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William L.

William L.

Joined on 12/17/01

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 3
Most Favorable Review

Improves on Yamaha's Previous Issues

Yamaha RX-V475 5.1 Channel Network AV Receiver
Yamaha RX-V475 5.1 Channel Network AV Receiver

Pros: Sounds great. Solves the old Yamaha problem of their "Natural Sound Receiver" sounding like a bland, lifeless, soulless, uninteresting, morbid, bleak, heartless, blaaaahhhh... zzzzzzzzZZZzzz. I have an RX-V series from awhile back and this 475 positively SPARKLES in-comparison. Everything is better. Mids, Trebles, Clarity, DSP programs, power, dimension, calibration, directional-atmospherics. Got pretty good results with YPAO Room-Mic every time. I felt no need to EQ manually. I do bump up the center-channel volume sometimes, though. SCENE buttons Very convenient DSP: *Chamber, Cellar Club and The Bottom Line are all pretty useful for actual music, if you like a small bit of echo. They're really not that bad. *Sheer number of DSP programs is just Great! An embarrassment of riches. *A.DRC+DSP+Enhancer frequently make sources sound quite a bit better than they are dry. Sound on headphones is great, even for big, epic movies. Plenty of power in headphone amp for serious-quality cans. -Even drives a set of old 1 Million Ohm AKGs No word on durability, but if history is any guide, my previous Yamaha is still running great after 15 years! -An N-A-DElectronics 705 of the same vintage had to go to the shop 2x so far! Except for a few silly mistakes in the UX, the Controller App is really good. You would have paid Thousands for something like that even just a few years ago. -Running this amp on an iPad is really a lot of fun. Back Panel: Thank You, Yamaha! Right now, I'm working in a mixed-source environment. And Yamaha is one of the few that doesn't say, "HDMI OR NOTHING!" -That is just a godsend that they still give you a full-range. Thank you Again for HDMI-Passthrough! -Just in-case for some insane reason I wouldn't want the sound coming out of this thing. USB power on the back is a nice touch. Rating: I would give it more than just 4 eggs if I had more experience with its direct price-competitors. Even with my limited knowledge, other brands will probably have a tough time keeping-up. -Especially in Bang-for-the-buck-ratio.

Cons: Minor Point: Tone Controls are abit out of the way. -But the thing sounds so good you hardly need them. DSP *Not sure what good "Hall In Munich"/Vienna/Roxy are quite good-for. *Some of the programs still need a little refinement, those 3 included *-Especially as far as music-listening goes. Universal remote "Forgets" command-set. (yes my FW is current as-of today) Ex: If you have assigned DVD to SCENE I, but you were on SCENE II when you last powered-off, and you hit SCENE I to power-up and switch-channels, you will Also then have to hit the AV key for the appropriate input to get the Universal Remote to send the right commands to the DVD. -Ie: A User-Process-Flow-Event Duplication. It should be Implicit and Automatic that if you hit the SCENE button, it should also load the codeset of the source you've assigned. -The UR will also "Lose" the last codeset if you go to change either "Option" or "Setup" in the middle of playing back that source. You have to go hit the appropriate AV key for it once you've fiddled with whatever setting. Controller App: *Does not have "Direct" in the DSP panel, where it probably should be. *Does not display "Setup" or "Options" on the iPhone/iPad's screen ; you have to look at the silly little screen on the amp and use this numpty little "side-app" called "Remote". -Dumb. *(music)"Server" Needs a Fast Scroll/Bracket by Alphabetical Title Feature; ie: A, B, C, etc. -esp. for large libraries. Internet Radio REALLY needs a "Last-Played-Station(s)" memory-slot, because there are like 4 Billion Internet Radio Stations. "Enhancer" is not properly-calibrated for Voice (especially low-register voices), and sounds frankly DISTURBING for things like Dialogue or Talk-Radio. LLLUUUUUKKE... LLLUUUUUUKKE... I am your... No lights or glow-in-the-dark on the remote, so it's easy to miss a key & accidentally launch a Saturn 5 rocket when you just wanted to un-pause. Mixing/Upscaling *It is a "Dumb" switch, as far as Video goes. *I would like the ability to send All Video over 1 output-to-monitor wire. *As it stands, Yamahas only upscale 480i, everything else just gets "dumb-switched" or passed-through. *So, it really does no composite-component-hdmi mixdown *Not necessarily a Yamaha-specific point, but allegedly All In-Receiver Video Upscaling is utter garbage unless you buy something costing $3k; -and maybe still then, too. That is sad. Yamaha Ethernet to Wifi Adapter Pricey. Just get the Wifi-N ioGear instead. Shame you have to spend so much more to get 2 HDMI outs, in-case you have a panel and a projector, etc.

Update to 11/8

Yamaha RX-V475 5.1 Channel Network AV Receiver
Yamaha RX-V475 5.1 Channel Network AV Receiver

Pros: Update to my previous review. Forgot one thing. The speed of the internal processor in this thing that runs the Internet Radio lists, DLNA Server music file listings, etc. seems Much [like 2.5x] faster than the RX-Vx73-series. (I had the 573 before it turned out to have a broken ground-path) This makes interacting with it more fun and easy with long lists.

Cons: No more as of now.

11/23/2013

Pretty Good. Some Pops. Not For Audio on Mac G4 Tower.

Syba 5 Port USB 2.0 PCI Card - SY-NEC-5U
Syba 5 Port USB 2.0 PCI Card - SY-NEC-5U

Pros: Will allow G4 Quicksilver Mac osx 10.3.9 to deep sleep. Works fine. Recognized natively in Panther.

Cons: Periodic static pop (every ~1.5sec) using Line6 TonePort GX. Frequently causes constant internal-type shortout-like static feedback under Garage Band + Cubase using Lexicon Omega Audio Interface. Noisy. Not for Audio Prod. -At least on Mac G4 Towers.

Overall Review: Great price, though. Super Nice to find a card that will sleep on a Mac Tower.