Yamaha RX-V6A 7.2 channel 4K / 8K Dolby AV Receiver Review

[amirm]

Tear down?

Could do.

 

[beagleman]

Thanks for the review Amir. I agree this looks nice, and I guess I'll stop telling people I've never heard of a Yamaha that didn't have above average sound.

Did he actually comment on the sound?

I saw a lot of comments about mediocre test performance.
But from my real world experience, the lowliest Yamaha I happen to have recently acquired, (for free) sounds fairly decent.

And yes I have heard far pricier and better testing stuff...

 

[Helicopter]

Did he actually comment on the sound?

I saw a lot of comments about mediocre test performance.
But from my real world experience, the lowliest Yamaha I happen to have recently acquired, (for free) sounds fairly decent.

And yes I have heard far pricier and better testing stuff...

I could have phrased that better. I just always thought of Yamaha as a very consistently good brand for designing durable and transparent amplifiers, and the performance of this one is rather average, though it looks nice. They should all sound pretty close. Making lots of power, which this does decently can be really important too. I am sure it would be hard to pick this blind with most speakers.

The point is this does not make it in the basket with every Yamaha amp and receiver I have seen, which may all be pre 1999, to get my recommendation. I think they should have done better with menus and the DAC at the very least. For $400 at Costco it is a little better, but it is not for people like me or people who ask for my unqualified recommendation.

If you actually going to spend a few thousand dollars or more on speakers and set them up for surround sound, Denon products are better than this.

 

[restorer-john]

Even the 5000 serie?

Yamaha use AVR parts right into the AS-xxxx series. The M-5000 amplifier is beautiful to look at for sure, but it's what's inside and its performance, that is sorely lacking.

Let's be honest, The M-5000 looks better than any Yamaha product made previously. But that is what you are paying for- the looks. ASR members are smarter than that.

The specifications are extremely underwhelming and typical of the descent into mediocre numbers we have witnessed from Yamaha (and plenty of others) for decades.

M-5000 100wpc/8R @0.07%! rated.

Let's compare to Yamaha's 1988/9 range, even the baby in the range (back then AU$999) outperformed the M-5000 (AU$12,999 today).

MX-1000 260wpc/8R @0.003%

Here's an actual AU price list from circa 1990/1 I just scanned.

Find me a single specification that is superior, 30 years on, apart from excess weight! The money on the 5000 series amplifier goes on looks, pretty speaker terminals and panels of steel to get the weight up because that's what audiophiles associate with quality.

I haven't seen a C-5000 preamplifier, so I can't comment. And the 5000 speakers are lovely, but certainly not remotely worth AU$20K.

The turntable GT-5000 turntable has been lambasted for the arm geometry (or lack thereof), it's a synchoronous belt drive and is not a patch on the Gigantic & Tremendous (GT) turntables that Yamaha brought to market in the late 80s.

Anyway, this review is of a cheap Yamaha AVR and it performs like one. It unfortunate as I'm sure @amirm remembers the quality Yamaha gear of yesteryear. Gear where the volume knobs weren't made of plastic and felt like they were going to break off if you used them. Where every spec has a few more leading zeroes.

 

[PeteL]

Yamaha use AVR parts right into the AS-xxxx series. The M-5000 amplifier is beautiful to look at for sure, but it's what's inside and its performance, that is sorely lacking.

Let's be honest, The M-5000 looks better than any Yamaha product made previously. But that is what you are paying for- the looks. ASR members are smarter than that.

The specifications are extremely underwhelming and typical of the descent into mediocre numbers we have witnessed from Yamaha (and plenty of others) for decades.

M-5000 100wpc/8R @0.07%! rated.
View attachment 91041

Let's compare to Yamaha's 1988/9 range, even the baby in the range (back then AU$999) outperformed the M-5000 (AU$12,999 today).

MX-1000 260wpc/8R @0.003%
View attachment 91042

Here's an actual AU price list from circa 1990/1 I just scanned.
View attachment 91043
Find me a single specification that is superior, 40 years on, apart from excess weight! The money on the 5000 series amplifier goes on looks, pretty speaker terminals and panels of steel to get the weight up because that's what audiophiles associate with quality.


I haven't seen a C-5000 preamplifier, so I can't comment. And the 5000 speakers are lovely, but certainly not remotely worth AU$20K.

The turntable GT-5000 turntable has been lambasted for the arm geometry (or lack thereof), it's a synchoronous belt drive and is not a patch on the Gigantic & Tremendous (GT) turntables that Yamaha brought to market in the late 80s.

Anyway, this review is of a cheap Yamaha AVR and it performs like one. It unfortunate as I'm sure @amirm remembers the quality Yamaha gear of yesteryear. Gear where the volume knobs weren't made of plastic and felt like they were going to break off if you used them. Where every spec has a few more leading zeroes.

Interesting. I have an even older than this Yamaha ca 800 in an office/backup system and I like it very much. look and sound

 

[Taddpole]

Find me a single specification that is superior, 40 years on

Well we've got ten years to find one

 

[restorer-john]

Well we've got ten years to find one

It was edited before you posted that!

 

[Taddpole]

It was edited before you posted that!

Time is an illusion.

The specs quoted seem suspect tbh

 

[beagleman]

Yamaha use AVR parts right into the AS-xxxx series. The M-5000 amplifier is beautiful to look at for sure, but it's what's inside and its performance, that is sorely lacking.

Let's be honest, The M-5000 looks better than any Yamaha product made previously. But that is what you are paying for- the looks. ASR members are smarter than that.

The specifications are extremely underwhelming and typical of the descent into mediocre numbers we have witnessed from Yamaha (and plenty of others) for decades.

M-5000 100wpc/8R @0.07%! rated.
View attachment 91041

Let's compare to Yamaha's 1988/9 range, even the baby in the range (back then AU$999) outperformed the M-5000 (AU$12,999 today).

MX-1000 260wpc/8R @0.003%
View attachment 91042

Here's an actual AU price list from circa 1990/1 I just scanned.
View attachment 91043
Find me a single specification that is superior, 30 years on, apart from excess weight! The money on the 5000 series amplifier goes on looks, pretty speaker terminals and panels of steel to get the weight up because that's what audiophiles associate with quality.

I haven't seen a C-5000 preamplifier, so I can't comment. And the 5000 speakers are lovely, but certainly not remotely worth AU$20K.

The turntable GT-5000 turntable has been lambasted for the arm geometry (or lack thereof), it's a synchoronous belt drive and is not a patch on the Gigantic & Tremendous (GT) turntables that Yamaha brought to market in the late 80s.

Anyway, this review is of a cheap Yamaha AVR and it performs like one. It unfortunate as I'm sure @amirm remembers the quality Yamaha gear of yesteryear. Gear where the volume knobs weren't made of plastic and felt like they were going to break off if you used them. Where every spec has a few more leading zeroes.

I am confused. What specs are mediocre on the new amp specifically>? They all look quite decent to me.

Not wanting an argument about old versus new, but I owned some older yamaha stuff (some you posted specs for) and sure it was great, I loved it and all, but I guess I do not see this huge discrepancy you talk about in specs.

Things are rated differently now, and that may be part of what you are seeing, but are you sure you are not letting nostalgia and specs alone cloud your judgement?

Prices are higher for sure, I agree there! But would a lot of that be based on much lower sales figures of separates today compared to years ago?

Separates are a niche category now.

 

[Vasr]

Yamaha sold themselves out in the early very 2000s. Prior to that, they were a specialist only brand, with no exposure in the big box discounters and their home theatre range was also reserved for dedicated retailers who would display, demonstrate and do justice to the brand.

I guess they brought in consultants from Bain or McKinsey or similar to re-structure their companies to be more capital efficient or hired a CEO graduating from an American Business School.

Sometime in the future, I hope historians will document how many products, services and livelihoods these monkeys have degraded/destroyed in search of capital efficiency.

 

[restorer-john]

but I guess I do not see this huge discrepancy you talk about in specs.

One is optimisticly specified mid-fi at best, the other HiFi with conservative specifications. Look at the maximum input voltage and THD for the M-5000 on both SE and balanced- it's a disaster. 1.1V/2.2V and it's deep into front end/back end clipping at 0.5% THD? What are they thinking? Just to be sure, I downloaded the manual and yep, 0.5% THD at 1.1V input!

So that means at 31.1V out into 8R (120W) the amplfier is at 0.5% THD (-46dB). It has no reserve.

The specs quoted seem suspect tbh

LOL. This is what decades of poorly performing gear does- it normalises distinctly mediocre specifications, especially for people new to the game.

This is the base model preamplifier from that 1989 range. The CX-600. I made no attempt to play with the earth/grounding. If I had, the numbers would be better again. The THD is the residual of the card. The preamplifier contributes none. Specified THD at less than 0.002%@3V out.

Anyway, let's take all this to a new thread and not derail this thread. I'll see what I can come up with later today. Cheers.

 

[theglobalelite]

I have not heard, nor read about any AVR by a major well known manufacturer that has ever sounded less than good.

I know there is a lot of AVR bashing in general, but "very poor", meaning what? Like an alarm clock radio, Super audible distortion or what?

You're right above most manufacturer AVRs probably sounding good to most people, and I am extremely skeptical of audio quality claims in general, I usually have a really hard time hearing the difference between most audio source devices, but holy cow did I notice an improvement when I added some Ncore amps to augment my low cost Denon AVR. The clarity was massively improved across the board by the Ncore amps. It's hard to describe, but when playing rock music the vocals sounded like they were "hiding" in the back of the speaker cabinet and struggling to come out, but when on the Ncore driven speakers in a level-matched A/B test they were blasting out the front of the tweeter along with the rest of the music. On the Denon amp some instruments got muddy and mushed together, but on the Ncore amps, every instrument was individually recognizable.

Now I actually thought my Denon was defective after these tests, since was a $600 msrp model which I bought refurbished for $350 from accessories4less. However, I recently saw this review for the 2020 $650 msrp Denon S960H and the reviewer had very similar findings on the audio presentation to my 2016 $600 model, which leads me to think the more budget Denons have significantly worse components. This is all very subjective and hard to prove of course so would be really interesting to see objective measurements. I would definitely like to be proven wrong!

 

[restorer-john]

Separates are a niche category now.

With respect, every D/A converter, headphone amplifier, integrated amplifier and pre/power tested here on ASR is regarded as a separate component. As such, there's been more separates tested by Amir than anything else.

However, I would lump the AVRs, streaming amplifiers in their own category now as the lines have blurred.

 

[beagleman]

With respect, every D/A converter, headphone amplifier, integrated amplifier and pre/power tested here on ASR is regarded as a separate component. As such, there's been more separates tested by Amir than anything else.

However, I would lump the AVRs, streaming amplifiers in their own category now as the lines have blurred.

You may have misunderstood this part.

I meant that separate audio components in general, are not common place today. Back in the 70s-90s they were all over the place. Every name brand had many models and so on.
I think economy of scale is not on our side with separates today, was all I meant.

A yamaha amp today, I would assume does not make a large dent sales wise, in comparison to their more common AVRs

 

[Nathan Raymond]

A yamaha amp today, I would assume does not make a large dent sales wise, in comparison to their more common AVRs

And sadly, AVRs are getting squeezed by both the sound bars (which promise to sound just as good but without all the wires and complexity) and things like Sonos. A decade or so ago as a computer consultant I got to see first hand how popular Sonos was in homes and small businesses. While I personally have no interest in it, many became enamored the idea of "whole home" audio, where they could stream things selectively to different places in their house, and that included a Sonos home theater setup. And as a result, we now have receivers also trying to act as a hub in the same capacity to compete with Sonos, which means more added complexity to an AVR and more features to test and more time and engineering energy taken away from a focus on core audio quality. What I wouldn't give for simple, affordable A/V separates (and this coming from someone who works with computers every day and have at least a dozen in my home).

 

[PacketofCrisps]

I have not heard, nor read about any AVR by a major well known manufacturer that has ever sounded less than good.

I know there is a lot of AVR bashing in general, but "very poor", meaning what? Like an alarm clock radio, Super audible distortion or what?

Agreed.

I do genuinely respect the 'science' in these tests, but what bearing some of these figures have on what actually reaches your ears can sometimes be very negligible. I have a lot of experience with Yamaha, Onkyo, and Denon mid-range av-receivers, and all of them paired with mid-fi speakers like Kef Q150/350, B&W 607/606, Wharfdale Evo 4.2, sounded 'good' at least, and even in surround sound applications as long as you set all your speakers to small and set the crossover to pass the low end to the subwoofers amp allowing for your speakers to be more efficient they can still sound pretty damn good.

 

[SynthesisCinema]

@amirm is that YPAO review still on the list to do? Have to keep reminding you boss! I would use the RX-A1080 if you still have it, cause it has 64-bit version so better than what this RX-V6A has.

 

[Kaaron]

Seems I did a terrible mistake as I've placed an order for the 4A version at 450€, to drive my Klipsch RP8000F.
I had a Denon X1200 before but I died and I was not happy neither of the poor OSD or the lack of options.

The 4A version has been recommended by the vendor but here is seems to be the poorest ever made AVR.
To be honest, I'm glad that Amir took the time to review it, however I do have the feeling that only few elite members can hear the difference between a 500USD amp and 2500USD one.

I'll listen to music at low volume, with a room which has no correction, meaning the sound quality could be "poor" even with the best pair of speakers.
At the end, after all theses graph, is it possible to REALLY hear the low quality ?

I was looking for an amp with BT, remote control on Android, 4K ready, around 450euros, and it appears to be the best, in that range.

Denon suffer from OSD problem, even with a mid model, same for Marantz, and the sound quality is great for some, only good for some others.

That's being said, I may have to send back the AVR if I do not like it but then I will have no clue about which receiver to buy with only 500e in m'y hand.
Possibly a second hand can be worth, but which one and how much time will have to spend to find it ?

 

[beagleman]

Seems I did a terrible mistake as I've placed an order for the 4A version at 450€, to drive my Klipsch RP8000F.
I had a Denon X1200 before but I died and I was not happy neither of the poor OSD or the lack of options.

The 4A version has been recommended by the vendor but here is seems to be the poorest ever made AVR.
To be honest, I'm glad that Amir took the time to review it, however I do have the feeling that only few elite members can hear the difference between a 500USD amp and 2500USD one.

I'll listen to music at low volume, with a room which has no correction, meaning the sound quality could be "poor" even with the best pair of speakers.
At the end, after all theses graph, is it possible to REALLY hear the low quality ?

I was looking for an amp with BT, remote control on Android, 4K ready, around 450euros, and it appears to be the best, in that range.

Denon suffer from OSD problem, even with a mid model, same for Marantz, and the sound quality is great for some, only good for some others.

That's being said, I may have to send back the AVR if I do not like it but then I will have no clue about which receiver to buy with only 500e in m'y hand.
Possibly a second hand can be worth, but which one and how much time will have to spend to find it ?

I have never heard it, but have heard other low cost AVRs and they sounded honestly fairly good.
I think you are worrying over nothing to some extent.

The review here, was basing everything on measurements, that in all honesty may not even be noticeable in a real world environment.

Not saying mediocre measurements mean nothing, but real world listening means more in most cases.

 

[AnalogSteph]

I expected little frequency dependency but found more:

Still, compared to cheap class D amps, this is very clean.

Holy crossover distortion batman. They must be running that output stage really lean. I get that you have to keep idle power dissipation down in an AVR, but this first watt performance is pretty lousy. Clearly they don't want you using 4 ohm speakers for good reason. (The 20 kHz hump would be even higher than 15 kHz if the 3rd harmonic didn't end up outside measurement bandwidth.) The FTC rating might just about make it to 0.1% THD with 8 ohm speakers. I guess it just about gets the job done but that's about it.