Price DD decoder built in, yamaha name

remote a little on the tiny side.

You get what you pay for ..... I only paid $199 Cdn for this receiver and I am happy with it so far. For that guy who wrote in that long winded review of this unit.... What do you expect at this price point? It sounds good enough to me, but if you dont like the way it sounds buy something else, good luck finding something better than this for the $!!

Similar Products Used:

kenwood, jvc etc..

Price DD decoder built in, yamaha name

remote a little on the tiny side.

You get what you pay for ..... I only paid $199 Cdn for this receiver and I am happy with it so far. For that guy who wrote in that long winded review of this unit.... What do you expect at this price point? It sounds good enough to me, but if you dont like the way it sounds buy something else, good luck finding something better than this for the $!!

Similar Products Used:

kenwood, jvc etc..

Price, quality construction, low THD, 2-year warranty

no s-video, no DTS

Picked mine up at Best Buy as a floor model. Alls it was missing was the manual, so I downloaded it from yamaha's website, and voila, i saved myself 70 bucks (applause . . .). Had it for about 2 weeks now and I am pretty impressed. Don't let the 60 watt rating fool you--this thing is lound as all get out. I turned it half way once . . . just once . . . sure was loud. Of course, I've got it in a small room so I don't need much power, but still, it's pleanty loud.

Sound quality is great for music and movies, even better when using the digital connector. Adds a lot of depth to recordings I've listened to for years. I thought the DSPs would be useless, but they're great. The performance hall one is a little annoying, but is fun to play with, especially for "live in concert"-type recordings.

The construction seemed a lot better quality than anything else I looked at in the $300 range (jvc, sony, and especially pioneer)--nice and sturdy. Doesn't get hot either, like the technics ones i had been considering. The remote is fine. Is any universal remote ever 100% intuitive? nope. this one looks a little different than some others (skinnier), but it ain't bad.

No DTS, but who cares. I think I've rented out 1 movie in the past 4 months that was DTS encoded. Only wish it had S-video in/out, but for the price I can live without (my tv has s-video in). The important part to me (at this price) was the sound quality (low THD), and it's there.

Similar Products Used:

older sony mini hi-fi

Great Sound, Low Distortion, and fantastic surround sound effects. Very underated power. Very well built - excellent value for the money.

Setting up speaker balance is very difficult. Remote control does not work well as a multi function device. No DTS support. No Svideo inputs.

I was looking for a second receiver for my basement system. I didn't want to spend more than about $400.00 for the receiver. I ran across the yamaha and was impressed with the distortion specs. .06% vs. .9 on most other similarly priced receivers. The trade-off was no DTS support which was not that big of a deal to me. My Denon has the ability to play back DTS - and in my opinion - good Dobly Digital is not that much different from DTS.

This receiver blows the doors off of my $1000.00 Denon as far as Digital effects go. I can't believe how spacious the effects make my basement room sound. Very impressive. The receiver is rated at 60W/Channel - I'm driving some Boston Acoustics RC, LC + surround speakers - HD10's, HD-5's, Polk audio Sub,and a Cerwin Vega Center. I have no problem ripping walls down with this receiver with no distortion. I can't believe it is only rated at 60w/channel.

The receiver is very well built. The only complaints I have are - No - DTS - but heh- this thing only cost me $265.00+ tax - I can live without DTS. The speaker balancing was very difficult. I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong but it wasn't very intuitive. The speaker tone keeps changing to the next speaker about every 10 seconds and gives you very little time to make adjustments. I have it pretty close - but this was a lot more difficult than it needed to be. The receiver also does not have any SVideo inputs - but heh - once again it is a $265.00 machine. The remote did not program well to my RCA sattelite receiver. I wrote Yamaha about it - and got a snotty note that this is what RCA gave them. TSK......

All in all - I really like this machine and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a solid receiver with great sound at a low cost.

Similar Products Used:

Denon 3300

Dolby Digital, Cost, Quality

None

First off what I upgraded from. From 1989 until just recently I have been using a Yamaha RX-530. It had lived up to my loud lifestyle, 4 years of college parties and then some and never stopped giving excellent sound. So I finally noticed DD recievers had taken a big drop in price and because of the 11 wonderful years that I got out of the RX-530, I wanted to stay with Yamaha and bought the 5130 for 239.00 at Brandnamez.com. Now I have to disclose that I am not a "true audiophile", and to tell you the truth don't really know what it takes to be one. I think that I am like a lot of people that have gotten into this whole "digital" era late in the game. I am just a normal person who likes good sound with CDs and movies loud and soft. I was very impressed with the sound produced by this product, clean, accurate, and very full. Some of the soundfields are a little on the annoying side, but nonetheless fun to switch to from time to time. Doesn't get overly hot. Remote is a little too long, but works. A little challenging to get the speakers set up, but has a good amout of tweaks. The power is good and my only major complaint is that the stereo is less controlable as my old unit which I could seperate the highs from the bass but still sounds good. I am running the unit with a pair of 'old-ass-non-space-saving' Cervin-Vega D2 loudspeakers, KLH center, and Bose 141 rears. Don't have a DVD so haven't experienced DD YET, but stereo VCR movies are incredible. Again , I think I am like a lot of people, who don't have 2000-3000 to blow on a big system and have been adding things like surround and center speaker when they have the chance. So I think this unit is an excellent value and the performance thus far is excellent too. 5 and 5

Similar Products Used:

None

Excellent overall quality, build quality, reliable universal remote, VERY low distortion for the price, a lot of power for 60 watts.

Confusing radio presets, uncomfortable remote, no S-Video, other than that - not much so far, for the price!

I bought this as my first brand new A/V receiver for home theatre and stereo use. I bought it initially because of the low harmonic distortion for such a low price - and it payed off, in my opinion. This unit doesn't offer DTS sound, but that is not important to me nor probably to many other casual to moderate listeners. The fit and finish of this piece, as well as most yamaha products (excluding speakers!) is excellent. The sound quality going to my Paradigm Monitor III's (also an excellent company - check them out) is great. It has some fun presets, but I really only use the dolby digital and "disco" settings. And the power - this unit is rated at 60 watts, but do NOT judge sound output by the wattage, this unit is PLENTY loud, even for my Monitor III's which are rated at 100 watts.

I have to say that since this IS an A/V receiver Yamaha should have included S-Video ins and outs, however I can see their logic in excluding this and focusing on the audio quality and connection availability (it has optical, coaxial, and RCA connection options.)

Overall a great product for 299 - I got mine at BestBuy - although I don't shop there seriously for many of my audio components, I am glad they carry Yamaha - it is a solid audio component at an appealing price, not the absolute best but straightforward and feature-rich. Get one for a stereo OR a home theater application if your price range is around 300.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer, Sony, Aiwa

a very good av receiver for the price

Cut too much corner for music, bright, even shrill, fatiguing to listen

One year ago, I bought RX-V395 with NHT Super 2, Super1 for the family room, for both music and HT.

The HTR-5230 has the same power amp section as V395.

I bought V395 because:
1. I compared it with Technics, Sony $300 AV-Receiver, Yamaha sounded best with its power amp. low impedance, linear damping, and not runs as hot as Technics.
2. the DSP effect are better than Technics and Sony.
3. I liked it very much at that time, esp with female vocal.
4. I don't like to play loud, so I think 60W is enough, with NHT 86dB/w rating, I can still get 104dB. Only 3dB less than 120W receiver.

After one year, I found something not right.
1. Fatiguing after listen a few hours with the shrill sound. The high-mid section became so annoying.
2. Lack of bass and treble. The drum and cymbal just don't sound right.
3. I never finished to listen any classic and Jazz CD. Because they don't sound good.

So I start to dig more to find what's wrong.
1. Yamaha cut too much corners without telling you. The highly claimed Yamaha A-592 stereo amp cost $500 for 2 ch that's designed for music. So what do you expect the music come from a 5 ch amp with all fancy stuff like DD decoder, prologic processer, surround sound processing, video switching and only cost $300? They cut the cost in the power amp. Which is the second most important thing besides the speaker.
2. The damping factor is only 60. While their stereo amp are 320.
3. The good low distortion spec they tell you is used to drive 8 Ohm resistor that heat your room. It's not designed for your speaker! The speaker has capacitance and inductance in it, that require much more current than the resistor.

It's cheating to put up those spec that don't reflect the real world performance. I buying this receiver because I thought it is cheap because it has the lower power, which is enough for me. I thought it still is a hifi, (based on spec), receiver, with the famous yamaha sound. But actually it is a low fi receiver, that put out distorted, shrill sound that hurt your ears. And drives you crazy after a few hours listening.

I digged a lot of information, found Parasound 855A power amp less than $800.
1. It rated 85w with 5 ch driven. But it's big transformer and 10 big capacitor are several times larger than Yamaha's small transformer and 2 small capacitors.
2. It got 30amp max current rating. Yamaha don't even tell you their amp rating.
3. It got >800 damping factor vs 60. The damping factor indicates the control of the amp over the speaker. The larger number indicates more fidelity.
4. The Parasound use DC coupling, no capacitor and inductor in the signal path, which means very flat freq response.

And I am very satisfy the sound. The NHT now sounds just right. No longer bright. The drum, cymbal start to sound real. And I do enjoy all different kind of music now.

Plus another benefit, I know that now I have a power amp that carefully designed with music in mind, and I don't need to upgrade anymore.

I have no connection to any of companys mentioned in this review. The only reason I post so much is because those I was robbed by those av-receiver companys that sell junk as Hi-Fi.

I found out: the power transformer, capacitor, max amp, damping factor is more useful than those spec while driving 8 ohm resistor. You are not going to pay $300 to buy a 60W room heater with a remote control, are you?

They cut so much corners on power amp that it's not suited for music anymore. And they just lie to you by putting up those fancy misleading low distortion number. It's like tell you how fast this car can go in a test without mension that it's been carried on an airplane. It is really that bad.

Another issue is that av-receiver with both power-amp and digital decoder in one box is really bad idea. The life span of digital products are much shorter. I had to upgrade computer every 2-3 years. The DD decoder is just a small computer. There are always new things comes out. DTS, 6.1 ch, THX Re-EQ, more replexible bass management ... . While a good power amp, which only have analog circuit can last more than 10 years.

Now, I spend $1000 on NHT speakers, $780 on 5-ch Hi-Fi power amp, the audiofile will call it low-end Hi-Fi. And use a $50 4-channel Guillemot Fortissimo sound card in the computer as my preamp, DD decoder, and progressive DVD player, connect to 55" HDTV-ready RPTV. Add later on add an HDTV card, and maybe satellite card to computer, I can have both OTA and satellite HDTV from computer. That means I only need to get new software to upgrade to get latest digital technology.

BTW, the current multi-channel sound cards are very good. My 4-ch card sounds has better bass and treble than 5 years old sony CD player. I can hear the little noise if you put my ear right on the tweeter with the volume turned to max. But the noise is not noticable at the listening position.

So, my advice is if you want music quality, buy a good power amp. 5-ch amp from Parasound, ATI, Outlaw are arround $1000, and are very natural sounding. The Yamaha av-receiver is NOT NATURAL, although they name it that way.

Then if you like to use computer, buy a good multi-channel sound card, like Guillemot, Turtle Beach, Creative. The M-Audio, Event Dala sell card with 24/96 DA converter, with the audiofile level performence.

It you don't like the computer, then you can buy a receiver with pre-out, or a preamp/processor, and connect to power amp.

These are the money well spent on audio.

If you don't like to spent that much money, then buy these cheesy little AV-Receiver for HT. You may not care much about these weird sound while watching movie. But just know that the music are not sound good on these. And you will get huge improvements if you use a better power amp.

I give it overall 2 stars because it sounds better than Technics and Sony; the value rating set at 3 stars, because you'll have to upgrade it in a short time, since it put out shrill sound that hurt your ear.

Similar Products Used:

Technics, Sony, Parasound 885a 5 ch power amp