Yamaha RX-A820 7.2-Channel Network AVENTAGE AV Receiver
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #11383 in Receiver or Amplifier
- Brand: Yamaha
- Model: RX-A820BL
- Dimensions: 10.50" h x
17.75" w x
20.88" l,
24.00 pounds
- Display size: 1
Features
- 7-Channel powerful surround sound
- 4K Pass-Through for next-generation super high resolution images
- AV Controller app for operating various functions from an iPod, iPhone, iPad or Android phones
- YPAO R.S.C. (Reflected Sound Control) sound optimization for automatic speaker setup
- 4K/full HD 1080p video upscaling from analog and HDMI input
Product Description
Enjoy expanded zone options with powered Zone 2, Party Mode and Zone B dual HDMI outputs. Entertain with ease using the Yamaha AV Controller App optimized for Apple and Android phones and tablets, including Kindle Fire. Simplified Apple connectivity with AirPlay. 4K video upscaling for next generation displays. Advanced audio calibration (YPAO multi-point) ensures an optimized listening experience. Appreciate multiple ECO functions to lower power consumption.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
72 of 74 people found the following review helpful.
Even Old Movies are New Again
By Pyanfar Chanur
My very first receiver many years ago was a Yamaha RX-V592. The sound was fantastic then, and with my Onkyo TX-SR806 deciding to go senile at the four-year mark, I came back to Yamaha, replacing it with this RX-A820. I'm pleased to tell you that the quality of Yamaha is still there today. There are a TON of features in the AVENTAGE RX-A820, so I'm going to try to hit the highlights of each here (and I've uploaded pictures of some of the setup screens):CONNECTIONSThe back of the receiver is bristling with connectors. The red and black screw-down/banana plug terminals are a bit crowded compared to my other receivers, but I was still easily able to slip in a combination of banana plug and bare-wire connections without anything getting too close. Connecting everything was very easy as all components are clearly labeled. I have two 10" subwoofers, so it was nice to have the two separate sub outputs and give each its own sub channel instead of having to merge them into the one sub out that my other receivers had.SETUPWhen you first power up the unit, if there is no signal you don't get a blue screen or black television with 'no signal detected': the RX-A820 puts a nice wallpaper image of piano strings on the screen (Yamaha builds some beautiful musical instruments, so this is their chance to show off a bit). Just to see what would happen, I turned all my devices on, right after my first power-up. The RX-A820 instantly detected all my devices and let me quickly flip through the inputs to watch whatever I want--no setup required. My only complaint is that any Component Input's VIDEO signal cannot travel through an HDMI output: if you're taking a Component input, audio will come out through the speakers, but video will not pass through the HDMI out: you instead have to use Component outputs to your TV also. Thankfully, my TV is a little more forgiving: once I moved my DVR's Component Outputs directly to the TV, stole the DVR's HDMI output that I'd originally sent to the TV and rerouted it through the receiver, all was good...still, it does seem weird that component mapping would otherwise not work. No problem though: if I didn't want to put the HDMI on the receiver and insisted on having it out to the TV and doing a Component-in to the receiver, I would be able to see the DVR's video by flipping the TV's inputs and could still listen to the DVR's audio through the Yamaha. Now I have three great ways to watch cable: the TV as-is, the TV with passive cleanup and signal processing, and of course the full "receiver on, speakers engaged" 5.2 treatment.NOTE: Amazon customer Excalibur212 experienced issues with a PC connection and also with using the Wii with a component input. While my PC connections have been fine, I don't own a Wii. You might want to look over that review to make sure you don't have any situations that might encounter the same issues that Excalibur212 did.Yamaha offers a YPAO speaker configurator: this is a small microphone on a long wire. When you connect the microphone and place it in one or more ideal seating arrangments, the unit will use the speakers and microphone to 'sound out' the room and make adjustments to the speaker balance to fix any acoustic issues (and I have a LOT of room issues). The system assumes that you have a 7.1 or 7.2 setup. You can manually tell the unit which speaker configuration you have (I have 5.2) and when you run the YPAO system, within minutes it's sounded out the room and tuned the acoustics accordingly. The biggest difference I noticed after running YPAO is that the dynamic range is cleaner: raising and lowering the volume balances the speech and loud noises (gunfire, explosions) much better. You can still manually specify the distances and levels if you like, but I'm pleased with YPAO.If you find you are not happy with the center channel and manual adjustments don't work for you, there are two more features you should know about: Dialogue Level and Dialogue Lift. Dialogue Level does a good job keeping voice clear at different volumes. Ever had a movie be thunderingly over-loud, but you find yourself turning it up because you can't hear the speech? I did a lot of that before switching to the RX-A820 and I am very happy with the way that Dialogue Level balances out the speech. If your center channel sits so low in your setup that voices sound like they're coming from below the person speaking, Dialogue Lift helps compensate for your center channel in one of two ways:- it can push some of the center channel sound to your left and right speakers and virtualize the sound so that it seems to come from physically higher up (just like how the movie theaters put their speech speaker directly behind the screen)- if you install a pair of 'reference speakers' above and/or behind your TV, Dialogue Lift will push more of the center channel sound to your reference speakers instead of trying to use your left and right front channels to virtualize the sound effect. Voices really will come from exactly where you put the reference speakers.NETWORKOnce I connected an Ethernet cable (the RX-A820 does not have wireless) I literally had to do nothing to point the Yamaha to my network. It wasn't just that Internet Radio was instantly available--it was the fact that all my computers that share media and my media server were instantly detected and crawled. I have a real problem with my Playstation 3 randomly deciding that this or that MP3 can't be played back, so I deliberately sought out some of my 'problem children' files to play back on the RX-A820. Sure enough, it worked like a charm. The on-screen player interface is a bit kludgy in that you have to arrow around a bit to close the player, but the quality of playback is just fine. Basic keys like next/previous, fast-forward/rewind, and play/pause work on the remote or you can use the directional arrows and ENTER to manually press the on-screen buttons if you really feel like it.Internet Radio can easily drown you in an endless list of options. Thankfully, you can filter the list of stations by 'local' and you can also drill down by genre: for example, to find an '80s station I chose "Pop" and then underneath was a list of all the Pop stations with their names, and most stations have obvious names, like '80s Hits' or 'Back to the '80s'. Once you choose a station, the Yamaha will display as much information as the Internet Station broadcasts: artist, title, show name, logo, etc. (I've got at least one picture of that uploaded here).UPDATE: Amazon customers tech boo and W. Reintgen confirm in the comments below that the Yamaha firmware update released in October 2012 adds support for Pandora, Rhapsody, and Sirius.MEDIA PLAYBACKIf you have a USB thumb drive, MP3 player, or an iPod that doesn't have AirPlay, you can connect it to the front USB panel and the Yamaha will immediately make the files on the device available for playback. It reads information such as Artist, Album, and Title and lets you drill down by either those paramaters, or by a file/folder browse using the remote. If your iPhone, iPad, or iTunes device has AirPlay, I can tell you that it allows any device with AirPlay to attach to the receiver and start playing, be that a computer that you launch a playlist from or an iPod or iPhone that you start playback from--with each, you tap the AirPlay icon and select the Yamaha as the output device. You must be connected to the same home network that your Yamaha is using to do it, but it can easily be done. It does require that you have iTunes 10.2.2 or later on Windows or Mac, or have an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad with iOS 4.3.3 or later.ANTENNAMost audio equipment treats radio as an afterthought these days. I have a really nice separate powered FM antenna and my Onkyo did a fairly poor job of picking up radio with it. The Yamaha picked up every station within about a 40 mile radius. I can't get stations that are farther away than that, but the stations I do get come in very, very clear--no static, no distortion, no dropouts. Very impressed.AUDIOAmazing. With the Onkyo, I often flipped from setting to setting to find the right sound balance for my TV shows or movies, occasionally having to manually adjust the center channel despite having used their automated speaker calibration system. Changing sound profiles on the Onkyo meant repeatedly pressing one of four possible buttons: with the Yamaha, the remote has an up/down pair of buttons just like the Volume up/down that will flip through them. I had a ton of fun watching the old Errol Flynn "Robin Hood" movie on "Roxy Theater", which put in just enough reverb and spatial effects to make the 5.2 speakers sound like an old movie-hall. When the reverb got too much, this old Mono movie sounded great on "Stereo Surround" (all speakers, clean balance, no acoustic FX). With the Yamaha's YPAO speaker calibration run, I've also set the Yamaha's "Extended Surround" to "Auto": this will automatically balance a 6.1 or 7.1 source across my 5.2 configuration. I can play anything and not need to make adjustments. I hear more nuances in games coming from the rear channels to help position me in the environment. When I play movies, the sound seems to fill the room. I think my favorite effect, when watching "The Dark Knight" the music rang out so very clearly without overrunning all the sound effects. I don't know how they managed it, but brass and string flourishes hummed and soared more with this receiver than with any other [home] setup I've heard. There are some built-in sound profiles that you can manually choose (e.g., "Theater - Concert", "Theater - Sci-Fi", etc.), but most of the time the fact that I have everything else fairly well balanced means that there isn't much sound difference for me...with one exception: the only Audio issue I've noticed is when I'm streaming media on my PS3 and it's coming from Netflix or Amazon Instant Video: sometimes the feed itself changes the quality of the audio from one session to another. For example, episodes of Stargate: Atlantis might sound different on different nights even though they're from the same season. When this happens, I just flip through a few of the major presets (Action, Sci-Fi, etc.) and one of them will sound better than the others.This may sound a bit golden-eared, but one drawback I did notice when playing a DVD was that the audio wasn't as good as a Blu-Ray. It was still better than it was under my old setup, but there was a noticeable lack of range compared to pure HD audio. I used to think the human ear couldn't pick up the difference between a high sample rate with good filtering and pure lossless audio, but now I think different. The same is true of the streaming stuff: sometimes it's DVD-quality, sometimes it sounds as good as a Blu-Ray.CONTROLSThe remote is long and skinny, and covered in buttons. Like most remotes, you probably won't use the majority of the buttons very often, but a nice thing is that there are four input buttons that you can map to anything. In other words, if I press the Blu-Ray button, it automatically switches inputs and sound for me. These four buttons are also on the front of the unit, so if you're first powering things on and standing in front of your system, no remote is necessary at all: just tap the button and have a seat. Many of the typical playback buttons on the remote work in any context: in other words, play/pause and next/previous will perform the same tasks when listening to an MP3 that they do when watching a video.As if that isn't enough, there is a remote control app for your Android or iPhone that is available for free. I downloaded mine through Google's Play Store and it immediately found my receiver and started working with one-tap configuration. The app will let you do anything the remote and the menus do: it's pretty amazing.UPSCALINGI played a DVD and as mentioned the audio wasn't perfect. Looking closely at the screen though I could see that the upscaling did a lot less pixellation and a lot more smoothing. My Onkyo had a tendency to smooth things to the point of being obviously smeary if you got really close to the screen (because no one watches TV that way), but the RX-A820 shows me that technology in the upscaling area has improved noticeably: it looks more like a game on a PC with a really good graphics card: everything is more anti-aliased and color-corrected.I realize this is a long review, but I think I've covered the features of the RX-A820. If you have a question about a particular feature, just post it in the Comments below and I'll gladly answer you and update this review accordingly. I'll also be adding to it as time goes on.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.An excellent choice
By DannyTechSavy
I started a quest to replace my old Harman Kardon AVR120 a few weeks ago and after reading several reviews from many different sites and looking at the Owner's Manual of many Receivers I decided to go for the Yamaha Receivers.After comparing them, the final decision was between the RX-V720 and the RX-A820. Both are basically the same, except for some features and extra HDMI Ports. But considering the price difference is $50 and the Aventage series has a better design and an extra year on the warranty (3 compared to 2 years on the RX-V series), I decided to buy the RX-A820.I spend about 3 hours disconnecting my old receiver and connecting the new one and configuring the basics. I got to say that this receiver is extremely good and has enough options to make you spend a week testing and playing with all of them.Having plenty of HDMI connections and a variety of Composite, Component, Digital and Fiber connections, you really need to have over a dozen of devices connected to this receiver before you run out of ports. Same way, it has Line Out for each channel so you can add external amps, as well as the usual Line Out for "oldschool" devices like a tape recorder. And even better, the dual Zone configuration to add a second set of speakers for a separate room makes this receiver a must have for anybody that likes to enjoy multimedia on more than one room. I personally going to use the second zone for the backyard/pool area as soon as I can do some wiring for the speakers (can't wait!).I have seen some complains from reviewers (usually buyers) basically they don't like the fact Yamaha dropped the upconversion to HDMI from the Component Video except for the basic 480i. I really don't find this so bad considering most people out there are pushing out the old connection and welcoming the HDMI as a standard. The RX-A820 does a beautiful job converting non HD signals to 1080p over HDMI, I tested it and looks very good and I did not notice any problems on the video at all.The graphical interface on the TV plus the Web Page and App for your Tablet and Phone makes controlling this device a very easy and pleasurable experience. The App (for both Android and iOS) is extremely simple and perfectly designed for any user level. I can enjoy fine tuning the device (I can consider myself an expert on technology) while my wife can simply use it to turn the device ON and set whatever multimedia device she wishes to listen to without having to open a manual to figure out what is what.Finally, the speaker placement and set up is very easy using the automatic settings, it basically tests the speakers and sets them by itself. If you are not an expert, I would suggest just letting the receiver set it for you. But if you like to fine tune it (like I did), let the receiver set them, and then go into the settings and do some extra fine tuning to meet your needs.I will probably write a second review later on after I have been for some time with the unit and tested it all. But as far as I can tell, this receiver is a winner.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Great looking Receiver. Note only 110 volts
By Andrew McGee
Ordered this receiver and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it arrived considering I live in Australia. I presumed that it would have a universal voltage setting as there was the option for it to be shipped overseas. Please note this receiver only accepts 110 volts. Had to return it :((
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