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

[JNMNL52]

Gotta, ask, your thoughts, Sony OLED or LG OLED? By October of next year a 65" OLED will be sitting in my setup so I have plenty of time to research.

Can't speak for LG, but I purchased a calibrated Sony 83A90J 4K OLED back in June, and it is absolutely perfect for me. Very bright picture and my Yamaha RX-A770 w/eARC firmware update supports it very well in my HT.

 

[Replicant 7]

Can't speak for LG, but I purchased a calibrated Sony 83A90J 4K OLED back in June, and it is absolutely perfect for me. Very bright picture and my Yamaha RX-A770 w/eARC firmware update supports it very well in my HT.

As of now, Sony Master Series 65" is my 1st choice. Both of my Son's have Sony Master Series OLED, 65" 77" absolutely gorgeous colors.

 

[Am_P]

Gamers are only a tiny segment of market who use wider video bandwidth. There are thousands of creatives who design modern audio-video content and need reliable AVRs to watch high-quality video renderings and listen to lossless audio mastered for it. Professionals rightly expect that expensive AVR machines would finally deliver the full bandwidth spec.

I don't know about all these thousands of creative professionals waiting on flagship features from a receiver?!...you seem to be pushing it a bit at the moment...

 

[clone1008]

Gotta, ask, your thoughts, Sony OLED or LG OLED? By October of next year a 65" OLED will be sitting in my setup so I have plenty of time to research.

I can't speak about Sony but my LG OLED from 2016 was one of their top of lines then and it is still absolutely stunning. One thing that is making my picture so good is that I am a certified ISF Calibrator with the right equipment/software. Even though it's a 2016 model it still has Dolby Vision and mine is the last model with 3D. What I am missing is EARC and 2.1. I will probably go LG again because of my experience with them.

 

[AVR Enthu]

Gotta, ask, your thoughts, Sony OLED or LG OLED? By October of next year a 65" OLED will be sitting in my setup so I have plenty of time to research.

Apologies to members for a side-topic answer.
LG OLED, as they have in-house made SoCs and do not rely on external companies for main features, troubleshoooting and firmware updates. Several other companies, like Sony, Philips, Panasonic, etc. use LG display panels anyway, and predominantly use MediaTek's TV chipsets and those can be troublesome. I have LG C9 55 and it works reliably for more than two years. Firmware updates have been coming all the time. They enabled and improved many features: LPCM 7.1 lossless pass-through, more reliable eARC, better HDR tone-mapping, WebOS, new video data blocks in EDID, etc. Commendable. It's a perfect TV by any stretch of imagination, but it's an excellent TV.

The biggest single audio feature any new TVs need to bring finally is native eARC output from main processor. I hope 2022 models start bringing this. This is important, as currently all internal TV apps, USB media and network-related services, such as DLNA that pick up movies/music from servers and NAS, only have ARC audio channel on the main processor and cannot output lossless audio from TV itself. eARC is a pass-through feature only, delivered by mux chip (shown below), for use with external HDMI sources. That's why Plex or any other app on TV cannot do DTHD, DTS-HD MA and lossless object-based audio.
There are workarounds, of course, such as connect network devices as external sources or directly to AVR and use Plex or other apps on Nvidia Shield, NAS, APple TV or PC, but this is not elegant, it powers on more devices and brings more potential AV glitch points into play.
Here is the problem on current TV chips.

 

[Majorusa]

My Yamaha A8A beta tester story continues.
After trying to fix the sound issues the AVR had after all the calibrations, multi point, height, manual, last night I snapped. I did a factory reset of the AVR only to find that it sounds good - not fantastic - with no calibration. It has a sibilance though but I cannot identify the source yet.
YPAO introduced a strong sibilance and voices became fuzzy without clarity. Regardless the DSP or Surround Mixer used, the AVR was muffling the voices in the center channel. Also, all the sounds that came from there were softer that the ones from the other channels despite the fact that using the tone generator I measured the volume of the center channel 2-3 db above all other speakers.
Redid YPAO calibratien only to have the same issues with voices and center as before the reset.
The AVR still have a very wide soundstage, much wider than the V6A but somehow sounds not as clear. I start to wonder if the unit is not faulty.

 

[clone1008]

My Yamaha A8A beta tester story continues.
After trying to fix the sound issues the AVR had after all the calibrations, multi point, height, manual, last night I snapped. I did a factory reset of the AVR only to find that it sounds good - not fantastic - with no calibration. It has a sibilance though but I cannot identify the source yet.
YPAO introduced a strong sibilance and voices became fuzzy without clarity. Regardless the DSP or Surround Mixer used, the AVR was muffling the voices in the center channel. Also, all the sounds that came from there were softer that the ones from the other channels despite the fact that using the tone generator I measured the volume of the center channel 2-3 db above all other speakers.
Redid YPAO calibratien only to have the same issues with voices and center as before the reset.
The AVR still have a very wide soundstage, much wider than the V6A but somehow sounds not as clear. I start to wonder if the unit is not faulty.

Do you know that as of right now there is a problem with anything over a 3 point multi-point calibration in YPAO?

 

[chapp]

Well, that Andrew's video sure created lots of feedback. That fella is not to be taken seriously, but he did mention some true facts about some of those issues. However, he compared the Denon 3700, the Onkyo, the other Yamaha v6a ($499 or less when Costco had it). I could be corrected here. This guy is nuts and with the setup he used was a joke as I mentioned previously. I had a $4500 Denon which I compared to the A8A and I gave the edge to the Yamaha for power and more pleasing sound. This was a 7.1.4 setup as well as a 7.2.4. For simplicity in setup and listening to music and viewing movies, I rather preferred the Yamaha. Sure, I said this previously and I also mentioned that I was awaiting another A8A to test for issues as experienced with the current one. Well, last week I got the other A8A, and it was not any different to the first one. I just packed it back in the box for return and am using the first one since I had received it at a discounted price.
Note: Ever since I had this A8A, it has been given a thorough workout. It is usually on at 6am and do not go back off till 9:30 to 10:30 PM since about Oct 20th. I have played with most of the settings and configurations, and this is how I have discovered the issues that are common to the unit. I still have an open window until January 15, I think, to return it and will do so if I decide it is not a keeper. I was disappointed to hear that Yamaha has pushed the Firmware update until Feb of next Year as I was hoping to get it prior to the units return time limit.
Except for the few issues and delayed firmware to enable the full features, this is kickass unit.
Just my 2 cents and did not mean to offend anyone.

 

[chapp]

Do you know that as of right now there is a problem with anything over a 3 point multi-point calibration in YPAO?

I did not have this issue with the 8 point calibration and Angle. I tried it on 2 units and both were about the same. My HT room do not have much issue with my placement of speakers and sub. I am very careful with how I setup and do the calibration on these units.

 

[clone1008]

I did not have this issue with the 8 point calibration and Angle. I tried it on 2 units and both were about the same. My HT room do not have much issue with my placement of speakers and sub. I am very careful with how I setup and do the calibration on these units.

I guess you're lucky. For me anything over 3 point and it flat lines my front heights.

 

[chapp]

I guess you're lucky. For me anything over 3 point and it flat lines my front heights.

It could be how the speakers are placed in the room. I have the Front and Rear Heights (SVS Prime elevation) suspended from the ceiling using the supplied clamps which I modified to hang from top of the speaker. This way I was able to control the position the speaker exactly to the angle I desired. They are directly above the front L and R and at the same angle, pointing towards the sweet spot. The Rears are mounted the exact way with the Rear Surrounds. YPAO did calibrate all of them as large, but this is common and easily changed to small. Distances were quite good, too, including the sub which I dialed down prior to the calibration. I had also turned off all the enhancements etc. Do not place the mic on a cushion or close to one and keep the room as quiet as can be. Good luck

 

[AVR Enthu]

Lol, that sound a little bit as an outdated way of thinking about electronic/software. Sorry I am not trying to be mean, but if you take a Tesla, every update brings new features, improvements, fixes, same for any computer related stuff, so trying to bring AVR in the 2000s seems to me like something totally right. If I don't have the features that appear on the manufacturer advertised description, I can just return it at some point because it's not the product I purchases. I don't think Yamaha will risk to not release all these features and then to take back all the sold AVR.

This is true, with caveats, I must say. The key question is at which point you give up on update hopes and make decision to return a product? Not quite easy to determine, especially when vendors feed you with contradictory and delayed annoucements, which mess up with your plans for intended usage of product. Even more so if you need it for professional work or to set up specific home media entertainment hub with other devices that also cost thousands.

Features evolve and improve; you are totally right. However, if there is no clear, calendar-bound roadmap for delivering advertised features and published at the point of product release, owners pay full price without knowing when those features would be enabled. Some owners might not need to use such features sooner than others, but where is an orientation point for decision-making? It is uncertainty and vagueness of communication from vendors that is unacceptable. Will we wait two months, seven months or one year for what we need? If one year, is AVR really worth its initial asking price? What if vendor changes its mind?

This is all hypothetical and rather meaningless without real life context. Let's see what's going on in real life then. When scandal with Yamaha and SU models broke out in October 2020, it took SU seven months to provide the fix. Covid was hitting hard everywhere and people accepted delays. Granted. Around New Year, Yamaha published detailed calendar roadmap for seven or eight firmware updates to enable all features on new boards. Owners accepted the announcement and kept fingers crossed. At that time, we knew that 2021 models were withdrawn and delayed. A few months later, in May, we found out why.

In May, they ditched the entire update roadmap, announced that boards were faulty and needed to be replaced, without saying to people that new boards would be quite different from those on 2021 models, i.e. slower ports with 24 Gbps vs 40 Gbps. This was a significant information to be silent about in public, until forced to admit what was behind the silence. So, yes, AVR features evolve and improve and new boards were promised, but you can't get improved features if you do not have a new board. It also turned out that the the fix did not bring improvements that people thought the company was telling them it was going to bring. Quite bizarre public relations. We will give you new free boards, but those boards will be slower. They never had a courage to say that honestly. Pssst! Do not tell anyone. It's all hush-hush. Owners felt being treated like idiots.

This is the easiest way to lose trust. I am talking about Yamaha in this case because it's Yamaha's thread, I am Yamaha fanboy and this is relevant to be aware of. Several other companies from consumer electronics and PC world have also used ugly practices, even worse sometimes. I criticise them in other relevant threads or in PM.

This has nothing to do with members here who own old or new devices and enjoy them. All power to you, to us. You should enjoy them in the same way as I do enjoy my Yamaha gear at home. Groups of employees from marketing and engineering departments of my favourite AVR company made wrong decisions, communicated consequences of those decisions to the public in ugly way and they need to be called out for bringing the company into disrepute. Have they been sacked finally or the company still blames Covid for all misfortune surrounding the new gen of AVRs? Would you sack a part of your team for such practices?

 

[AVR Enthu]

Just chunk a snowball back at @AVR Enthu , he can take it, it's obvious he likes a snowball fight just look at some of his post.

You won't be able to throw any snowballs soon if those AVRs continue to run hot, as Gene said, and accelerate the climate change.

 

[AVR Enthu]

I don't know about all these thousands of creative professionals waiting on flagship features from a receiver?!...you seem to be pushing it a bit at the moment...

Possibly, but 40 Gbps ports are hardly a "flagship" feature, I am afraid. It's mainstream now.
The world moves fast:
- even low end Denons for under $450 from Costco have them. Those sell like hot cakes for the festive season
- every single graphics card has those ports since August 2020, both low end, mid range and high end. Almost 100 million have been shipped worldwide. Jon Peddie Research gathers detailed data
- tens of millions of LCD and OLED TVs too
- more than 20 million consoles sold worldwide have speedy ports. And consoles are not flagship devices either

So, speedy ports are already widespread, but not yet in all AVRs. If Yamaha is not able to provide, professionals can buy elsewhere too. Whatever the case, they need reliable devices for workflows. There are record number of games being released with lossless audio and employees in design studios want to proof listen to those gametracks before release.

 

[Replicant 7]

Apologies to members for a side-topic answer.
LG OLED, as they have in-house made SoCs and do not rely on external companies for main features, troubleshoooting and firmware updates. Several other companies predominantly use MediaTek's TV chipsets and those can be troublesome. I have LG C9 55 and it works reliably for more than two years. Firmware updates have been coming all the time. They enabled and improved many features: LPCM 7.1 lossless pass-through, more reliable eARC, better HDR tone-mapping, WebOS, new video data blocks in EDID, etc. Commendable.

The biggest single audio feature any new TVs need to bring finally is native eARC output from main processor. I hope 2022 models start bringing this. This is important, as currently all internal TV apps, USB media and network-related services, such as DLNA that pick up movies/music from servers and NAS, only have ARC audio channel on the main processor and cannot output lossless audio from TV itself. eARC is a pass-through feature only, delivered by mux chip (shown below), for use with external HDMI sources. That's why Plex or any other app on TV cannot do DTHD, DTS-HD MA and lossless object-based audio.
There are workarounds, of course, such as connect network devices as external sources or directly to AVR and use Plex or other apps on Nvidia Shield, NAS, APple TV or PC, but this is not elegant, it powers on more devices and brings more potential AV glitch points into play.
Here is the problem on current TV chips.
View attachment 52008

Thanks, just learned a lil bit more on OLED.

 

[Replicant 7]

My Yamaha A8A beta tester story continues.
After trying to fix the sound issues the AVR had after all the calibrations, multi point, height, manual, last night I snapped. I did a factory reset of the AVR only to find that it sounds good - not fantastic - with no calibration. It has a sibilance though but I cannot identify the source yet.
YPAO introduced a strong sibilance and voices became fuzzy without clarity. Regardless the DSP or Surround Mixer used, the AVR was muffling the voices in the center channel. Also, all the sounds that came from there were softer that the ones from the other channels despite the fact that using the tone generator I measured the volume of the center channel 2-3 db above all other speakers.
Redid YPAO calibratien only to have the same issues with voices and center as before the reset.
The AVR still have a very wide soundstage, much wider than the V6A but somehow sounds not as clear. I start to wonder if the unit is not faulty.

From reading your post, I take it your having issues with DSP? What's it sound like in 2.1 for music? Again not bragging just stating facts, my RX-A4A sounds great in use with HT or just for Music use. It is setup for Atmos. I will add heights soon.

 

[AVR Enthu]

Just my 2 cents and did not mean to offend anyone.

Even if anyone feels offended by your experience, so be it. After giving us an honest account of your personal experience, you are not responsible for other people's feelings. They are.

 

[Replicant 7]

You won't be able to throw any snowballs soon if those AVRs continue to run hot, as Gene said, and accelerate the climate change.

Oh, no worries, they'll still come just be the yellow showball's.

 

[OldAndSlowDev]

This is true, with caveats, I must say. The key question is at which point you give up on update hopes and make decision to return a product? Not quite easy to determine, especially when vendors feed you with contradictory and delayed annoucements, which mess up with your plans for intended usage of product. Even more so if you need it for professional work or to set up specific home media entertainment hub with other devices that also cost thousands.

Features evolve and improve; you are totally right. However, if there is no clear, calendar-bound roadmap for delivering advertised features and published at the point of product release, owners pay full price without knowing when those features would be enabled. Some owners might not need to use such features sooner than others, but where is an orientation point for decision-making? It is uncertainty and vagueness of communication from vendors that is unacceptable. Will we wait two months, seven months or one year for what we need? If one year, is AVR really worth its initial asking price? What if vendor changes its mind?

This is all hypothetical and rather meaningless without real life context. Let's see what's going on in real life then. When scandal with Yamaha and SU models broke out in October 2020, it took SU seven months to provide the fix. Covid was hitting hard everywhere and people accepted delays. Granted. Around New Year, Yamaha published detailed calendar roadmap for seven or eight firmware updates to enable all features on new boards. Owners accepted the announcement and kept fingers crossed. At that time, we knew that 2021 models were withdrawn and delayed. A few months later, in May, we found out why.

In May, they ditched the entire update roadmap, announced that boards were faulty and needed to be replaced, without saying to people that new boards would be quite different from those on 2021 models, i.e. slower ports with 24 Gbps vs 40 Gbps. This was a significant information to be silent about in public, until forced to admit what was behind the silence. So, yes, AVR features evolve and improve and new boards were promised, but you can't get improved features if you do not have a new board. It also turned out that the the fix did not bring improvements that people thought the company was telling them it was going to bring. Quite bizarre public relations. We will give you new free boards, but those boards will be slower. They never had a courage to say that honestly. Pssst! Do not tell anyone. It's all hush-hush. Owners felt being treated like idiots.

This is the easiest way to lose trust. I am talking about Yamaha in this case because it's Yamaha's thread, I am Yamaha fanboy and this is relevant to be aware of. Several other companies from consumer electronics and PC world have also used ugly practices, even worse sometimes. I criticise them in other relevant threads or in PM.

This has nothing to do with members here who own old or new devices and enjoy them. All power to you, to us. You should enjoy them in the same way as I do enjoy my Yamaha gear at home. Groups of employees from marketing and engineering departments of my favourite AVR company made wrong decisions, communicated consequences of those decisions to the public in ugly way and they need to be called out for bringing the company into disrepute. Have they been sacked finally or the company still blames Covid for all misfortune surrounding the new gen of AVRs? Would you sack a part of your team for such practices?

Thank you for taking time to describe what happened during my loooong audio coma. I better understand why Yamaha selling "once again" something that isn't properly working is "enough".
When waiting so long for something that should had worked two years ago, I get why people can be really angry, and I would have been angry. It's just like I am a kind of new born in the scene I just get what is available right now, expecting naively that things will work.
Finally my "dream" avr would be a robust computer with state of the art dac, pre amp and amp, able to evolve for saying five to ten years. But it's maybe not what avr manufacturers want as it will reduce the number of sold units as at some point the computation power will be enough to process almost anything.
But at some point if my RX-A8A is plagued with major issues, and isn't working properly for features that have been announced as part of the product, I will ask for a refund and get something else. Like a 2022 RX-A8B

 

[jakkedtide]

Your situation could be different than his. I don't know what your 4K player is but most don't have 2 HDMI outs. Also what if he has different sources? For example I have Shield TV, Fire stick and a PS5. Your solution wouldn't even begin to work for me. So he either goes into the AVR with sources and "direct" out to TV via HDMI, or he goes into TV with sources and out to AVR via EARC/ARC or Toslink. ARC and Toslink are going to limit his surround options though.

I just got the firestick 4k max and it sucks. Almost all audio needs to be transcode. All my Atmos Demos get transcoded. My Xbox series x will pass through all audio. I am using plex primarily.

I want to get another shield as I have one already on another tv but I new should come out soon. I hope!