Yamaha RXA800 HD Radio Reception

[jcl]

I just recently got a Yamaha rxa 800 for the family room system. I find the interface a little unintuitive compared to my older Onkyo. One thing I really have problems with is the HD radio. With the included antenna I get about 4 stations. I live in the hills, but within city limits, and regular reception on my Onkyo I could get plenty of stations.

I had a Sony hd tuner upstairs in my office for a few weeks until it died, and it didn't have any problems pulling in many stations.

I know often the hd radio signal is far weaker. Does anyone have experience with the yamahas? Should I bother trying an external antenna, try a different brand, or just stick to internet radio?

 

[timoteo]

The Yamaha Aventage line has been known to have issues with the HD Radio reception. They have been working on improving it through firmware updates. So make sure you plug the reciever into the internet or through a usb drive & update the firmware. Its free & has helped mine. Future updates will probably help more as well.
Hope this helps!!!

 

[bikdav]

HD radio has lots of downfalls as far as reception is concerned. I have a separate HD tuner and a strong antenna is the only way to get this thing to work. [Fortunately, I got this thing for dirt cheap, because the listening choices in my area are not that great]. I'd try an out door antenna or something strong like that. I'm slowly moving over to internet radio via an old desktop MAC that I'm thinking of eventually replacing with a laptop. Pulling radio off the internet yields far more great listening choices than I'll use.

 

[jcl]

Thanks for the responses giving me hope. I'll try a firmware upgrade and hopefully that will get me the stations i'm looking for. If that fails I'll try the antenna. I think I have 30 days to return if I can't get it to bring in any stations worth listening to.

 

[jcl]

Well, I got around to checking the firmware and it's on 2.05 which the instructions say doesn't need to be upgraded. I was hoping the firmware upgrade was going to help. Not sure if I want to bother with an antenna or just return it.

 

[TLS Guy]

Well, I got around to checking the firmware and it's on 2.05 which the instructions say doesn't need to be upgraded. I was hoping the firmware upgrade was going to help. Not sure if I want to bother with an antenna or just return it.

You need an antenna anyway. HD radio is not a big deal and a terrible system. It is a miserable 40kbs highly compressed bit stream and often worse than that. Compared to analog FM it is just plain awful.

I have my HD switched off and use analog only.

 

[bikdav]

True

You need an antenna anyway. HD radio is not a big deal and a terrible system. It is a miserable 40kbs highly compressed bit stream and often worse than that. Compared to analog FM it is just plain awful.

I have my HD switched off and use analog only.

You're very right about that. A vast majority of the stations that I can get don't really sound that great in "digital" mode. Pulling radio off the internet leaves HD radio in the dust. The audio quality of some stations off the internet is shockingly good. I didn't expect that.

 

[jcl]

You need an antenna anyway. HD radio is not a big deal and a terrible system. It is a miserable 40kbs highly compressed bit stream and often worse than that. Compared to analog FM it is just plain awful.

I have my HD switched off and use analog only.

The radio would be mostly for background music, so I wasn't too worried about quality. I had read your review of the Sony HD Tuner (thanks for that btw) so I wasn't expecting too much.

My wife really likes the rds features of the car tuners. Her stipulations for the new receiver were 1. It had to fit in the Salamander rack with the back on (my Onkyo didn't) 2. It needed to display the artist song info like the car radio.

I'm wondering if I'd be better off with an rds receiver or tuner. The only recs. I know of are NAD and Cambridge Audio - Which tend to be higher on price and lower on features than I'm looking for. It probably would be more economical to keep the 1/2 price rxa800 and add a rds tuner.

 

[tonypelicon]

Did you got the firmware upgrade yet ? Yamaha main website announced a new release in few weeks.