<font color='#000000'>I picked up the RX-V1400 on Oct 3 from Hificity.com, which happens to be near by for $625+tax. For a rookie w/o SPL meter like me, I enjoyed the YPAO setup. My only complaint is that it recognize my Left Main speaker as small while the Right Main as large. I corrected that through the manual setup. Other than that, YPAO is pretty accurate as far as the distance and levels for all speakers and subwoofer. Calculated equalization for frequency response seemed impressive. Subwoofer is not too boomy. Timbre is very accurate. The second feature, which I like, is the upconversion of video. Since my 42" Panasonic plasma has only 1 component input, the RX-V1400 really makes things simple for my wife and kids. With the universal remote control Sony AVR-3000, a single touch of the System button really solves the problem. The third feature, which my wife loves, is the night feature. Unlike the old Yamaha, I do not have to lower the volume and compromise the dialogue of the movies. In addition, my Panasonic DVD player has the Dialogue feature that really compliments the night feature on this AVR. I watched Too Fast & Too Furious; the Core, and Bionnicle. Thanks to YPAO, sound and dialogue sound better as all sounds from different speakers and subwoofer are well calculated and equalized. The fourth feature is the 7-channel stereo mode. Unlike the old Yamaha, HTR5540, I can listen to true music throughout all speakers (currently 5.1 HT setup). With the old AVR, the surround speakers had processed sound, which sound weak and faded. With this new model, it is designed to play music at a party throughout the whole house if you have 7 speakers setup. I do have all 7 matching speakers, but I do not have the room to setup 7.1 HT setup as of now. I do have some music, which I prefer not to have DSP. Thus, the 7-channel stereo mode is wonderful for me.
A week later, my Marantz MM9000 5-channel amp (170wpc) arrived with my IXOS interconnect cables. I then used such AVR as my pre/processor. Thanks to the amp, movies sound more clear and distinct. I watched Matrix Reload and The Lion King on DVDs, I was blown away. On top of that, music sounds even better than w/o the amp. I spent about 5 hours in the last two days listening to old CDs. I also listened to the concert DVDs, such as Eagle's Hell Freezes Over and Bee Gee's Live by Request of A&E. That compelled me to go out and purchase another DVD music. That's all I have for now as I am still playing around w/ the unit.</font>
