Excellent High definitiion surround sounq quality at a bargain price (Yamaha DSP-AX763)

Member Name: rdsoftware

Product:	Yamaha DSP-AX763
Date:	08/01/09 (433 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: ease of use once set up, fantastic sound,

Disadvantages: Auto setup ineffective, can't turn off OSD when fiddling with equaliser settings, only 2 HDMI inputs

First I should say that when properly setup the sound from this amplifier is quite simply excellent. However, setting it up is less simple than it might first appear

Listening to this amp after completing the easy automatic setup process using the supplied microphone I was massively disappointed. The sound was very harsh, with little bass, and wasn't a patch on the aging Marantz SR4200 that I had replaced. So, deciding that with the many good reviews floating around it must be something I had done and not the amp that had the problems I spent some time going through the menus and manually setting it up. Setting the equaliser to GEQ instead of PEQ (the automatic setting) instantly made a huge difference. Each speaker has its own 7 band graphic equaliser so I then spent some time increasing the lower frequencies while knocking the higher ones down a little. I also turned off the Adaptive DRC setting.

What a difference! I quickly changed from disappointed to massively enthusiastic as I listened to the freshly tweaked sounds. Soundwise, I would recommend this amp to anyone.

The amp has all the usual connections you would expect but is limited to only 2 HDMI inputs which could be a problem for some people who have more than 2 High defiintion sound sources.

I've had the amp about a month now, so I'm getting to know it pretty well, and have discovered one irritation that I haven't seen mentioned in any other reviews. If you have the HDMI signal passing through the amp there is no option to stop the OSD (On Screen Display) being sent to the TV when you access the setup or volume levels menu. So if for example I want to adjust the centre speaker volume after a film has started, the amp throws up the ugly grey OSD on the TV screen, when ideally I only want it to show on the small LCD screen on the front of the amp, so that my tweaking doesn't interrupt the film for anyone else that is watching it with me and make them shout at me... Note, that it is only when accessing the setup menu and the individual speaker volume settings that this occurs, you don't have to look at the OSD if you're just changing the master volume, or the sound modes.

I have emailed Yamaha support and they have confirmed that there is no way to stop the OSD coming up when the menu or level button is pressed, I can only hope for a firmware update at somepoint in the future to add this simple option.

If you don't tend to fiddle with graphic equaliser settings or individual speaker volumes once you have completed the initial setup it shouldn't be an issue for you though, hence I have still awarded this excellent amplified 5 starts

Summary: Highly recommended

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