Yamaha RX-A 60 AVENTAGE AV Receivers Offer a Significant Important Update!

[gene]

In a major announcement this week , Yamaha unveiled their new and updated premium AVENTAGE RX-A 60 Series network Atmos/DTS:X AV receivers, one our favorite lines of AV receivers on the market. The RX-A 60 series is a little more than a refresh of the series predecessor. ALL of the models (starting at $649) in this line up support Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. The RX-A3060 sports 64 bit precision for enhanced YPAO capabilities and DSP overlay on Atmos and DTS:X.

Best of all, Yamaha even took our suggestion to change their manual PEQ so it now works down to 15Hz which allows for useful subwoofer EQ correction.

Read: Yamaha RX-A 60 AVENTAGE AV Receivers Offer a Significant Important Update!

 

[MR.MAGOO]

Gene, do you know if Yamaha will offer a firmware update for older AVENTAGE receivers (RX-A1020) for YPAO ?

 

[gene]

Gene, do you know if Yamaha will offer a firmware update for older AVENTAGE receivers (RX-A1020) for YPAO ?

Not for YPAO or PEQ.

 

[Gordon_1000]

Hi Gene,
I assume these new Aventage models are class AB amp, I wonder if RX-A3060 has sufficient reserves for speaker rated 4 ohms and max 140w?

I am considering buying Pioneer SC-97 which is a class D amp, its spec says it can do 240w 4 ohms with 2 ch driven. Is this too good to be true or is the sound quality compromised?

 

[mhdaniels31]

Hi Gene,
I assume these new Aventage models are class AB amp, I wonder if RX-A3060 has sufficient reserves for speaker rated 4 ohms and max 140w?

I am considering buying Pioneer SC-97 which is a class D amp, its spec says it can do 240w 4 ohms with 2 ch driven. Is this too good to be true or is the sound quality compromised?

hey you should go to check out the bench tests for a2050 review in another major publication the numbers the a2050 puts out in 2 channel are unbelievable for a step down from the flagship model and yamaha also reworked there protection system on the a2050 as well where in 5 channels it puts out more then 100watts a channel and on 7 channel is where the protection starts to kick in at 55watts but my point is that in 4ohms it was showing 250watts .1% and 315watts at 1% 2 channels driven these are really big numbers for a receiver also in the yamaha manual for the a3050 and a2050 in print at the back they say the receiver uses 1200watts when its at max thats a very beefy power supply I dont think you'ld have that much trouble running 4ohm speakers unless your running everything without bass managment in surround sound but im pretty sure it could handle full range audio in stereo without a problem given its power supply and abbillities so all those people that tell you yamaha only uses a 450watt power supply are very wrong those are just the numbers they publish to show what it draws in regular usage plus 40lb receiver deffinately uses a bigger power supply then 450watts

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

While I am moderately excited about solid improvements in new Yammi 60s series (I'm more of D&M fan) - this sentence made me puke into my mouth a bit:

advanced dual ESS SABRE DACs for quieter and more fluid sound

 

[gene]

While I am moderately excited about solid improvements in new Yammi 60s series (I'm more of D&M fan) - this sentence made me puke into my mouth a bit:

Hmm that's carry over from the press release. Let me clean that nonsense up.

 

[gene]

 

[Gonzaga_1]

Hi Gene,


I am so glad you mentioned how the microphones that come with AV receivers are not sufficient enough to measure what is needed for the new features of the Yamaha line you are excited about. (16:30 in) I would highly recommend making a short simple video and accompany an article showing the variances of all the microphones you can get your hands on in one REW graph. I think the comparison, visual graph, and dialog would help educate your viewers. I absolutely love my Dayton Audio USB calibrated mic UMM-6 and compared it to the microphones that came with my Pioneer and Denon receivers and it showed that there is absolutely no accuracy below 200 Hz and above 10k Hz.


Cheers,


Alan

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

advanced dual ESS SABRE DACs for state of the art noise floor and high resolution support

Much better

 

[brian6751]

@gene

Per Yamaha. The A860 does NOT have independent sub adjustments.

 

[3db]

hey you should go to check out the bench tests for a2050 review in another major publication the numbers the a2050 puts out in 2 channel are unbelievable for a step down from the flagship model and yamaha also reworked there protection system on the a2050 as well where in 5 channels it puts out more then 100watts a channel and on 7 channel is where the protection starts to kick in at 55watts but my point is that in 4ohms it was showing 250watts .1% and 315watts at 1% 2 channels driven these are really big numbers for a receiver also in the yamaha manual for the a3050 and a2050 in print at the back they say the receiver uses 1200watts when its at max thats a very beefy power supply I dont think you'ld have that much trouble running 4ohm speakers unless your running everything without bass managment in surround sound but im pretty sure it could handle full range audio in stereo without a problem given its power supply and abbillities so all those people that tell you yamaha only uses a 450watt power supply are very wrong those are just the numbers they publish to show what it draws in regular usage plus 40lb receiver deffinately uses a bigger power supply then 450watts

That's good to hear that Yammy reworked their protection circuitry. This should go along way in quelling some of the fears for the ACD group.

 

[PENG]

so all those people that tell you yamaha only uses a 450watt power supply are very wrong those are just the numbers they publish to show what it draws in regular usage plus 40lb receiver deffinately uses a bigger power supply then 450watts

You made an excellent point, but we really don't knows exactly how Yamaha and others rate their power consumption figures. The fact is, Yamaha, and sometimes Harman Kardon typically provide two such figures, that is:

Power consumption
Maximum power consumption

Denon/Marantz:

Just power consumption, sometimes in amperes (A) for the older models, in watts for the newer models.

Onkyo:

Just power consumption, in watts

NAD:

Just power consumption for idling and standby, sometimes also the "power rating", on the back plate in amperes (A).

In any case, whether they provide the "Watts", "VA", "A", just power consumption, maximum power consumption, or both, or Volts and Amperes (e.g. NAD T787's 120V, 9.5A), we have no idea under what kind of loading conditions those figures are specified for, that is, at half load, full load, all channel driven, two channel driven, two channel driven to full load + %'s of the remaining channels?

Apparently there are some international standards for amps/AVRs power consumption ratings, but we have no idea, or proof of what standard they actually follow. It is a guessing game, the best way I know how to compare them as close to "apple to apple" is by comparing their bench test numbers obtained by the same lab, such as AVtech, S&V/Hometheatermag, HCC (have not seen one by in recent years). Again, even then you have to stick to comparing data obtained by the same lab for the products compared.

I can tell you for sure about one thing though, maximum power consumption figure of 1200W does not imply a 1200W, or roughly 1500VA power supply continuously rated at all. I highly doubt the A2050's power supply transformer would be rated any larger than 1,000 VA or around 800W and I am being extremely generous in my educated guess. Power transformers typically have great short term overload capacity such that even a continuously rated 600VA transformer could possibly sustain 150% rated load for a few minutes. That would be long enough test benches such as S&V's to test and yield impressive all channel driven output figures. If it can sustain such output for even a couple minutes, the test bench would be able to use the term "continuous".

 

[New24K]

So Yamaha has reworked their protection circuitry?

Because those bench test that Sound and Vision did - and I believe the one Audioholics did on the Aventage 5000 amp - showed a dive in power output when the system detected more than 5 speakers running at high output.

If it detected 7 speakers - the power output was seriously curtailed.

Did Yamaha address this or "fix" it?

 

[3db]

I can tell you for sure about one thing though, maximum power consumption figure of 1200W does not imply a 1200W, or roughly 1500VA power supply continuously rated at all. I highly doubt the A2050's power supply transformer would be rated any larger than 1,000 VA or around 800W and I am being extremely generous in my educated guess. Power transformers typically have great short term overload capacity such that even a continuously rated 600VA transformer could possibly sustain 150% rated load for a few minutes. That would be long enough test benches such as S&V's to test and yield impressive all channel driven output figures. If it can sustain such output for even a couple minutes, the test bench would be able to use the term "continuous".

This brings up a question for the ACD test. Does S&V Mag ever state how long they are running the ACD test for?

 

[PENG]

This brings up a question for the ACD test. Does S&V Mag ever state how long they are running the ACD test for?

They claimed to follow FTC 1974:
http://www.soundandvision.com/content/how-we-test-audio#UE92EwrTMZsqcCjb.97

That means the test would be run for no more than 5 minutes, most likely much less, say a couple of minutes or less (I seemed to have read it somewhere but could not find it).

Gene also measured "continuous average power". I doubt he would have done those for much longer than a few minutes either but we should ask him about it, instead of assuming.

 

[Steveie]

How does the Rx-A3050 compare to the Rx-0A3060? Is their enough difference to pay full price for the 3060 or get the 3050 at a discount?
Or should I buy the Marantz SR7010 or Denon RX6200?
Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[Latent]

How does the Rx-A3050 compare to the Rx-0A3060? Is their enough difference to pay full price for the 3060 or get the 3050 at a discount?
Or should I buy the Marantz SR7010 or Denon RX6200?
Thanks for your thoughts.

The big wins with the 3060 vs 3050 seem to be as follows:

15hz PEQ setting which does not help unless you have the skill and knowledge to manually EQ instead of using the auto YPAO EQ'ing from the microphone reading. So great for advanced users who want it but others it won't help much

upgraded resolution on YPAO could be useful if want to get the best room correction. The Marantz and Denon you mention also have a very good room eq setup called Auydssey XT32 which may give different but similar results. Be aware that Auydssey (and maybe the 3050???) downsamples the bit rate of sources to 48khz when active while the new 3060 may not do this now. Also be aware that scientifically there is no real downside to downsampling to 48khz due to limitations of human hearing but many people belive the marketing and think this high frequency inaudible data is useful somehow.

And finally it can apply Cinema DSP to atmos/DTS:X sources as well so if you like Yamaha's effects then this may be a plus for you.

Otherwise the 3050 will do just fine. If you are not interested in Atmos/DTS:X then you may save some money getting an even older unit.

 

[Steveie]

Thanks Latent.
It says the 3050 has Atmos/DTS:X. The 3040 does not.
Thanks for your quick reply.

 

[3db]

They claimed to follow FTC 1974:
http://www.soundandvision.com/content/how-we-test-audio#UE92EwrTMZsqcCjb.97

That means the test would be run for no more than 5 minutes, most likely much less, say a couple of minutes or less (I seemed to have read it somewhere but could not find it).

Thanks for the link. I read it and S &V's ACD test is based on a 1KHz signal which I take issue with as it does not even come close to a realistic frequency range during normal music listening. That really sucks. The other thing I saw is that they lower input voltage. Why bother when the majority, if not all, HT setups don't have this capability.
"Line voltage is adjusted to be no lower than 120 volts RMS at maximum amplifier power output. "

Gene also measured "continuous average power". I doubt he would have done those for much longer than a few minutes either but we should ask him about it, instead of assuming.

It makes no difference to me that Yamaha tweaked their protection circuits to give better results as this test is kind of useless and unrealistic. Yamaha power delivery is not an issue and bests most other manufacturers (model equivalent comparison) in the 2 channels test based on Audioholic's reviews of the older generation A series.