Yamaha AVENTAGE 2021 AV Receivers Bulk Up on Power and 8K Features

[Replicant 7]

I got a A4A a couple of days ago. I want to like it, but I'm not having a lot of luck. I'm not sure if I'm doing something right or wrong. I think I have a fairly straightforward setup. Satellite box, Oppo 203, and LG CX. I have 3 2.1 HDMI cables. 1.Satellite -> STB Port 2. Oppo -> Movie Port 3. HDMI 1 OUT (eARC) -> HDMI 2 (eARC) on the LG.
The Oppo seems to work fine. The apps in the LG (Netflix, Prime etc) work fine. The satellite does not. I get picture, no sound using the A4A HDMI 1. If I turn on HDMI 2, even though nothing is plugged into it, I get sound but no picture.
As a temporary solution I plugged the Sat directly into the LG. Sound and picture both work, but of course I have no OSD for the A4A. I'm a bit frazzled right now. There are a few things I will try when get home from work. Is there a certain sequence of connecting the equipment? I was hoping someone might be able to point me in the right direction. Many thanks.

In settings, for (HDMI Video Format) All HDMI's, should be set to (Mode 1). Also for (HDMI Version) all HDMI's 1 through 7 should be set to (Auto). HDMI Standby Through, set to (On). I'll mention, I had Cox cable last year don't anymore just their internet service, I had issues with their cable box, audio and video issues. My RX-A1080 never would upscale to 4K from that Cox box always showed just 1080P. Check your satellite box settings maybe something's up with it? I have no issues at all with my RX-A4A.

 

[AVR Enthu]

How many more dollars per year would Yamaha earn by adding Dirac? Is it 0.000001% of the $3.9 billion?

You could ask, by analogy, why bother with AVRs at all, which are a minor part of their revenue anyway? They cannot do always what they want, as consumers and competition will punish them. I have also had Yamaha products for years, but do not intend buying any new AVRs or separates until they explicitly sort out issues with new HDMI, room correction and whatever noise Gene has discovered. You cannot have this on machines costing several grand. Ridiculous. Too much money for features that are under question.

By the way it's the same with garbage Samsung. They still do not offer Dolby Vision because it's 10 dollars a TV. Samsung are clowns.

Some of their product and marketing managers were blind for years and should be sacked. Agreed. They are changing now, finally, and will be adopting OLED displays, from LG, oh irony! DolbyVision will come with it, as unstoppable wave of consumers are moving towards OLED tech and goodies that come with it. Even some new laptops have DolbyVision, Intel supports it in its media engine on CPUs and more game developers and content creators also embrace it.

 

[AVR Enthu]

He is waiting to hear back from Yamaha's engineering department.

Two months? Four months? Six months? A year? while devices are in the market already...

This would be unthinkable in computing market, i.e. not to publish a thorough review of new processors or other components until company comes back to you.

New AVRs should be coming out of factory with initial SINAD measurements, as a quality assurance report for every single customer, in the same way as better monitors come with factory calibration reports out of the box. AVR market is a bit behind those QA processes that are adopted in other sectors.

 

[Replicant 7]

Two months? Four months? Six months? A year? while devices are in the market already...

This would be unthinkable in computing market, i.e. not to publish a thorough review of new processors or other components until company comes back to you.

New AVRs should be coming out of factory with initial SINAD measurements, as a quality assurance report for every single customer, in the same way as better monitors come with factory calibration reports out of the box. AVR market is a bit behind those QA processes that are adopted in other sectors.

Kinda like Denon's fix? the add-box fix with only 1, 2.1 fix. Yeah I see that going over well. Same can be said with all the car and truck manufacturers putting out new cars and trucks and to only find out they have a bunch of recalls and your new car or truck sits at the dealership week or two. It'll All get worked out.

 

[ryanosaur]

Two months? Four months? Six months? A year? while devices are in the market already...

This would be unthinkable in computing market, i.e. not to publish a thorough review of new processors or other components until company comes back to you.

New AVRs should be coming out of factory with initial SINAD measurements, as a quality assurance report for every single customer, in the same way as better monitors come with factory calibration reports out of the box. AVR market is a bit behind those QA processes that are adopted in other sectors.

Yup...

Time to sh!t or get off the pot.

To be fair, there have been other instances before this of collaboration between reviewer and review-ee. I think it is worthwhile for building and maintaining such relationships; dare I say, even important.

The longer this continues, though, I fear potential loss of credibility. Yamaha deserves the pie in the face at this point. An online publication can always put out an update to show the results of their conversation. Hell, even Amir has done this (sometimes) over at ASR.

Right now, I can safely say Yamaha is getting lapped.

Kinda like Denon's fix? the add-box fix with only 1, 2.1 fix.

But it worked, and Sound United didn't punish the consumer in any way with that "fix". Free to all who purchased an affected unit. Forgive, but so far Sound United has impressed me more in the response to their fcuk-up than Yamaha has. And the sad thing is, Sound United took all the heat of this situation on the chin while Yamaha skated by somehow... and for those to whom HDMI 2.1 is important, Yamaha continues to skate by.

 

[Replicant 7]

Yup...

Time to sh!t or get off the pot.

To be fair, there have been other instances before this of collaboration between reviewer and review-ee. I think it is worthwhile for building and maintaining such relationships; dare I say, even important.

The longer this continues, though, I fear potential loss of credibility. Yamaha deserves the pie in the face at this point. An online publication can always put out an update to show the results of their conversation. Hell, even Amir has done this (sometimes) over at ASR.

Right now, I can safely say Yamaha is getting lapped.

But it worked, and Sound United didn't punish the consumer in any way with that "fix". Free to all who purchased an affected unit. Forgive, but so far Sound United has impressed me more in the response to their fcuk-up than Yamaha has. And the sad thing is, Sound United took all the heat of this situation on the chin while Yamaha skated by somehow... and for those to whom HDMI 2.1 is important, Yamaha continues to skate by.

Yep, lol it's a mess for every manufacturer of avrs. They All dropped the ball. I'm sure they all using baby wipes when they got off the pot. But yeah guys I do get the message y'all getting across to help others with making a better decision when choosing gear. I can not disagree.

 

[TadMoore]

In settings, for (HDMI Video Format) All HDMI's, should be set to (Mode 1). Also for (HDMI Version) all HDMI's 1 through 7 should be set to (Auto). HDMI Standby Through, set to (On). I'll mention, I had Cox cable last year don't anymore just their internet service, I had issues with their cable box, audio and video issues. My RX-A1080 never would upscale to 4K from that Cox box always showed just 1080P. Check your satellite box settings maybe something's up with it? I have no issues at all with my RX-A4A.

Thanks for the advice. I do have 1-7 as Auto. I will double check the other settings as well. I don't recall seeing Video Format/Mode 1.

 

[Hetfield]

You could ask, by analogy, why bother with AVRs at all, which are a minor part of their revenue anyway? They cannot do always what they want, as consumers and competition will punish them. I have also had Yamaha products for years, but do not intend buying any new AVRs or separates until they explicitly sort out issues with new HDMI, room correction and whatever noise Gene has discovered. You cannot have this on machines costing several grand. Ridiculous. Too much money for features that are under question.


Some of their product and marketing managers were blind for years and should be sacked. Agreed. They are changing now, finally, and will be adopting OLED displays, from LG, oh irony! DolbyVision will come with it, as unstoppable wave of consumers are moving towards OLED tech and goodies that come with it. Even some new laptops have DolbyVision, Intel supports it in its media engine on CPUs and more game developers and content creators also embrace it.

I just hate Samsung man, I really hate them. They are so arrogant I don't think I could ever own one of their products although I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I have JBL speakers which I believe Samsung owns.
I'm glad they are moving to OLED though because QLED was just incredibly bad. DV was just about arrogance and money.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

 

[Replicant 7]

I just hate Samsung man, I really hate them. They are so arrogant I don't think I could ever own one of their products although I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I have JBL speakers which I believe Samsung owns.
I'm glad they are moving to OLED though because QLED was just incredibly bad. DV was just about arrogance and money.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Isn't it always about the money. The end users always take it up the yahoo. They all sent out a fix or to be fixed, trade offs. Denon, Yamaha, Onkyo, Marantz and other's will make it right. Some fix's better than others? They All should have been validated before releasing. Functional out the box All them.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

I just hate Samsung man, I really hate them. They are so arrogant I don't think I could ever own one of their products although I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I have JBL speakers which I believe Samsung owns.
I'm glad they are moving to OLED though because QLED was just incredibly bad. DV was just about arrogance and money.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Well you should know that Samsung owns Harmon, but had nothing to do with your JBL’s. So you can definitely feel good about that!

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

You could ask, by analogy, why bother with AVRs at all, which are a minor part of their revenue anyway? They cannot do always what they want, as consumers and competition will punish them.

I agree that AVRs make up an extremely small percentage of their $3.9 billion annual revenue.

So how will Yamaha be “punished? By the extremely smaller percentage of people who care about auto room EQ (since the majority of the people who buy Yamaha AVR don’t care about auto room EQ)?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

@AcuDefTechGuy, it's good that Onkyo stepped up their game. They had to, with what happened to Onkyo with their chip issues that nearly wipe them out years back.

If I were Onkyo I would also do whatever I think it will take to stay ALIVE.

But in the end, will it be enough to get the MAJORITY of the people to buy Onkyo?

 

[Hetfield]

Well you should know that Samsung owns Harmon, but had nothing to do with your JBL’s. So you can definitely feel good about that!

Whew, load off my mind.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Gene did state, that on the RX-A6A in Direct Mode, that his findings are state-of-the-art. He hasn't stated what his finding are yet. He is waiting to hear back from Yamaha's engineering department.

Excellent point.

I wonder how all these AVR/AVP measure when they turn on the Auto Room EQ PROCESSING?

Will THD+N be 0.01% or 0.1% after all this EQ Processing?

 

[OldAndSlowDev]

I have a real noob question about Dirac, Audissey, YPAO… There seems to be really strong opinions about the quality of room correction, but how is this measured / compared ? Are there tools to check with/without room correction ? To use the same AVR but with the different room correction settings ? And can a third party device offer better measurements you can then apply on any AVR ?

 

[Replicant 7]

I have a real noob question about Dirac, Audissey, YPAO… There seems to be really strong opinions about the quality of room correction, but how is this measured / compared ? Are there tools to check with/without room correction ? To use the same AVR but with the different room correction settings ? And can a third party device offer better measurements you can then apply on any AVR ?

I was just wondering the same thing. But you beat me to it. I wouldn't bet again any difference in sound quality of, Denon, Marantz, Yamaha, Onkyo sounding any different in Direct Mode, with all things being equal.

 

[ryanosaur]

Dirac is often considered among the better and more powerful options. Anthem Room Correction had gotten popular for a bit, but lately seems to have gotten buggy. Audyssey used to get picked on, but with XT32 and the App many have experienced good results. I have no experience with YPAO, but have heard pretty regularly that it wasn’t very good… but that’s only hearsay.
For Aud and YPAO, it is not uncommon for people to just run it to set the trims and delays, but then disable it.

As for a third party solution, MiniDSP has som gear that is licensed with Dirac, and if you have pre-outs you can install those between AVR/AVP and amp and have Dirac do it’s thing.

As far as checking and tuning your system, that is what REW (Room EQ Wizard) is for. That and a suitable calibrated measurement mic, and you’re in business,

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Whew, load off my mind.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Right?!?!

 

[Hetfield]

Right?!?!

Heck yeah! Feeling good!

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Heck yeah! Feeling good!

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Roger that!