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

[Rottmannash]

Are we sure they are identical? Usually when the model number is changed for Costco, they also delete a feature or two. My OLED TV for example doesn't have wireless audio streaming. My computer monitor lacks speakers, etc.

I bought the C9 at Costco last year and just discovered this difference a week or so ago. Wouldn't use the wireless feature anyway but damn, as much as that tv cost it should watch itself.

 

[Rottmannash]

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.

In English, please. No clue what you mean by "running that output stage really lean."

 

[Spinitch]

How is Yamaha skimping on the stereo sound? The amps and power supply did really good unlike its DAC implementation.

“The sum of distortion is literally the median of every amplifier ever tested (just many products worse than it than better).” I was referring to AVRs, RX-V6A. It is ok, but the R-N803 was quite good and several years older. The AVR offers more features and probably fine for most listening plus fairly affordable.

 

[Basil11]

I was intending to purchase the RX-V6A until I read this review. So a bit of advice from you experts please. I have an Arcam AVR600, which is 10 years old. Yes, I did have a lot of problems, for a few years, until they ironed out most of the problems with firmware. Mine is clean with no pops and crackles. However, I am concerned by its age and any major repair will probably cost as much as the price of the Yamaha RX-V6A!

As it is 10 years old I decided that it was probably time to change it. As I am retired and in my mid 70's I cannot afford much these days so the RX-V6A looked a good buy, bringing many 2020 technical features that my Arcam is sadly lacking. My hearing is not as good as it used to be so high end quality I think is now unfortunately lost on me. Added to that most of my usage is Internet streaming of films

So I would appreciate any thoughts you aficionados might have.

 

[3dbinCanada]

Despite Yamaha not measuring very well, Yamaha's quality control especially in AVRs is the best in the industry. They have the least problems. Unlike other manufacturer's Yamaha owns ALL of its manufacturing facilities and are not out sourced. I'm fustrated with Yamaha for this AVR not measuring very well in Amir's test. If you have a super quiet room and play your material very loud, you may hear distortion that gets measured. If you play at conversation level or slightly above, the background noise of the room will drown out any distortion and you wont hear it. The analogy I make is like tape hiss on a cassette deck. During nominal passages, you dont notice the hiss until the song gets really quiet or its between tracks. Please keep in mind that tape his is at a minimum 10 db louder than the distortion that got measured.

 

[bigx5murf]

https://slickdeals.net/f/14594275-c...ee-shipping?src=SiteSearchV2_SearchBarV2Algo1

the costco version of this is on sale for $330 right now. I'm tempted, but I don't have a costco account.

 

[Julie J]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Yamaha RX-V6A "8K" Audio/Video Receiver (AVR). They only announced two such 8K AVRs and this is the upper model. Our company (Madrona Digital) is a dealer for Yamaha so I was able to purchase this at a discount for testing. Retail cost is US $600.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Yamaha break the boring mold of AVR front panel which has greeted us for 10 to 20 years;

View attachment 90811

The curve plastic is cheap stuff but if you don't try to touch it, it looks like glass, giving the unit a high-end feel.

The display has also been revamped to be a proper LCD panel now with good resolution (looks better in person than in the above picture).

What continues to be a miserable fail is the large volume control. It is stiff, and somewhat scratchy feeling just like these have been for years. Why put such a large knob there to invite touching and have the touch feel so bad? Please get rid of the friction material and just give me a loose rotary control.

A loose rotary control is what we have on the right but alas, that was is so loose that it feels cheap.

A frustrating aspect of the RX-VA is choice of words/abbreviations. By default it would show that "Straight" indicator. What does that mean? Straight what? Video? Audio? I thought it was audio only to find the Pure Direct button and indicator as well.

Hit the setup button and after a few second delay (why oh why?), it puts on an understandable list. But then select speaker config and you are given these cryptic words and abbreviations:

View attachment 90812

EXTRA SP1? What extra speaker? If it means the binding post in the back, just say it for heaven's sake. Now, what does F.PRNS mean? I have been in home theater for as long as there has been home theater and I have never seen F.PRNS abbreviation. What is wrong with spelling these things out? There is plenty of room to the right.

Power Amp Assign is set to Basic. What is basic? Was there a class I missed on this lingo?

And Select Automatically Extra SP1 to Extra SP2? I don't want to go and read a manual just to understand what the unit is telling me. There is no point to the menu if it can't properly explain what it is indicating. A single scrub of all the menus will make the unit a lot easier to understand and no doubt reduce support calls.

Anyway, it is a one-tome pain so let's not kill ourselves over it.

Here is the back panel by the way:
View attachment 90855

Yamaha RX-V6A DAC Measurements
Only a subset of channels are provided as pre-out and fortunately the Front Left and Right are two of them. So let's see how they perform using HDMI input:

View attachment 90813

As is our procedure, I attempt to adjust the volume until I get to 2 volts out which is what we get out of any desktop or hi-fi DAC. This usually results in volume being above max as indicated (2.5 dB). If you reduce volume down to 0 dB, then output drops to 1.5 volts which is higher than normal and hence good. What is not good is the distortion+noise at full 2 volt output of just 71 dB:

View attachment 90814

Let's sweep the digital input and see what the optimal output voltage is:

View attachment 90815

Gosh, that is pretty low. Optimal output is just 0.46 volts which corresponds to volume setting on the unit of -10.5 dB. If you go above that, the amplifiers start to suffer and translate into screwing up the DAC performance as well. Even at optimal output level, SINAD is only 90 to 93 dB so way short of best AVRs at their 2 volt out.

This early saturation shows up just as well in intermodulation distortion versus level:

View attachment 90816

Not only do we have higher noise floor than desktop DACs but early onset of distortion at just -17.5 dB (on the volume indicator).

The high noise floor hides a lot sins when it comes to jitter and unwanted spurious tones, but not on Coax input:

View attachment 90818

Multitone shows high levels of distortion:

View attachment 90819

We can't clear the 16-bit dynamic range of the CD without adding distortion to its floor.

Linearity is not bad for an AVR:
View attachment 90820

Given the high levels of distortion, noise actually looks good in contrast:
View attachment 90821

Filter performance is poor:

View attachment 90822

This causes problems in THD+N versus frequency:

View attachment 90823

Running the above test at 192 kHz (green) removes the effect of the poor filtering. Performance remains poor. I did not dig into why but it may have been due to noise shaping or something like that.

Yamaha RX-V6A Amplifier Measurements
Let's start with analog input using Pure Direct mode that bypasses all DSP (crossover, room eq, etc.):

View attachment 90824

The sum of distortion is literally the median of every amplifier ever tested (just many products worse than it than better):

View attachment 90845

Not that good of a showing among AVRs:

View attachment 90846

You might ask if digital input is better so let's test that:

View attachment 90847

See? You shouldn't have asked me that! Performance is worse because the noise and distortion of the DAC is getting added to the amp. This is why you want a very clean DAC so that it has zero impact on the amplifier that is already suffering to produce good performance.

You have to run the AVR at full power to get same dynamic range as 16 bit CD:
View attachment 90848

Crosstalk is OK:
View attachment 90849

Analog frequency response is good if you don't let the unit digitize it:

View attachment 90850

As you see, as soon as I set the front speakers to small, forcing the digital crossover to become active, the ADC used actually screws up the response at the top end! Seems like 96 kHz sampling is used which is good but why on earth can't it get transparent/flat response to 20 kHz if not beyond? I have to think there are some processing errors there to cause such wiggles.

The receiver is not rated into 4 ohm but as the rest of them, it functions fine:
View attachment 90852

And here is the 8 ohm performance which actually exceeds spec a bit:
View attachment 90853

Typical of class AB AVR amps, there is good headroom:

View attachment 90854

I expected little frequency dependency but found more:
View attachment 90851

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

Happy to also report that the AVR had no trouble with the above test. It never shut down as some cheap AVRs do.

Conclusions
The 8K indicator in the title of RX-V6A makes you think you are buying a high-end AVR. But you are not. Audio performance is mostly close to the bottom tier of high-fi and AVRs. Still, it brings a fresh look and nothing in it seems completely broken. This made me withhold my lowest ratings for it considering the price. Yes, I am getting too soft in my older age....

I personally like to aspire for higher performance so can't recommend the Yamaha RX-V6A. You are welcome to decide otherwise.

And oh, this unit is available for sale. Make me an offer in private.

------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate in advance any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

this is a real eye opener for me. like @napilopez i have a pleasant experience owning yamaha avrs, in fact i have two of them the RXV481 and RXV483. unlike other famed name brands that encounter hdmi issues and a host of other major issues, mine never skipped a beat after close to five years of nearly daily operation. i suppose the kind of brutal testing in @amirm capable hands as seen in the cranked SPLs above do reveal their inherent limitations. like some people here would comment, unless my home use approaches near reference levels then perhaps these flaws will far from manifest themselves. but i have to credit @amirm efforts in assuring that the measured performance will at least meet some level of expectation and standard. otherwise the consumer gets constantly duped into buying avrs overflowing with useless feature sets, with greatly diminished DAC implementation and amplifier sections for which these things were supposed to deliver. so i guess its really the denon X3600H on the crosshairs for my next upgrade...

In the last few weeks there was a major firmware revision and update, @amirm will there be further testing to see how the unit now performs?

 

[infinitesymphony]

In the last few weeks there was a major firmware revision and update, @amirm will there be further testing to see how the unit now performs?

The last firmware update I see for the RX-V6A is 1.23, released 10-14-2020, before the date of this review. It says, "This update focus exclusively on bug fixes." Any indication that this or another firmware update would affect audio performance?

https://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio_visual/av_receivers_amps/rx-v6a/downloads.html

 

[3dbinCanada]

The last firmware update I see for the RX-V6A is 1.23, released 10-14-2020, before the date of this review. It says, "This update focus exclusively on bug fixes." Any indication that this or another firmware update would affect audio performance?

https://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio_visual/av_receivers_amps/rx-v6a/downloads.html

There's a new one, 1.26 that a few have installed or is coming shortly over in audioholics.com

 

[Rottmannash]

There is a difference between getting things manufactured in a factory off-shore and outsourcing the model to a ODM (Original Design Manufacturer). I was referring to the latter. The former approach can result in as much quality as the brand wants for the money they are willing to pay. Apple products are a good example of high QC requirements. So, I wouldn't necessarily dismiss this type of off-shoring.

The ODM relationship is completely different. The technology may have no relation or resemblance to the brand's own in-house competence and quality. It will be just a rebranded box designed and manufactured by someone else. The brand just becomes a marketing layer. Outlaw and Emotiva does this for example. Big brands also may do this for low-end products since the cost of in-house R&D for such products may be too expensive for the price point.

Do you mean Emotiva not make their amps in Franklin Tennessee?

 

[Vasr]

Do you mean Emotiva not make their amps in Franklin Tennessee?

Emotiva uses a combination of in-house assembly (flagship products), OEM (mid-tier) and ODM(low-end)

 

[Rottmannash]

Emotiva uses a combination of in-house assembly (flagship products), OEM (mid-tier) and ODM(low-end)

Ah. Didn't know that. I assume the minoblocs they sold awhile back based on the B&O Icepower modules were ODM? I have a couple of them.

 

[dougi]

I have a RX-A2A incoming. Which, on the face of it, seems the same as the V6A but with audio tweaks? I'm only using it for a 3.1 system integrated with a two channel system to improve dialogue. Hence I did not want to stretch to the Denon AVC-X3700X, the lowest Denon with at least front pre-outs. Yes it is called the AVC in Australia, there is no AM/FM tuner for our market! The Yammie comes with FM/DAB tuner so that is an added bonus for Aus market. Plus Denon prices are silly here: US$1199->A$2599 for the Denon. Yamaha a more reasonable rip-off at US$799->A$1599. I will try and do some basic measurements on the A2A with RME ADI-2 PRO and see if it is any different from the V6A.

 

[dougi]

I was intending to purchase the RX-V6A until I read this review. So a bit of advice from you experts please. I have an Arcam AVR600, which is 10 years old. Yes, I did have a lot of problems, for a few years, until they ironed out most of the problems with firmware. Mine is clean with no pops and crackles. However, I am concerned by its age and any major repair will probably cost as much as the price of the Yamaha RX-V6A!

As it is 10 years old I decided that it was probably time to change it. As I am retired and in my mid 70's I cannot afford much these days so the RX-V6A looked a good buy, bringing many 2020 technical features that my Arcam is sadly lacking. My hearing is not as good as it used to be so high end quality I think is now unfortunately lost on me. Added to that most of my usage is Internet streaming of films

So I would appreciate any thoughts you aficionados might have.

In the real world I think the performance is perfectly OK. Even if you run it at THX "reference level" of 105dBA at your listening position the distortion from an amp will be at the room noise floor (~30dBA say). It also seems that in practice the Yamaha reference level is not "0dB" volume level but lower. Certainly my new equivalent RX-A2A is at least 10dB louder at the same volume level as my 10YO Denon AVR, both carefully setup to give the 75dBA test tone level at 0dB volume so it tends to support this. Hence the DACs do not run anywhere near 0dBFS in practice and get closer to 90dB+THD+N performance. The integrated streaming solutions (plus DAB+ digital radio in my region) made it a compelling option for me. Especially as I only use 3.1CH to simply improve dialog. Critically for you perhaps are dynamic range control for movies which seems needed for a lot these days. It has a method for non Dolby/DTS sources but there is no control over it. I am yet to evaluate it to see whether it is good in practice.

 

[Robesini]

Of course distortion is too high but actually it is OK for an entry level AVR with 8k. Performance doesn't get much better when paying 2-3k usd anyway...

A receiver should have as first priority to get the sound quality at the claimed level. My Bluray player and tv already have ablity to upscale while border to do this in a reciever. Does Yamaha now how to produce tv sets. Just stick to your main objective which is improve audio quality. Thats the room there is left. If sound quality is bad properly the upscaling is also on a poor level. All recievers i have owned never did a good job on the auto setup. It is just a shame. And why border to have the effects of cathedrals, cellars, swimmingpools. i will never use that. Just decode the surround signal and feet the amplifier. how complex can it be.

 

[dougi]

I have a RX-A2A incoming. Which, on the face of it, seems the same as the V6A but with audio tweaks? I'm only using it for a 3.1 system integrated with a two channel system to improve dialogue. Hence I did not want to stretch to the Denon AVC-X3700X, the lowest Denon with at least front pre-outs. Yes it is called the AVC in Australia, there is no AM/FM tuner for our market! The Yammie comes with FM/DAB tuner so that is an added bonus for Aus market. Plus Denon prices are silly here: US$1199->A$2599 for the Denon. Yamaha a more reasonable rip-off at US$799->A$1599. I will try and do some basic measurements on the A2A with RME ADI-2 PRO and see if it is any different from the V6A.

I have done some measurements, focussed on the pre-out performance but will redo them before posting. It is certainly odd. The front pre-outs go via the DPA-1 digital preamp then to the RME ADI-2 PRO. Even with null HDMI input to the AVR the RME reports high-ish levels on the peak program meter (~-67dBFS) yet it is not audible. Yet if you mute the AVR it goes to ~-83dBFS. Still poor! I suspect that there are high levels of ultrasonic just outside of the audio band and REW RTA captures support this. Unfortunately the REW RTA window always reports noise as in/out of 22-22kHz band in the level summary so it is also capturing some of the out of band in the in band figure. This also seems to be screwing up the RTA stepped sine vs level or freq plots as very high levels of noise are being reported yet in band it is not really there. There seems to be a big hump of noise from 20-22kHz.

 

[dougi]

I have redone the measurements on the RX-A2A. It should be near identical to the V6A. It's just dressed up and given a longer warranty after all. I got even earlier onset of distortion. I haven't shown noise as REW always gives strange results for me in the step sweep. Not sure why.



HDMI J test about the same but some isolated products.



While REW can't do an IMD sweep like Amir can with the AP, results were again in line with earlier onset of distortion.

Again, multitone shows a similar 10dB odd worse value at 0dBFS 0 volume.



Note that these tests were HDMI into AVR, pure direct then front R preout into RME ADI-2 PRO. Perhaps it's relatively low input impedance of 9kohm unbalanced loads the AVR even further.

I only get 95dB dynamic range too. RME's nf is much lower than that.


Note that on some forums there is a claim that Yamaha reference level is much lower than 0dB VOL. One source claims -17dB gives ref level. Not from my SPL measurements. -20dBFS pink noise at -20dB vol gave 66dBC. Hence -20dBFS pink noise at 0dB volume gives 86dBC, 1dB more than reference and of course then 0dBFS gives 1dB more than the 105dBC reference peak.

Is the AVR performance of the DAC poor? Yes. Is it a problem in practice? Probably not for me as I may get close to -15dB volume but not to 0dB. Likely to be good enough for movies. With my 2 channel pre/DAC/amp 90dB+ SINAD they are at least not degrading the AVR DAC further. Oh yeah note that it is not even advertised as 8k capable in the Australian market. I purchased it as a cheap AVR with front pre-outs to be able to add a centre channel to a 2.1 system. It does the job with the odd quirk.

 

[dougi]

I have redone the measurements on the RX-A2A. It should be near identical to the V6A. It's just dressed up and given a longer warranty after all. I got even earlier onset of distortion. I haven't shown noise as REW always gives strange results for me in the step sweep. Not sure why.

View attachment 109817

HDMI J test about the same but some isolated products.

View attachment 109819

While REW can't do an IMD sweep like Amir can with the AP, results were again in line with earlier onset of distortion.

Again, multitone shows a similar 10dB odd worse value at 0dBFS 0 volume.

View attachment 109820

Note that these tests were HDMI into AVR, pure direct then front R preout into RME ADI-2 PRO. Perhaps it's relatively low input impedance of 9kohm unbalanced loads the AVR even further.

I only get 95dB dynamic range too. RME's nf is much lower than that.
View attachment 109822

Note that on some forums there is a claim that Yamaha reference level is much lower than 0dB VOL. One source claims -17dB gives ref level. Not from my SPL measurements. -20dBFS pink noise at -20dB vol gave 66dBC. Hence -20dBFS pink noise at 0dB volume gives 86dBC, 1dB more than reference and of course then 0dBFS gives 1dB more than the 105dBC reference peak.

Is the AVR performance of the DAC poor? Yes. Is it a problem in practice? Probably not for me as I may get close to -15dB volume but not to 0dB. Likely to be good enough for movies. With my 2 channel pre/DAC/amp 90dB+ SINAD they are at least not degrading the AVR DAC further. Oh yeah note that it is not even advertised as 8k capable in the Australian market. I purchased it as a cheap AVR with front pre-outs to be able to add a centre channel to a 2.1 system. It does the job with the odd quirk.

Yes I suspected the lowish input impedance of the RME might load it a bit and I was correct. Increasing the input impedance by:
1) using a Musical Fidelity X-CAN V3 head amp as a buffer (47k) or
2) using rothwell RCA attenuators
Both improved THD closer to Amir's above stimuli of >-10dBFS.
Unfortunately my preamp has an input impedance of only 10k ohms.

Neither of the above methods is a long term solution for me so I either don't worry about it or by a new preamp.

 

[Thedog]

I bought the C9 at Costco last year and just discovered this difference a week or so ago. Wouldn't use the wireless feature anyway but damn, as much as that tv cost it should watch itself.

Hi, I'm a new subscriber (this site is great and thank you @amirm for great testing and info) but here's some anecdotal perspective based on having own the Yamaha RX-V6A for a few weeks now. I only use it for 2 channel audio currently.

What's interesting is that I find from my subjective listing comparison that there's a huge sound quality difference between three following set-ups with this Yamaha unit. In each scenario below I used A130's for nearfield listening at 8 ft away in my garage. WiFi turned off on unit. Unit is set to Pure Direct in each case below. I've used same gain setting in each scenario, same reference material.

Scenario 1. Source = Qobuz HiRes with Volumio. Setup is CAT 5E cable out from router>RPi (no HiFi hat)>USB to Topping E30>RCA out to analogue input on RX-V6A - soundstage and imaging just OK to my ears. Soundstage width does not really extend.

Scenario 2. Source = Qobuz HiRes using Qobuz app on desktop. Setup is USB cable out from Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 3 soundcard>USB to Topping E30>RCA out to analogue input on RX-V6A - soundstage and imaging same as #1 but slightly punchier bass.

Scenario 3. Source = Qobuz HiRes with mConnect while streaming (which allows gapless playback compared to Musiccast). Setup is CAT 5E cable out from router>directly into Ethernet port on RX-V6A. In this setup I find huge and noticeable increase in SQ. Soundstage extends oftentimes 6 ft beyond each speaker. Much better imaging. Vocals, bass and percussion seem to be perfectly centered between the A130's. Bass much more punchy.

I can't really explain the above. I would assume that based on @amirm's testing that the Topping E30 has a better DAC than the one's inside the RX-V6A. I'm guessing that in scenario 1 HiFi hat may improve the sound to be more like scenario 3, but I'm not sure why scenario 2 would be inferior to scenario 3.

 

[rccarguy]

What the hell with pre out voltag can't even manage 1 volt?