Looking to replace my AV Amp

Haze

Haze

Haze

Soldato
Joined
10 Jan 2007
Posts
5,121
Location
Warwickshire
so, my pioneer vsx 918, is a bit faulty, so it time for an upgrade

looking at £500-600 budget, not really sure what to get, have been looking at the Yamaha 675, looks quite good, im using tannoy custom f4 floor standers and matching center

any idea please?

thanks :D
 
The previous model RX-V673 is still around on various etailors, priced a fair bit cheaper. There won't be a huge difference between that & the 675. Yamaha & Tannoy should be well matched.
 
The 673 is a brilliant bit of kit and at £300 (if you can still find one is a steal). Probably won't be much different to the 675 to be honest, (although I've not heard the latter). There are quite a few AVR's at this price range nowadays. Best advice would be to go and audition them with thing you will listen to be it movies or music.
 
The Sony 1040 apparently worth a look too. Noticed it discounted in my local Sony shop recently to about £430. Current Whathifi product of the year.
 
I just recently auditioned the onkyo 626 against the yamaha 675. Used same set of speakers and both were only quickly calibrated with their respective onboard room cal in the same room.

The onkyo was quite nice, it had snappier high end and more detailed bass but did seem to lack a little in the mid range. The yamaha definitely had more mid range but i thought the response range was very flat all round. The bass didn't quite hit home like the onkyo and the high end blended with the mids a bit TOO well. The overall sound was definitely balanced, but it sounded a bit too busy. You could hear everything very well, but there seemed to be so much going on that nothing really stood out and it sounded a bit boring.

The yamaha backs the airplay features so if you're an apple user you get all the features with that, the onkyo goes for built in wi-fi and bluetooth so probably better if you're running androidy jobbys.

I think the killer was the multiEQ on the onkyo vs the YPAO on the yamaha. I think the multiEQ did a better job than the yamaha, which after a bit of playing seemed more comparable to my 506's audyssey 2EQ, which is to say. Sounds very basic.

Probably a bit of a ramble, but thought it may be of a little help. Add to that the onkyo is currently £299 on the high street and the yamaha £450, it seemed a no-brainer really.
 
Thanksfor thatreview krisboats, the 626 is currently top of my list for an AV amp, going to richer sounds in Croydon tomorrow to test it with the Q acoustics 5.1 speakers. The Onkyo ticks all my requirement boxes so it's basically dependant on how it sounds and if I like I'm buying tomorrow.
 
At least you've got two weeks to audition from Richersounds :D I just replaced my aging Yamaha 6.1 amp to a Sony Str dn 1030 for £199 from Richersounds (open box).

I was shocked at the sound difference between the Sony and the Yamaha. The Yamaha had a richer and fuller sound than the Sony and I was ready to take it back! But after a day or so I realised that the Sony had more detail, sparkle and very tight punchy bass though it doesn't over power the mix at all.So it's a keeper (The GUI is terrible though! the 1040 is supposed to a lot better) For £200 I got WIFI,AIRPLAY and 7.2 surround so I'm a happy bunny :D

Whatever you get I'm sure you'll be chuffed :D Let us know how you got on sir!
 
*update*

so i want for the 673, very happy with it, not had chance to set the speakers up yet, but love the way it was all just plug play

thanks all
 
T C said:
At least you've got two weeks to audition from Richersounds :D I just replaced my aging Yamaha 6.1 amp to a Sony Str dn 1030 for £199 from Richersounds (open box).

I was shocked at the sound difference between the Sony and the Yamaha. The Yamaha had a richer and fuller sound than the Sony and I was ready to take it back! But after a day or so I realised that the Sony had more detail, sparkle and very tight punchy bass though it doesn't over power the mix at all.So it's a keeper (The GUI is terrible though! the 1040 is supposed to a lot better) For £200 I got WIFI,AIRPLAY and 7.2 surround so I'm a happy bunny :D

Whatever you get I'm sure you'll be chuffed :D Let us know how you got on sir!
Click to expand...

It will never cease to amaze me the way people quantify differences in sound, and the words they use to describe those details.
 
At £600 you could have picked up a used Anthem MRX300, it would walk all over anything else up to £1000 and probably more.
 
9designs2 said:
Made sense to me, so what words would you use?
Click to expand...

I understood the sentiment of it, I just find it bizarre that people are so willing to use words and speak in that specific way to quantify sound.

Things like "sparkle" and so on, I admit T C's wasn't as bad as some serious audiophiles though.

But really, how does sound sparkle? Sparkle is a description of something visual. It's common people use words to describe audio that make it very hard to quantify what it actually means.

Participant said:
I agree. In a blind test you wouldn't know which was which from one day to the next.
Click to expand...

This too, I think different amps make a difference, but no way in the way people describe. The same with speakers and cables, I know there's *a* difference but it's not in the way people often describe.

Like cables, I know they can make a difference, but it's generally poor cables degrading the sound rather than good cables enhancing it, gauge is insufficient and can't transport the correct current that the speaker needs for example.

Or amps, where lower end lower power ones can't drive speakers as loudly as without distorting the sound to describe it simplistically.

I think 2 amps running the same speakers with adequate cables will sound the same at the same volume as long as one of the amps isn't being driven beyond its power capability.


I literally find it amazing the sort of stuff some audiophiles are in to, and the stuff that they fall for.
 
Music and the results from the equipment used to reproduce recordings though is all very subjective, surely?

I'd challenge you on the "adequate cables" thing though. I'm aware of the science and also James Randy's challenge. But I'm equally aware that the same system will sound fundamentally different in one room to another. So it's not difficult at all to engineer a situation where the conditions are prohibitive to making positive identifications. Then there's the added complication of the mechanisms required to administer a rigorous double blind test. So rigorous that it actually defeats the objective of the test before it has even begun.

The final hurdle though is in the ears of the listener. I've sat in dems where I can hear a clear difference between two bit of kit and others couldn't. Likewise the roles have been reversed too. I kind of have an idea where my perception of differences peters out. So two people listing to the same system can all come away with quite different perspectives.

BlindMenElephant_720.png


Given all that is potentially stacked against it, I'm hardly surprised that the majority of people struggle to distinguish the difference cables can make. Add on top of that the problem that a lot of the magic solutions really don't pan out in every system.

Yet despite all this it is possible to hear the differences made by cables, tables and mains blocks. I've made the offer to lay on dems countless times over the past 8 years. So far, no one has accepted.
 
I didn't say people don't hear a difference, but that doesn't mean there is one. I simply don't accept that a cable will alter the properties of sound outside of degradation. It makes no sense at all from a practical perspective or a scientific one.

I also think your examples are vague too, I have no idea what you mean by hearing differences between two bits of kit as I have no idea what that kit would be.

That aside, people continually can not reliably tell the difference between cables when attending a double blind test. The fact that people hear *a* difference is meaningless if they can't reliably distinguish between them and point them out.

What makes it worse is that people can hear a difference solely because they know something is supposed to change.

I don't understand why you say you know the science behind it, and of James Randy's challenge but still resign yourself to the position of "there IS a difference" instead of the acceptance of human perception and how it can alter the way someone sees things. The Jimmy Fallon iPhone 5 trick says it all, where people were shown an iPhone 4G but were told it was an iPhone 5. They praised it for being a huge upgrade over the previous one, some of them getting their own 4Ss out to compare and STILL seeing differences tells me ask I need to know about the way people perceive things when they're told there's a difference. I think people are even MORE inclined to see differences when when it's their own money they've just spent on fancy cables.

Also, the type of people that amaze me are the ones that think the type of table that their CD deck is on changes the audio properties of their music, or that placing their speaker cable or interconnects on little blocks of wood enhances the sound quality.
 
Last edited:
Okay, so you accept sound loss by degradation. So let me ask; why are you so certain that the measurements you can make of a cable gives the full story?

Can you conceive that the measurements we can make don't adequately describe all of the properties of a cable? Scientists know better than anyone how the tools we use to describe our world are constantly improving. Could you be open to the possibility that two cables of differing construction can exhibit the same measurable properties, but that there are still some facets that we haven't got adequate tools to quantify.That's why I can say I understand the science but can still hear differences.

The examples of different bits of kit really don't matter. It could be two CD players, or two amps, or two cables. If you were involved in a blind test then you wouldn't know which the models were, so I don't see how it changes anything in this particular part of the discussion either.

The reason double blind tests fail is exactly what I described before: In order to conduct a rigorous double blind test for Hi-Fi equipment means introducing additional equipment foreign to the equipment on test. It taints the system and invalidates any results.

You see, unlike the absolutists who believed the earth was flat, or that man would suffocate if travelling faster than 30 mph, or that atoms were the smallest building blocks of the universe or that we have all the tools to adequately describe the properties of Hi-Fi equipment, I constantly question perceptions and beliefs.

Jimmy Fallon proves only that if you stand on the street with a camera crew and take enough vox pops that eventually you'll find that enough people and edit the film in the right way to make a good joke. There's no secret to that.

The point of a cable dem is just the same as any equipment audition. It's pre-sale not post sale. If I set up a dem as an experiment there'd be no sales at all. Equally it could be done so that none in the listening panel knew anything about the cables.

Finally, why wouldn't the right kind of support make a difference to the way equipment sounds?
 
I'd be up for listening to tables and mains blocks, they are things I don't think will make a difference. I'm a cable believer having heard the difference in my own room.
 
I'm still interested what language people would use to describe sound, if "audiophile speak" is no good. Using visual terms to describe sound surely can work.... Sparkle, is that so hard to work out?

The cable and others items is an old debate, frankly a boring pointless one, made even more pointless by people spouting what they "think" will make a differnce and what surely couldn't...
Instead of spouting theory go try it and then quote from experience of what you have tried and heard. If not kindly don't speak of what you no jack about.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom