Small in price, BIG in quality

Excaliburn did a fantastic job on describing the attributes of this receiver, so there is no need for me to get technical here.

Based on my personal experience with Onkyo, Denon, Pioneer, Harmon/Kardon and Yamaha, I found myself comming back to Yamaha. For references, I've owned a Onkyo TX-8511 stereo receiver, a budget Pioneer surround piece I can't remember the model of, a Yamaha DSP-E492 preamp/processor/amp, and tried out some $800 Harmon/Kardon about 5 or 6 years ago, and have had them all hooked to my Paradigm Monitor 9s V.4 and Mini Monitors. I up until recently used a Denon AVR-2801. The Onkyo sound was good, balanced and kind of dull sounding but nevertheless good. The Pioneer needless to say sounded like cheap crap. The H/K sounded extremely unbalanced due to being biased toward high poppy midrange....it may have just been that model, I dunno. I thought the Denon was the be all end all of sound quality until I bought the Yamaha.

I bought the Yamaha just to try it out with every intention of returning it. It was relatively inexpensive and had several features like variable crossovers and independent speaker distance controls that my Denon lacked. So I thought I would see if these new controls would help me fix some acoustical problems I was having and see how a "Budget" receiver sounded next to my non-budget Denon. Expecting the Denon to sound much better, I was planning on returning the Yamaha to buy a used Denon AVR-2805 that had all the same adjustments and more. I didn't even use the batteries that the Yamaha came with or any of the antenna's or microphone to make taking the thing back seamless.

Getting ready to laugh, I turned on the Yamaha and began to do simple calibrations for stereo playback. I noticed that it had less bass punch and less high frequency detail than the Denon, or so it seamed. I decided to hook My Monitor 9s that I have never been happy with since the day I bought them over 5 years ago up to this receiver. Much to my surprise, they sounded good for the first time. I then swapped the Yamaha with the Denon and it was night and day. The Denon which seamed more detailed and full with my Mini Monitors was harsh and bright with my Monitor 9s. I always thought that my Monitor 9s were just a design failure by Paradigm, but it was the Denon.

Ok, so you're probably thinking....well, the Denon 2801 is a way outdated receiver and has outdated DACs and processing technology. I thought so too. So I hooked the Denon up as an external amp to the Yamaha using the preouts. The Denon still sounded the same even with newer DACs and technology from the Yamaha.

Yamaha got this reputation for being bright and harsh while Denon gets the rep for being warm and detailed. Having both to compare the to directly, I think it's the other way around.

Ok, so how about the HT side of the receiver? Astounding. The Dolby Digital and DTS presentations were jaw dropping. If that wasn't enough, the "STRAIGHT" mode in DD, DTS, and stereo mode was incredible. The STRAIGHT mode is the second most direct signal path to the amp section. Not to be confused with PURE DIRECT. In Straight mode, all crossover and video functions are still active. The added sound quality of Straight mode cannot be described, only heard.

Don't let the tiny price fool you. Instead of picking up a stripped Denon receiver that has a remote so poorly designed it almost made a technically savvy grown man cry along with no on-screen menus and compromised sound quality. Just go to a big chain retailer where you can take anything back with no fuss and pick this gem up and try it out. Then if you like it, take it back to the store and buy it cheap on the net if you want to save more money.