Yamaha/Denon Music Performance

[AVlover]

Hi All,

After much more wait and information collection finally I have purchased Yamaha RX V471 HT. But in this purchase I was confused between Yamaha and Denon till last moment, so thought of asking you experts ....

I am a music lover and like Indian classical type music more.
While auditioning different systems I tried playing different type of music and had also seen the standard Stereo type system for Music, but considering my budget and overall usage I went for 5.1 HT.

Overall I was pleased with the Sub-Woofer effect but while auditioning Denon/Yamaha I observed that Yamaha Sub Woofer especially when you consider classical music the leather effects of Tabla/Pakhawaj I felt Denon was more superior than Yamaha. I felt for Pakhawaj some times Yamaha woofer was beating little over and feeling out of control.

After playing with some settings I could make the Yamaha feel similar to that of Denon and considering Budget I finalized Yamaha but still was not satisfied.

Denon speaker set Sub Woofer was firing downwards and the Yamaha one which ever speaker I connected were either firing in front or side wise.

My question here is what ever I was feeling as a difference was it an amplifier difference or speaker system ....? how could I understand or debug this.

I tried to connect Yamaha and few other brand speakers with the Rx V471, but the Denon 1312/1612 were having its own speaker set that of Denon. I didnt change those. The denon sound was pleasing.... why is that so....?

Regards,
AVLover.

 

[spirovious]

Well with Denon you get some impact with Bass,but overall sound will be colored.Yamaha will be neutral.For serious music,you need to have a stereo amp.

 

[iaudio]

AVlover, there is a good chance it has got something to do with the speakers(in this case, the subwoofer) rather than the amp/avr.
You can isolate the cause to an extent by trying A-B comparison, with different subwoofers or AVRs.

 

[saj2001ind]

a good speakers plays a very vital part in Music or Movies sound from any AVR, typically denon and yamaha are not speaker making company or rather experts in speakers, but their AVRs are equally good

with same AVR if you upgrade the speakers to a good one you will feel the difference having said that, denon models 1612 and higher have a audyssey with multeq XT which does a great job in calibration, 1912 will have XT version which is superior, I had experienced that, denon also have a restorer feature which is used to enhance low quality sources, whereas yamaha does not have the audyssey rather it has its own YAPO which is not at all usefull, dont take my word read reviews in avsforum.com, the gurus speak there

while audtioning make sure the audyssey is turned on and use a different set of speaker and not the denon ones, I am preety sure you will feel a lot of difference

but again like everyone says for music stereo amps like NAD is always best but good AVRs when paried with very good speaker will give you almost the same feel

better use a very good bookshelf speakers for music they are always better as ppl would sayt here

personally I feel yamaha to be very bright or not natural than denon, that is why most bigger dealers here in pune like avexcellence, sound and vision etc do not keep yahama, but denon everyone like and I guess thats why you liked denon warm sound too

btw how much did you get the yamaha and from where in pune, I am from pune too

 

[AVlover]

The price I got for 471 + Yamaha speaker set was 35K, I wont disclose the shop name as he told me this set of offer was from Diwali slot so I could get that (may be I am fooled ...:licklips: )

Other wise every other combination of 471 + good speaker or Denon 1612 + good speaker was going around/above 50k

And worst part was I was also ready to go with 1612 extending my budget but he was not having any suitable speaker package for that AVR to give me. what I listened was a speaker set from Denon which comes with 1312 package and he was not ready to break that for me. He was trying to tie me up with 1612 + Yamaha Speaker so IMO that was not a quality deal ....

so may be a little bad luck for me that I missed Denon....

But any way these things are some corner cases, which I am sure I wont feel that much as Yamaha/Denon both are well deserved AVRs...

 

[saj2001ind]

yeah both are good, you got to trust your ears on these gears, if you like one stick to it

 

[saj2001ind]

@ AVlover can I ask , did you listen to the denon 1312xp package whose speakers u heard ? 1312 is very much similar to 1612, except 1612 has audyssey

 

[hemantwaghe]

Well with Denon you get some impact with Bass,but overall sound will be colored.Yamaha will be neutral.For serious music,you need to have a stereo amp.

From where you got this conclusion?
Which music you are taking as reference and A&B?and are you comparing with unamlified live music in hall? it will be an interesting test

 

[baijuxavior]

I think it is the speaker system that is the culprit here. You got AVR+speakers for 35k means the speaker system should be of low quality costing approximately 10k. Try with another good speaker system. What is the model of the speaker system?

 

[AVlover]

Saj2001 - yes I auditioned 1312 and 1612 both ...

Baiju - Yes the speaker system is a low cost one as I had my budget limit ... but the question here was the denon which I liked was also having a similar ranged speaker system and not a huge difference between them. The Yamaha speaker system auditioned is NS-P40 costed around 11-12k

The only difference was the denon subwoofer was a little bigger 8inch and downwards firing, the Yamaha one was I think 6.5 inch or so and firing sidewise.....
I can guess that It could sound different if it is heard with floor-stand or something more good. But the issue I wanted to understand here is the quality of music reproduction. I was not trying to hear very loud, I was just trying to check how good the different range sounds are reproduced and I felt the leather effect of the Tabla/Pakhawaj (low frequency output) was more pleasing in Denon...with not that considerable differences .... so was it just a setting difference or realy a speaker difference ....

Both were first auto tuned and then tried with manual changes ...

 

[saj2001ind]

Did you liked the sound quality of 1312xp ? If u do then denon is best suited for u since its a very basic model without any audyssey etc

But now that u already got the system then try ur avr with some good bookshelf speakers like kef, dali etc you should definately enjoy their sq

And yes its speaker fault during ur audition which made not so good sound nothing to do with avr

 

[Santy]

Not to demean, but 5 speakers and an active subwoofer for Rs.11k? What more can you expect? At any volume level, the sound will be below average. The avr, both Yamaha and Denon you have mentioned here can do justice to speakers worth 3 to 4 times their cost, excluding the sub, in my opinion.

Please up your budget and get a better speaker package. Or build slowly. Else you will find yourself in the classifieds section selling your speaker package. And yes, there's nothing wrong with your 471.


Sent from my GT-I9001 using Tapatalk

 

[saj2001ind]

hey AVlover on a side note what classical album you were listening where u need to get good tabla sound etc, wanted to test that on my system

 

[AVlover]

@Saj - I was testing one DVD with Rashid Khan(Vocal) + Bhawani Shankar (Pakhwaj) and one more with ShivKumar + Zakir Husain ....

Thanks for every bodies reply may be in future I will try and upgrade the speaker set ... or test few sets with my AVR ...

 

[hemantwaghe]

Well with Denon you get some impact with Bass,but overall sound will be colored.Yamaha will be neutral.For serious music,you need to have a stereo amp.

hey again can I have some supporting? and how "NEUTRAL" sound is achieved?hyeah:

 

[saj2001ind]

@Saj - I was testing one DVD with Rashid Khan(Vocal) + Bhawani Shankar (Pakhwaj) and one more with ShivKumar + Zakir Husain ....

Thanks for every bodies reply may be in future I will try and upgrade the speaker set ... or test few sets with my AVR ...

you could do the following setting in ur AVR and see if you like the sound then

1) check crossover freq settings, set it to highest like 150 or 120 HZ, since you have woofer and want more thump and ur front speakers are not powerful enough, this will send all the low freq to woofer
2) try placing ur woofer in between ur front left and right speakers to avoide any localisation low freq effects
3) set all speakers to small in settings on ur AVR and sub woofer to yes
4) it should have music DSP, so turn on the Dolby Pro Logic II or just dolby pro logic , it optimises music, or check other music than just stereo
5) check all channel levels on all speakers, set them all to 0 DB.

btw I tried listening to one of zakir hussain CDs yesterday and with dolby pro logic II on my denon, the beat sounded amazing, like original concert, I have to keep the subwoofer lower to make a even sound, but I enjoyed it

 

[X man]

Is the difference between Stereo Amp and a good AVR substantial

 

[saj2001ind]

both have different applications and pros/cons depends what u want

 

[marsilians]

I think you can tweak the sound a lot with the various DSP settings in the AVR as well as the crossover settings (you can set between 60 - 100 Hz) depending on what sounds OK to you in the AVR settings.

As you say the sub with Denon was downfiring, means that it could be having a bigger bass effect if placed on a hard surface.

Is there a reason the store would not give you the Denon speaker package with the Yamaha AVR? Try asking that if you have not yet bought your system (I was not sure if you got it from your initial post).

 

[kohinoorb]

Hmm .. interesting people say yams are more musical than denon ... but to my ears my denon avr speaker combo sounds better than amp speaker combo.. atleast i couldnt tell the difference