- Joined
- Aug 1, 2009
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Hi folks,
I recently pulled the trigger and upgraded to a Yamaha RX-A860 (Thanks Stormy Norman). I upgraded from a Yamaha RX-V795a which at the end of this year, would be 20 years old. Yep, believe it (kinda embarrassed to admit this here - LOL).
But nevertheless, it is great to finally have a decent AVR with all the technologies so that when I am able to go to 4K / HDR, I can do that with ease (would have to rip that plasma TV from my hands first - LOL). I already have an Nvidia Shield which I swear by and on an aside, if there is one media box that you should buy, it should be the Shield - nothing else!
Coming from a very old AVR, these are the observations that I made and would be interesting to get a conversation around these as I'm sure many of you have had your fare share of AVR experience over the years.
As they say, the devil is in the detail.
1. FINALLY, I can keep my AVR in "Straight" mode so that when I am not watching content with one of the surround formats, the AVR does not default to Dolby Pro Logic. Instead, it goes into PCM, so for music, YouTube, etc, I get stereo - as in L/R channels only. I still to this day have no idea why AVRs in the past, when there was no decoding happening of a surround format, that they would default to Dolby Pro Logic! I mean really? When the content is in stereo, I want it in stereo and I'm just so happy that I don't have to push any buttons on the new AVR to swap between "Straight" or stereo.
2. When I attempted to plug my speakers using banana plugs into the binding posts at the rear, I was faced with the fact that I could not do this as the plugs didn't want to go in. I thought this very odd and RTFM'ed and found the directions on connecting banana plugs with a footnote indicating that they were for US/Canada models only? Really? So, I shortly figured out that there were grommets that I had to remove in order to use banana plugs. Why? Why on earth were grommets present? I get the impression that if you bought this AVR in the US/Canada, the grommets would be absent? There was nothing in the user guide that I could find about grommets - ok, I didn't read the whole manual, so maybe there is a small section. Well, that is the impression that I got. Rather odd.
3. When I watch a movie on Netflix, Plex, etc, the surround mode changes to DD+, Atmos, etc, etc - all good, but when I turn off the movie, the display reads "Decoder Off" and then I navigate to say Spotify on my Shield to play some music, there is no sound and only a few seconds later, does the display change to PCM and I can hear the music. Why on earth does the AVR turn off the decoder entirely instead of switching directly to PCM by default when it stops receiving a surround signal? Is there a way to fix this? The amount of time is around 2-4 seconds, although not a deal breaker, but not great when the misses plays a track and she cannot understand why there isn't sound during those first few seconds and although it seems short, it is long in perspective.
4. Why, oh why are AVRs STILL bundled with DSP modes? Although I have been on top of A/V technologies for years, I still just surprises me that DSP modes are still present on AVRs like this one which is considered as part of their higher end Aventage line as those that purchase AVRs like these, wouldn't even dream of invoking these DSP modes.
5. All those HDMI ports. In the past I had to become quite creative as the years went by in terms of adding more devices with HDMI to my set up. I had to plug them into my TV (thankfully my TV has 4 HDMI ports) and pipe audio via optical / SPDIF to the AVR and thankfully with a Harmony One remote, the experience to make everything work together was seamless. But as I type this today, I only have ONE device plugged into my AVR, namely the Nvidia Shield. I cancelled DSTV last year, the Xbox moved to the pub, I sold the PS3 and moved the AppleTV to the bedroom. So now I have 7 HDMI ports and I somehow don't think I'll be needing to plug anything else into the AVR ever again. We have transitioned to a streaming world where suddenly you have one device to rule them all. Where were these HDMI ports when I needed them most. LOL. and now I only use one. How times have changed.
6. As with all our other gadgets, firmware updates came to the AVR which is something I do first before anything else. I love firmware updates with that glimmer of hope that they bring some or other feature that I probably will never use. LOL.
7. HDMI-CEC, the bain of my existence. I would turn on the AVR and TV and the audio input would change to AV1 from HDMI1 after a few seconds, just like that. After figuring out that the remote control was not at play, it came down to HDMI-CEC from the TV. For some reason, when the TV turned on, it would signal to the AVR to switch audio inputs and this is from a TV from 2009 where ARC was not even a figment of a feature on TVs, so turning this off on the TV, solved the problem. Such a pity though as I would love for the TV and AVR to turn on when the Shield is turned on and this would happen when I divert Spotify to play on the Shield via SpotifyConnect on the app. I had this setup before the AVR upgrade except that the AVR could not be turned on automatically. I'll still play around with this and see if I can get it to work.
In closing, this AVR is a great upgrade for me and for the price, one cannot go wrong. The RX-A880 which is the latest model is R25k new and with a receiver that is only two years old, note TWO YEARS OLD, it was a quarter of the price and with all the relevant technologies of today including HDR Dolby Vision, Atmos, etc, I so do not regret buying it.
It is very configurable which is up my alley. Love the fact that in this day and age and yes, I know this has been in AVRs for ages, that one can customise the name of each source and that they come with an app to control them and have an API so that home automation systems like Home Assistant, which I use, can control them. Yep, life's little pleasures.
Have a good one!
I recently pulled the trigger and upgraded to a Yamaha RX-A860 (Thanks Stormy Norman). I upgraded from a Yamaha RX-V795a which at the end of this year, would be 20 years old. Yep, believe it (kinda embarrassed to admit this here - LOL).
But nevertheless, it is great to finally have a decent AVR with all the technologies so that when I am able to go to 4K / HDR, I can do that with ease (would have to rip that plasma TV from my hands first - LOL). I already have an Nvidia Shield which I swear by and on an aside, if there is one media box that you should buy, it should be the Shield - nothing else!
Coming from a very old AVR, these are the observations that I made and would be interesting to get a conversation around these as I'm sure many of you have had your fare share of AVR experience over the years.
As they say, the devil is in the detail.1. FINALLY, I can keep my AVR in "Straight" mode so that when I am not watching content with one of the surround formats, the AVR does not default to Dolby Pro Logic. Instead, it goes into PCM, so for music, YouTube, etc, I get stereo - as in L/R channels only. I still to this day have no idea why AVRs in the past, when there was no decoding happening of a surround format, that they would default to Dolby Pro Logic! I mean really? When the content is in stereo, I want it in stereo and I'm just so happy that I don't have to push any buttons on the new AVR to swap between "Straight" or stereo.
2. When I attempted to plug my speakers using banana plugs into the binding posts at the rear, I was faced with the fact that I could not do this as the plugs didn't want to go in. I thought this very odd and RTFM'ed and found the directions on connecting banana plugs with a footnote indicating that they were for US/Canada models only? Really? So, I shortly figured out that there were grommets that I had to remove in order to use banana plugs. Why? Why on earth were grommets present? I get the impression that if you bought this AVR in the US/Canada, the grommets would be absent? There was nothing in the user guide that I could find about grommets - ok, I didn't read the whole manual, so maybe there is a small section. Well, that is the impression that I got. Rather odd.
3. When I watch a movie on Netflix, Plex, etc, the surround mode changes to DD+, Atmos, etc, etc - all good, but when I turn off the movie, the display reads "Decoder Off" and then I navigate to say Spotify on my Shield to play some music, there is no sound and only a few seconds later, does the display change to PCM and I can hear the music. Why on earth does the AVR turn off the decoder entirely instead of switching directly to PCM by default when it stops receiving a surround signal? Is there a way to fix this? The amount of time is around 2-4 seconds, although not a deal breaker, but not great when the misses plays a track and she cannot understand why there isn't sound during those first few seconds and although it seems short, it is long in perspective.
4. Why, oh why are AVRs STILL bundled with DSP modes? Although I have been on top of A/V technologies for years, I still just surprises me that DSP modes are still present on AVRs like this one which is considered as part of their higher end Aventage line as those that purchase AVRs like these, wouldn't even dream of invoking these DSP modes.
5. All those HDMI ports. In the past I had to become quite creative as the years went by in terms of adding more devices with HDMI to my set up. I had to plug them into my TV (thankfully my TV has 4 HDMI ports) and pipe audio via optical / SPDIF to the AVR and thankfully with a Harmony One remote, the experience to make everything work together was seamless. But as I type this today, I only have ONE device plugged into my AVR, namely the Nvidia Shield. I cancelled DSTV last year, the Xbox moved to the pub, I sold the PS3 and moved the AppleTV to the bedroom. So now I have 7 HDMI ports and I somehow don't think I'll be needing to plug anything else into the AVR ever again. We have transitioned to a streaming world where suddenly you have one device to rule them all. Where were these HDMI ports when I needed them most. LOL. and now I only use one. How times have changed.
6. As with all our other gadgets, firmware updates came to the AVR which is something I do first before anything else. I love firmware updates with that glimmer of hope that they bring some or other feature that I probably will never use. LOL.
7. HDMI-CEC, the bain of my existence. I would turn on the AVR and TV and the audio input would change to AV1 from HDMI1 after a few seconds, just like that. After figuring out that the remote control was not at play, it came down to HDMI-CEC from the TV. For some reason, when the TV turned on, it would signal to the AVR to switch audio inputs and this is from a TV from 2009 where ARC was not even a figment of a feature on TVs, so turning this off on the TV, solved the problem. Such a pity though as I would love for the TV and AVR to turn on when the Shield is turned on and this would happen when I divert Spotify to play on the Shield via SpotifyConnect on the app. I had this setup before the AVR upgrade except that the AVR could not be turned on automatically. I'll still play around with this and see if I can get it to work.
In closing, this AVR is a great upgrade for me and for the price, one cannot go wrong. The RX-A880 which is the latest model is R25k new and with a receiver that is only two years old, note TWO YEARS OLD, it was a quarter of the price and with all the relevant technologies of today including HDR Dolby Vision, Atmos, etc, I so do not regret buying it.
It is very configurable which is up my alley. Love the fact that in this day and age and yes, I know this has been in AVRs for ages, that one can customise the name of each source and that they come with an app to control them and have an API so that home automation systems like Home Assistant, which I use, can control them. Yep, life's little pleasures.
Have a good one!
