This is a review and detailed measurements of the Yamaha R-S202 Receiver (tuner plus stereo amplifier) with Bluetooth. Money was kindly donated by a member for me to purchase it new for $200 from Amazon.
The R-S202 harkens back to the old days of receivers being the most popular way to play your content with inclusion of AM/FM receiver and preamplifier to select among your inputs. Alas, the volume control is the new incarnation with poor/stiff feeling but otherwise, a lot is familiar including bass and treble controls (which used to be knobs but now up and down buttons). The back really brings back old memories:
I hated those spring speaker terminals then and now. They don't allow thick wires to be inserted and you never know how far you have pushed them looking from above. I know every cent needed to be saved here but are these really cheaper than standard binding posts??? Another factor is the attached cord which Japanese companies stick to in their budget audio products.
As you see a remote control is provided. No, you don't have motorized volume control. It is a digital rotary control which likely uses an analog programmable gain buffer.
Overall though, the impression is positive. The insides look roomy and while the heatsink is the spring metal type, it seems adequate for the job, making the unit pretty light to carry around. The amp space helps with cooling as in my testing, the top barely got warm above the heat sink.
Yamaha R-S202 Amplifier Measurements
For a long time I have standardized on setting the gain on integrated amplifiers to 29 dB. Lately I have been thinking that is a mistake as our DACs can output so much signal that can drive almost any amp to its full power at lower gain settings. So decided to dial that down to 25 dB (max was 33 dB and change). It should have a very slight impact on measurements, allowing direct comparison still be made. Here is our dashboard with that setting:
Performance is just good enough to land in our "green" zone:
As noted in the graph, power supply noise is quite visible and partially responsible for not so excellent showing. We see that in our dynamic range measurements:
This is a class AB amplifier so frequency response is wide and load independent:
The bass control does what you expect but tweeter response is kind of wild:
Crosstalk/channel separation is very good:
Multitone is good where it matters in mid frequencies:
But highs suffer and this is reflected in 19+20 kHz IMD test:
Response is noise dominated until distortion sets in when sweeping for power:
Allowing 1% THD, we get our standardized power levels for 4 ohm:
That is good amount of headroom for bursty content as music would be.
Sweeping frequencies we get increased distortion at lower frequencies (and generally high noise level):
But predictable response due again the amplifier being class AB. Design was quite stable, not shutting down even though the amplifier went into clipping at all frequencies.
The amplifier improved a bit as it warmed up:
There is significant spike in the output as you power the amplifier on and off even though it is going in and out of standby:
The more sensitive your speaker is, the more likely you will hear these noises.
Yamaha R-S202 Complex Load Testing
I was surprised to see Yamaha rate the amplifier down to 2 ohms in burst mode so powered up my reactive load test:
We see that it indeed is able to get down to 2 ohm. But change the phase angle and you barely make it out of 4 ohm and by 2 ohm, you better have basically resistive load:
Conclusions
It is hard to imagine a major audio company can product such a receiver and get it to my door for $200. Measured performance is just acceptable which makes that even a more pleasant surprise. The design seemed robust handling many instances of me pushing it into really dire circumstances with very low impedances going even below 2 ohm. You can get better noise and distortion from other products at even lower costs but not with this feature set. Or looks for far listening.
I am going to put the Yamaha R-S202 stereo receiver on my recommended list.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The R-S202 harkens back to the old days of receivers being the most popular way to play your content with inclusion of AM/FM receiver and preamplifier to select among your inputs. Alas, the volume control is the new incarnation with poor/stiff feeling but otherwise, a lot is familiar including bass and treble controls (which used to be knobs but now up and down buttons). The back really brings back old memories:
I hated those spring speaker terminals then and now. They don't allow thick wires to be inserted and you never know how far you have pushed them looking from above. I know every cent needed to be saved here but are these really cheaper than standard binding posts??? Another factor is the attached cord which Japanese companies stick to in their budget audio products.
As you see a remote control is provided. No, you don't have motorized volume control. It is a digital rotary control which likely uses an analog programmable gain buffer.
Overall though, the impression is positive. The insides look roomy and while the heatsink is the spring metal type, it seems adequate for the job, making the unit pretty light to carry around. The amp space helps with cooling as in my testing, the top barely got warm above the heat sink.
Yamaha R-S202 Amplifier Measurements
For a long time I have standardized on setting the gain on integrated amplifiers to 29 dB. Lately I have been thinking that is a mistake as our DACs can output so much signal that can drive almost any amp to its full power at lower gain settings. So decided to dial that down to 25 dB (max was 33 dB and change). It should have a very slight impact on measurements, allowing direct comparison still be made. Here is our dashboard with that setting:
Performance is just good enough to land in our "green" zone:
As noted in the graph, power supply noise is quite visible and partially responsible for not so excellent showing. We see that in our dynamic range measurements:
This is a class AB amplifier so frequency response is wide and load independent:
The bass control does what you expect but tweeter response is kind of wild:
Crosstalk/channel separation is very good:
Multitone is good where it matters in mid frequencies:
But highs suffer and this is reflected in 19+20 kHz IMD test:
Response is noise dominated until distortion sets in when sweeping for power:
Allowing 1% THD, we get our standardized power levels for 4 ohm:
That is good amount of headroom for bursty content as music would be.
Sweeping frequencies we get increased distortion at lower frequencies (and generally high noise level):
But predictable response due again the amplifier being class AB. Design was quite stable, not shutting down even though the amplifier went into clipping at all frequencies.
The amplifier improved a bit as it warmed up:
There is significant spike in the output as you power the amplifier on and off even though it is going in and out of standby:
The more sensitive your speaker is, the more likely you will hear these noises.
Yamaha R-S202 Complex Load Testing
I was surprised to see Yamaha rate the amplifier down to 2 ohms in burst mode so powered up my reactive load test:
We see that it indeed is able to get down to 2 ohm. But change the phase angle and you barely make it out of 4 ohm and by 2 ohm, you better have basically resistive load:
Conclusions
It is hard to imagine a major audio company can product such a receiver and get it to my door for $200. Measured performance is just acceptable which makes that even a more pleasant surprise. The design seemed robust handling many instances of me pushing it into really dire circumstances with very low impedances going even below 2 ohm. You can get better noise and distortion from other products at even lower costs but not with this feature set. Or looks for far listening.
I am going to put the Yamaha R-S202 stereo receiver on my recommended list.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
