this post is about my new YAMAHA AVENTAGE RX-A870BL 7.2-Channel Network A/V Receiver that I bought on AMAZON. I gave it 3 stars for "OK"
This unit sounds at least as good as the famous old 70s Yamaha monster stereos I've had when properly configured, which wasn't exceedingly difficult to do. It's also a lot easier than the old stereos to achieve the proper levels for the best sound as each speaker can be individually configured with the program that has an EQ, distance frequency cutoff and level adjustments in manual configuration mode.
UNFORTUNATELY, I have enough issues with this unit that I will not give it anything near 5 stars, although I very much like the sound and the overall convenience of my first modern networking surround sound audio front end enough to keep it.I trust Yamaha because they have been in the Music business a very long time and have never disappointed me like most of their Japanese born rivals.The only other brand I even considered was Harman Kardon. The Yamaha selection is better. The Yamaha speakers with this order are a good value too, Oh, and though it is listed as a 7.1 system, it has 9 speaker connections.
The cons: #1 its the onboard software. it is woefully inadequate. it is simple to use, but has many shortcomings & limitations. A) playing files from a USB stick, you're limited to seeing and playing only 500 songs on the stick no matter how big or small the stick is. my computer from 204 doesn't have this limitation. Plus you can only be in "current selection" or "browse" but not current selection and browse. To me, what is currently playing should be automatically highlighted. And of course it has the ubiquitous phony "shuffle" mode software that has been around since CDs were invented that merely skips five songs, so after a couple days (hours when you only have 500 songs) it starts repeating the so called "shuffle" playlist. That's the biggest software fault. The rest is that there is ABSOLUTELY NO explanation for any of the many settings you can choose, not in the manual and not in the software. Once again i have a 2005 model digital camera that does batter than this. it has a button that displays a brief onscreen description of every setting you can make in the camera. So this dual purpose dedicated AV computer by Yamaha does less with AV files than my 13 year old Pentium 4 computer does that cost less money.Shamefull! I don't know if other brands have better software, but frankly I chose Yamaha for the sound and quality and at least it has that.
trying to read the user manual on my phone because they don't send a full one with the unit and I lost it anyway. and I feel that the "full" manual is jumbled, confusing and leaves a lot out or buries it somewhere, such as where a lot of the controls are, specifically tone controls and the YPAO positions. i auto configured 3 YPAO listening positions but still cannot find where to activate any of them and it doesn't say in the manual how to and it is not in the setup mode.So the manual sucks and makes this unit look scary complicated to run , but it is not.
in fact for my setup , I pretty much ditched the manual and just explored the app when I finally got it on screen that is, another thing the left out of the manual. pressing the "on screen display button on the remote doesn't work at first because you have to configure the TV as well. finally I found that someplace and then got the onscreen display. i don't like the fact that, when I select a DSP mode, the whole screen goes away when I am not finished and I have to punch "on screen display" again to get it back up. A lot of GUIs are that way and I hate them and the people who made them. There is a work around. you can push the return button before the screen goes off and go back to DSP setting, so one way or another, you have to press a button to keep the screen up or get it up, which takes longer because there is quite a lag and there shouldn't be. it tells me that the processor of this unit is too small and maybe doesn't have enough memory to be as quick as it should be.
another issue I am not please with is the existence of only 1 USB that playing files from a USB thumb drive, you cannot connect a USB splitter and connect two things.
Networking: only one thing works for me, the Wifi internet connection. But i do not use any of the embedded streaming music services that rely on it so I cannot comment on them. However I can comment on the fact that I could Wifi direct connect to my phone, but then do absolutely nothing with it, such as stream anything to the receiver. i also could not connect with my phone to the chrome cast plugged in back, nor could I connect my phone via Bluetooth. neither device saw the other. Also With the wifi connection, there is no option to save it, so if you go to another conx and come back again, you have to enter the password over again, which you cannot see. s o it is very basic networking without the ability to go on the internet directly from the receiver.
I have a Fire Stick, A DVD player, a VCR, my computer 's sound & video cards (hardwired via composite), A thumb drive, one 4k non-smart TV and a Chrome Cast stick connected to this receiver. All work satisfactory except the Cast stick.
Also I can't tether my phone to the USB. I don't know if it is incompatible with my phone or it is bad since I don't have another phone to test and my little tablet is missing.
Oh I almost forgot, set in "small mode" I used to (yesterday after setup) be able to select a wide range of crossover frequencies for the front presence and center channel speakers, but now the only option is 200 hz which sucks. I've been monkeying with that all day today trying to get back the full range of frequency choices and cannot. today I just stuck the speakers in "large" mode to get more sound out of them and I hope they don't blow up.
This unit sounds at least as good as the famous old 70s Yamaha monster stereos I've had when properly configured, which wasn't exceedingly difficult to do. It's also a lot easier than the old stereos to achieve the proper levels for the best sound as each speaker can be individually configured with the program that has an EQ, distance frequency cutoff and level adjustments in manual configuration mode.
UNFORTUNATELY, I have enough issues with this unit that I will not give it anything near 5 stars, although I very much like the sound and the overall convenience of my first modern networking surround sound audio front end enough to keep it.I trust Yamaha because they have been in the Music business a very long time and have never disappointed me like most of their Japanese born rivals.The only other brand I even considered was Harman Kardon. The Yamaha selection is better. The Yamaha speakers with this order are a good value too, Oh, and though it is listed as a 7.1 system, it has 9 speaker connections.
The cons: #1 its the onboard software. it is woefully inadequate. it is simple to use, but has many shortcomings & limitations. A) playing files from a USB stick, you're limited to seeing and playing only 500 songs on the stick no matter how big or small the stick is. my computer from 204 doesn't have this limitation. Plus you can only be in "current selection" or "browse" but not current selection and browse. To me, what is currently playing should be automatically highlighted. And of course it has the ubiquitous phony "shuffle" mode software that has been around since CDs were invented that merely skips five songs, so after a couple days (hours when you only have 500 songs) it starts repeating the so called "shuffle" playlist. That's the biggest software fault. The rest is that there is ABSOLUTELY NO explanation for any of the many settings you can choose, not in the manual and not in the software. Once again i have a 2005 model digital camera that does batter than this. it has a button that displays a brief onscreen description of every setting you can make in the camera. So this dual purpose dedicated AV computer by Yamaha does less with AV files than my 13 year old Pentium 4 computer does that cost less money.Shamefull! I don't know if other brands have better software, but frankly I chose Yamaha for the sound and quality and at least it has that.
trying to read the user manual on my phone because they don't send a full one with the unit and I lost it anyway. and I feel that the "full" manual is jumbled, confusing and leaves a lot out or buries it somewhere, such as where a lot of the controls are, specifically tone controls and the YPAO positions. i auto configured 3 YPAO listening positions but still cannot find where to activate any of them and it doesn't say in the manual how to and it is not in the setup mode.So the manual sucks and makes this unit look scary complicated to run , but it is not.
in fact for my setup , I pretty much ditched the manual and just explored the app when I finally got it on screen that is, another thing the left out of the manual. pressing the "on screen display button on the remote doesn't work at first because you have to configure the TV as well. finally I found that someplace and then got the onscreen display. i don't like the fact that, when I select a DSP mode, the whole screen goes away when I am not finished and I have to punch "on screen display" again to get it back up. A lot of GUIs are that way and I hate them and the people who made them. There is a work around. you can push the return button before the screen goes off and go back to DSP setting, so one way or another, you have to press a button to keep the screen up or get it up, which takes longer because there is quite a lag and there shouldn't be. it tells me that the processor of this unit is too small and maybe doesn't have enough memory to be as quick as it should be.
another issue I am not please with is the existence of only 1 USB that playing files from a USB thumb drive, you cannot connect a USB splitter and connect two things.
Networking: only one thing works for me, the Wifi internet connection. But i do not use any of the embedded streaming music services that rely on it so I cannot comment on them. However I can comment on the fact that I could Wifi direct connect to my phone, but then do absolutely nothing with it, such as stream anything to the receiver. i also could not connect with my phone to the chrome cast plugged in back, nor could I connect my phone via Bluetooth. neither device saw the other. Also With the wifi connection, there is no option to save it, so if you go to another conx and come back again, you have to enter the password over again, which you cannot see. s o it is very basic networking without the ability to go on the internet directly from the receiver.
I have a Fire Stick, A DVD player, a VCR, my computer 's sound & video cards (hardwired via composite), A thumb drive, one 4k non-smart TV and a Chrome Cast stick connected to this receiver. All work satisfactory except the Cast stick.
Also I can't tether my phone to the USB. I don't know if it is incompatible with my phone or it is bad since I don't have another phone to test and my little tablet is missing.
Oh I almost forgot, set in "small mode" I used to (yesterday after setup) be able to select a wide range of crossover frequencies for the front presence and center channel speakers, but now the only option is 200 hz which sucks. I've been monkeying with that all day today trying to get back the full range of frequency choices and cannot. today I just stuck the speakers in "large" mode to get more sound out of them and I hope they don't blow up.
