Yamaha RX-V1065 or Denon AVR-2310

[Frank Harvey]

Thanks passingbat. We do like to think we have a large range of the sort of products that people want to hear, so we are in a good position to help people who don't have access to some of this equipment. I also like to think I give consistent advice, while at the same time taking into account user's individual needs. I have over a thousand posts to my name now, which 99% of those have been to help people with their enquiries.

If you can't be genuine, there's no point being here

 

[Anonymous]

If one browses through the various other forums one thing to note is that the thing that seems to get most attention, (and gives rise to most "after purchase" disappointment), is not the sound but whether there are any "gotchas". Such things as whether it can upscale HDMI, whether room EQ can be applied to bit stream inputs, flexibility of input assignabilty (not just for Sky btw) etc.

Admittedly these are not major issues for most people but they might be if one wants to upscale SD from a Sky HD box, or to connect a Wii with component video and analogue audio. Or perhaps one might find that room EQ settings give a preferable sound and would like to use these irrespective of source. There are work arounds for all of these but it doesn't stop consumers getting hacked off.

My view is that at the £700 price point no product should have limitations that can only be found in the small print, irrespective of perceived importance. Yet out of the Denon, Yamaha, (and Marantz) there appears to be only one that provides the flexibility that it is reasonable to expect.

Sadly, these issues do not get much weight in reviews and are often only found after buying and living with the item.

 

[Frank Harvey]

I generally recommend amps from about a £1,000 if somebody wants it to do everything. Of course, there are some things you'll only get when moving up the Z11, but that's understandable - many of these amps do a hell of a lot for the money already. There's only so much a manufacturer can do at a certain price point

 

[Anonymous]

Re: I generally recommend amps from about a £1,000 if somebody wants it to do everything.

I think you gave completely mis-read what I have said.

 

[Frank Harvey]

There's always going to be limitations to AV amps when they're at the budget end of the market. Given what an AV receiver is capable of nowadays, I think it's hard to argue against them - they do more now than AV amps did 10 or even 5 years ago which cost 10 times as much! Things like upscaling SD HDMI signals is usually down to the the higher end amps. You could put that sort of thing on a cheaper amp, but then it would have to lose other features to pay for it.

As I said, if somebody asks me for a do-it-all amp, I'll mention amps from £1k, knowing that they will do 99% of what most people are going to ask of them. At this price point, input assignment isn't an issue. As for room EQ being applied to bitstream signals, I know there's been a lot of debate about it which only really started with the Marantz 8003 pre/power, but how many people actually knew they were listening to un-EQ'd bitstream all that time? I didn't initially. Does it bother me? Not really - my amp still sounds stunning without it. Because we listen to our customers needs, we've not had one customer come back to us who're unhappy with their AV amps.

I agree that AV amps should do absolutely everything - but with this will come a price.

 

[Anonymous]

Perhaps I should try making my point again. One manufacturer, (there may be more), has managed to provide very well regarded sound performance in the budget and mid-end price points but have also apparently provided:

the ability to assign all available audio inputs to all available video inputs AND

upscaling of all video inputs AND

the ability to apply room eq to all audio inputs irrespective of input format.

Whether these things have significant value to most people is irrelevant; if one manufacture can do it whilst also improving things where it really counts then the others have no excuse, (particularly in a world where retailers can sell recently released kit for two thirds RRP and still turn a profit).

 

[Frank Harvey]

whitwood: Perhaps I should try making my point again. One manufacturer, (there may be more), has managed to provide very well regarded sound performance in the budget and mid-end price points but have also apparently provided:

the ability to assign all available audio inputs to all available video inputs AND

upscaling of all video inputs AND

the ability to apply room eq to all audio inputs irrespective of input format.I don't see the point of being able to assign ALL audio inputs to any video inputs. Even if onlt half were assignable, that's usually enough to cover 99% of people. As for upscaling SD HDMI, why? Most products that have HDMI outputs upscale quite competently to 1080p anyway. And anyone with a half decent screen will have decent upscaling there too. Maybe you can tell us which amp it is you have a problem with......

Whether these things have significant value to most people is irrelevant; if one manufacture can do it whilst also improving things where it really counts then the others have no excuse....Some manufacturers have exclusive featuren their amps, which cost money, so they may have to drop something else to keep to a price point. That's all this is at the end of the day - a manufacturer having an amp at a key price point.

(particularly in a world where retailers can sell recently released kit for two thirds RRP and still turn a profit). Just about. It only takes one idiot dealer to decide to run on a whisper thin margin - other dealers have to then decide to lose sales or follow suit. It's not easy.

 

[Anonymous]

FrankHarveyHiFi:[]I don't see the point of being able to assign ALL audio inputs to any video inputs. Even if onlt half were assignable, that's usually enough to cover 99% of people.

If you have component video inputs, the Yamaha X65 series could cause problems. It has 2 component inputs and one is fixed to an optical audio and the other to a coaxial audio. In the previous years' Yamahas. that wouldn't be a problem you could assign either an optical or a coaxial input to any component input. I would say a majority of component equipment has optical for audio, so this could be a problem. I know you can get optica/coaxial convertors, but why should you have to --- I don't see other manufacturers scrapping this kind of assignability (that I'm aware of). Although the firmware update fixed the Sky optical/HDMI isiue, I don't believe this was fixed.

I'm not a yamaha basher BTW, I'm a fan, but doing stupid things like this doesn't help them, and was one of the reasons I got a 1900 before they dissapeared!

 

[Frank Harvey]

Most source components people are buying now use HDMI. They will also have component, but people will always favour using HDMI. The only reason I can think of someone needing to use a component input would be if they've ran out of HDMI's and need to free one up by using the component for a Sky HD box, which only runs 1080i anyway, within the capabilities of a component connection. The only other product would be a Nintendo Wii, but this doesn't have any digital outputs, only standard stereo analogue connections anyway.

 

[Anonymous]

FrankHarveyHiFi:Most source components people are buying now use HDMI. They will also have component, but people will always favour using HDMI. The only reason I can think of someone needing to use a component input would be if they've ran out of HDMI's and need to free one up by using the component for a Sky HD box, which only runs 1080i anyway, within the capabilities of a component connection. The only other product would be a Nintendo Wii, but this doesn't have any digital outputs, only standard stereo analogue connections anyway.

I realise it's a minority of people it will affect, but someone coming from a previous Yamaha amp to the new ones may get caught out unawares. And, how difficult would it have been for Yamaha to keep it as it was with regards to component optical/coaxial assignability? Other manufacturers have.

I know we're probably small in number <GRIN>, but I suspect that there are other people who still like to keep their older equipment connected as well as the new..I have 3 non HDMI sources connected via component ---- 2 DVD players and a DVD/HDD recorder together with 3 HDMI sources, 2 BR players and a Virgin V+ BOX.

 

[Anonymous]

Trying to make my point yet again ..................

One manufacture in particular seems to have decided to provide not only highly regarded audio quality across the various price points, but also to provide a full array of core AV functionality without any real limitations as to the use of this functionality. This company has given the decision as to what is and what is not important to the consumer and should thus be congratulated.

Other manufacturers have either not provided, or limited the use of functionality they consider unimportant, thus taking the choice away from the consumer. This is fine if the resulting cost savings are past on and the limitations are made clear at point of sale, but very often they're not and they're not.

This difference in ethos is something that I feel should carry more weight in reviews than it currently does.

Note also that if all functionality was removed that in some expert or anothers opinion is unimportant there would be no bitstream decoding, no analogue inputs, no upscaling, no DSP, no room eq etc etc. Personally, I put a great deal of value on the opportunity to decide these things for my self and believe that many others do too.