My first impressions with the Yamaha RX-A6A (compared to an old RX-V2095) after playing with it for several hours:
Cheap plastic front plate instead of machined aluminum. Black gloss plastic on top as well, with factory scratches visible when using a flash light. Front touch panel instead of real mechanical buttons.
A blue-ish LCD instead of a night-vision-friendly orange LED display. From the User Guide p. 25: "Under the high or low temperature, the visibility of the character is sometimes deteriorated by the LCD characteristics. It is not a malfunction." Yeah, it is. The display should function uniformly well over the entire operating temperature of the AVR, 10-40 C. I wonder about the durability of this LCD.
Cryptic icons on the LCD -- no idea what they mean, need a manual to decode.
Speaker jacks spacing is non-standard, so double banana plugs (joined by a plastic bridge) used with the old AVR (and the speakers) do not fit. Had to order separate connectors and will have to rewire, PITA.
Volume control sucks. When first powered up, the AVR did not produce a sound even after increasing the volume by 50dB. Finally, some faint sound started to emerge, but only from the height-effect speakers. I thought this was cross-talk rather than a real amplification. I was afraid that if I cranked up the volume further and then started to change the sound settings, the volume would suddenly increase to a very high level and blast out my speakers (and hurt my eardrums in the process). The volume control is useless until about -25dB, where the configuration max. is 16.5dB, which leaves only about 40dB of the effective control range. The screen that "explains" sound level control is gobbledygook.
All speakers start as "small" and I do not have subwoofers (since my mains go down to about 24Hz with ease), so everything sounded "tinny tiny" out of the box, until I found the speaker configuration setting. That is where I also set the non-existent speakers to "none."
The Quick Start Guide mandates the installation of MusicCast on a smartphone. So, I thought, would I now have to keep my smartphone in my media room at all times to be able to control the AVR?? I went through this step, but for what reason I do not know, since I only have one zone and all source devices are in the same room, next to the AVR. The MusicCast app is confusing.
It turns out there is a separate 443-page User Guide (downloadable online), but it is not shipped with the AVR. No word about that in the materials that came in the box.
There is no diagram on how to assemble the star base and pole with the YPAO microphone. I kind of had to work backward, starting with mounting the mic on the pole (which can only be done one way) and then matching that assembly with the base which has a front direction marking as the mic does.
The YPAO calibration yielded varying results. After the first two runs, it complained about the polarity of the center channel speaker (which was wired correctly, red-to-red and black-to-black); sure, I get it that this could still result in the phase being 180 degrees off from what is "YPAO desired," but still. At that time, YPAO did not complain about any other issues. But after I switched the center channel connection and tested again, it started complaining about the phase of one of the surround speakers (which was, again, wired correctly). These surround speakers are bipolar to produce a wide sound field, so YPAO probably got confused. Anyway, after switching that surround wiring, it stopped complaining.
Despite the previous setting of some speakers to none, YPAO still uselessly goes through them, trying to emit test noise and tone sweeps.
The sound from my reference CD through the main speakers is fine in the mid- and high-range, but not as powerful at the low range as with the old AVR (which, BTW, is 24 years old and still works fine). I guess the power increased from 100W to 150W at the expense of instantaneous current supply to drive woofers. Pure Direct mode does not help much.
There are no balance or tone controls on this thing; there seem to be some digital settings but hidden pretty deeply in the menu structure.
Early one, I checked through the TV screen whether a firmware update was available (the unit came with v1.4) and it was not. To my surprise, about 20-30 minutes late, a screen for the firmware update to 2.0 suddenly appeared. It is possible, but rather unlikely, that Yamaha just posted v2.0 at that very time, so the check for firmware update probably malfunctioned (I used wired Ethernet, so no WiFi issues).
When I selected an immediate update, the unit sort of shut off and when I checked about 30 minutes later, the LCD said the update was successful and the unit should be "powered off." So I tried the remote control to "power it off," to no avail. Finally figured it out they probably meant "power cycle" and that seems to have worked.
My TV set has ARC but not eARC over HDMI. So, Dolby Digital 5.1 should work when streaming movies using apps on the TV. While it sounds like it might, there is no explicit indication on the LCD that such a program is being received (it says "Surround:AI"). There is no meaningful explanation in the User Guide; nor is there any mention of Dolby ProLogic (only a vague description of "decoding from a 2-channel source").
Streaming Dune from HBOMax, which is supposedly in Dolby Atmos, requires cranking up the volume a lot to hear anything. Now that may be a function of this streaming service, which is notorious for playing at much lower volume compared to Netflix or Prime Video (as if they were afraid of accidental digital-full-scale clipping). Streaming Expanse from the latter service (in DD) yielded much better results.
I hope to learn more about this model as I go along.
