but YPAO RSC can create more seamless soundfields if you go through the trouble of the multi angle measurement and use something like the "Sci Fi" DSP mode or similarly light-handed one. The DSP for music modes are overly aggressive for any modern recordings, but the movie modes are very interesting in my opinion.

The YPAO Volume feature is also really good.

There's still CEDIA to look forward to

And Sony did a weird thing last year where their AZ line of receivers came out in February.

 

[Miker 1102]

I wish I understood room correction more. I can read the y graph and basically understand what a decent measurement is, but don't understand what Dirac does different than Audyssey or YAPO. Sometimes I think I should take a math course. I found Audessy the easiest one to manipulate and the app is very helpful. Once I learned how to adjust the curve to give it some boost ..I was good. I have not really ventured outside of the big manufactures for audio. I get too nervous that I am gonna get something not supported..not that the other companies are great.

 

[GXAlan]

I wish I understood room correction more. I can read the y graph and basically understand what a decent measurement is, but don't understand what Dirac does different than Audyssey or YAPO. Sometimes I think I should take a math course. I found Audessy the easiest one to manipulate and the app is very helpful. Once I learned how to adjust the curve to give it some boost ..I was good. I have not really ventured outside of the big manufactures for audio. I get too nervous that I am gonna get something not supported..not that the other companies are great.

Dirac really lets you control the target curve really well, and do things like limit your correction to 500 Hz or so. It supposedly has the most sophisticated algorithms, but the jury is really out whether it's actually a lot better or just different.

Audyssey gave people very little control early on, which is where Dirac resulted in better performance. With the app and now MultEQ-X, the control you get with Audyssey is quite good. Again, you can use Audyssey to control full bandwidth, or reduced bandwidth and the use of the aftermarket tools helps fine tune. Audyssey's subwoofer integration is pretty good which people like. The lack of easy target curves in the app made it less flexible than Dirac.

YPAO RSC is very light handed with its correction, so the assumption is that it's worth. The reality is that being light handed means that it rarely "overcorrects" and causes problems. The PEQ allows you to tune your sound later if you choose, but as people point out, it's tricky correcting over the transition frequency. What YPAO does well is with the angular measurements tune your timing such that when you engage DSP, the speakers disappear. The "Sci-Fi" DSP is quite benign and more often than not, sounds better with movies. Yamaha also has the center lift feature which adds front heights into the mix to help bring your center channel up. YPAO is not very transparent for its corrections and it is not aggressive with your corrections but if you have good speakers in bad locations, YPAO works well.

If you don't use DSP with Yamaha, you give up a lot of the rationale for being light with the room correction (since a lot of CPU power is reserved for the DSP). It's not traditional reverb and is a lot more sophisticated, but again -- only for specific modes like Sci-Fi.

 

[PHD]

I was told by a local dealer that Yamaha is considering ditching the AV market. They can no longer compete with other brands like Masimo's D&M.

 

[rana_kirti]

Yamaha is big daddy, this can never happen in a 100 yrs.

I'm almost buying the a6a. but curious if Yamaha will bring Dirac in the probable upcoming a8b and a6b.

 

[GXAlan]

Yamaha is big daddy, this can never happen in a 100 yrs.

I'm almost buying the a6a. but curious if Yamaha will bring Dirac in the probable upcoming a8b and a6b.

Yamaha doesn’t need Dirac. They have Trinnov level expertise in commercial environments.

Three New Shows in the Super Surround Theater— Performances from the Yamaha Symphonic Band Reproduced Using Yamaha's Unique "ViReal™" Three-dimensional Acoustic Technology - 2022 - Information - INNOVATION ROAD - Yamaha Corporation

www.yamaha.com

But it’s not clear if their new vitality with stereo means home theater is weakening

 

[SilverRubicon]

Yamaha is big daddy, this can never happen in a 100 yrs.

In 2024?

 

[kibs]

Yamaha is big daddy, this can never happen in a 100 yrs.

I'm almost buying the a6a. but curious if Yamaha will bring Dirac in the probable upcoming a8b and a6b.

Their size is what is worrying. The receiver division is probably inconsequential to their bottom line and can be easily ditched

 

[0ldSchool]

Thank you for that breakdown. Like you, I am into avrs for the audio. I am always astounded how good multichannel music sounds on avrs. The Yamaha I have has an ess dac in it. It had a very poor review on here and was trashed as a product. I can't find anything wrong with the sound, tho. I never put it thru a lot of rigorous testing.
I was curious about the new Yamaha line initially but felt like it was priced kinda of high. I thought you did a good job on highlighting the pros and you are right about it seeming a little underrated. I never read anything about them. I have used Dirac on amps that were cheap (Onkyo) and was excited about the capabilities coming up with room correction. I thought I would wait until it came out on Denon. The 3800 was thr possible solution that offered everything in one package. It's a nice piece of engineering but the music was off to me. So I using a previous version I think had better dacs. If Yamaha updated would they ever get Dirac or Auro? I almost thought maybe the a8a had auro as well?

The dsp modes on the Yamaha are so nuts that I wonder if people use them really get into it. I had a very good time messing with them one night.

In answer to your comments and questions regarding use of DSP modes, musicality and my RX-A3080, let me say...

I have access to systems worth in excess of $50K and have not found sound more pleasing than that from Tidal [MQA or not], coming directly over (low jitter) fiber to my premises, fed directly from the ONT into an S.M.S.L. SD-9 streamer and then from there via an I2S [i-squared-ess] interconnect into a Gustard X-16 DAC which has two Sabre ES9068AS chips (right and left channels), and from the DAC fed into my RX-A3080 via XLR input. I use "Pure Direct" (unprocessed) amplification which is fed to KEF Coda 9.2 floor standing speakers on stands which elevate each 5.25" speaker and tweeter to head level. My wife and I were musicians during 5 years in high school and we expect all of the instruments to sound "real" like they did when we were immersed in the symphonic orchestra. My set-up gives that realism, and of course delivers life-like vocals as well.

Regarding the multiple DSP available, I have pared my list to a few DSPs at the top. (See screenshot from the Yamaha app).

When I listen to music, 95% of the time, I want the sound field, stage presence, and performer location data available from professional 2-channel, unprocessed highest quality microphone sound.

HOWEVER, there are a few instances where I might switch to a DSP. These are only a few examples - but I assure you with matched speakers in a 7.1 configuration, the sound "takes you there."

1) Listening to a jazz musician who appeared at one of the jazz clubs Yamaha has included in their DSP choices. I might switch to that club sound processing for a few moments of being in the venue.
2) Listening to Janis Joplin in a live performance with Big Brother and the Holding Company. I heard them perform in the old UF wooden basketball gymnasium in 1969. The Yamaha DSP brings back the "trip" as I moved from being next to the risers which acted as a stage, to halfway back in the venue. It reminds me of the sound more than 50 years ago when I use "Ritz Theater" or "Cellar Club" DSP functions.
3) A few years ago, a special re-edit, remix was done of Beatles music for Cirque de Soleil. The release had two discs - a CD and a DVD audio disc. Spine numbers are 0946 3 79810 2 3. When playing this DVD Audio disc, I use the 9 Channel Stereo DSP to pick up the down mix of all available channels and have it shoved into my 7.1 setup!
4) As you have noticed, many sports broadcasts are gibberish due to the poor processing, poor microphones, compression of FM signals, etc. When the sound on a sports broadcast is particularly grating, I invoke the "Sports" DSP. If it is still poor quality, I also push the AI (artificial intelligence) surround sound button. Quite often it makes enough of a difference that I do NOT need captions!

 

[Miker 1102]

Wow. Thank you so much for that break down. I am old enough to have seen music performers in hockey rinks in the early 80s and remember the sounds of differnt "halls" . But seeing Joplin at a Gym must have been amazing. I have talked to people that saw Zeppelin at a local club we had in my home city. They played 2 shows. Imagine a Zeppelin matinee? One was supposed to appeal to high school kids was the understanding

I also appreciated your break down of how you run your set up and process your music. I enjoy using a streamer or local network to play music off the current avr but it's not quite enough. If I move up it would be my last go at this. I don't see being in my current home on five years. I have had the luxury of a lot of space and no neighbors. I can play reference levels in my own home at 4am. I sometimes forget what a luxury that is. It's just once you enjoy music in multichannel channel you want it to sound as good as it can. It's a compelling hobby.

 

[SkipperGW]

Yamaha doesn’t need Dirac. They have Trinnov level expertise in commercial environments.

Three New Shows in the Super Surround Theater— Performances from the Yamaha Symphonic Band Reproduced Using Yamaha's Unique "ViReal™" Three-dimensional Acoustic Technology - 2022 - Information - INNOVATION ROAD - Yamaha Corporation

www.yamaha.com

would love to see that trickle down to the "regular" avr…
i've always had yamaha avr (at this point a rx-a3080), but never was satisfied with ypao.
dirac art could be a gamechanger.
since i'm planning a new avr this summer i really wonder if there will be a next generation yamaha avr with something like yamaha super surround theater which maybe is as good as trinnov, or if after many years i have to switch to something different from yamaha (which i wouldn't really like because i really like surround:ai and dialogue enhancer or raised center level).
but since i never was able to finally get rid of the room modes and that's why i'm toying with the idea of getting an avr with dirac art.
now, what's your guess – will yamaha super surround theater come this year to a new avr line?

 

[0ldSchool]

would love to see that trickle down to the "regular" avr…
i've always had yamaha avr (at this point a rx-a3080), but never was satisfied with ypao.
dirac art could be a gamechanger.
since i'm planning a new avr this summer i really wonder if there will be a next generation yamaha avr with something like yamaha super surround theater which maybe is as good as trinnov, or if after many years i have to switch to something different from yamaha (which i wouldn't really like because i really like surround:ai and dialogue enhancer or raised center level).
but since i never was able to finally get rid of the room modes and that's why i'm toying with the idea of getting an avr with dirac art.
now, what's your guess – will yamaha super surround theater come this year to a new avr line?

I WONDERED the same thing (would Yamaha incorporate what they've learned from the super surround theater in their next AVRs), since from 1984 (and possible before) Yamaha's sound processing has incorporated their analyses of recordings made in different environments.

The Yamaha tag line "Natural Sound" meant something in 1984 (and I still use that original amp in the Christmas boat parade - LOL), and my experience (and many visiting listeners in my den) indicates that Natural Sound is just that.

My nephew (one of my contacts with an expensive system) loves Dirac. However, for me, YPAO is satisfactory, since 85% of my listening is 2-channel with TIDAL high fidelity via my Gustard DAC-X16.

Let's hope Yamaha keeps giving us sound we love.