Yamaha RXV540- A good upgrade? (1 Viewer)

[Dan Shogren]

Ive been needing to upgrade from my crappy 100 watt Venturer reciever/surround system for a while now, and i was wondering if the Yamaha RXV540 would be a good upgrade? Whats the sound quality like? It was either this or a denon, but the guy at the good guys said the Denon was more difficult to use and set up.

my budget is about $400.00, but it would be nice if i could get something high quality for less than that.

 

[Bob C]

The Denon is a little more difficult to work with, but not much. Listen to them both before you decide. There are several companies out there that have decent receivers in the $400 range. Onkyo has the 501 in that price point, Harman and Kardon have the AVR130. Download the owners manuals for these and look at what it takes to set them up as well. I just bought an Integra 5.4, which is basically and Onkyo 601, with some tweaks and additional features, and it was a piece of cake to set up, and the remote doesnt take a phd to learn. Good luck. Bob.

 

[Iver]

I would guess the salesperson wanted to sell you the Yamaha more than he wanted to sell the Denon, for whatever reason.

You can see the owners manuals for Denon receivers here. Not having read a Yamaha receiver manual, I can't directly comment, but I do own a Denon and would describe the owners manual as fairly straightforward.

By the way, I am very curious about your Venturer HTIB. I saw a Venturer model for sale at K-Mart for $130. It had a central unit with the disc player, tuner, and amplification; five plastic single-driver speakers; and a passive subwoofer.

Is that the same one you had? How bad was it?

 

[James W. Johnson]

The HTR-5660 or RX-V640 is quite abit better than the RX-V540 and these can be had for under $400 shipped online.
The main advantages of the 5660/640 is the pre-outs for all channels and the better amplifer section.


http://www.yamaha.com/yec/products/compare/recvr_16.htm

 

[Dan Shogren]

Iver,

The model i have sounds fairly similar, except it lacked a DVD player. My model is just the receiver plus 5 satilites and one sub.Theres a picture of it on my website. (see link in signature, the receiver is the thin silver box on top of the black dvd player.)

The sound quality is alright for absolute beginner home theater, but the sound quality could definetly use some improvement. The sub rattles just about everytime its used, which is an annoyance, and the sound has a pretty muddy quality to it.

Also, during big action sequences, the diolog can get drowned out very eaisily. Also, there is very little tweaking that you can do to the speakers. Theres volume (only goes up to 50, which is annoying because at top volume, its not very loud) surround delay, center delay, and bass level. It would be a good gift to a family who doesnt have a system at all, but i would reccommend spending a little bit more for better quality.

Oh, and thanks for all the help guys, but it looks like i might not be getting the reciever this year after all, money problems...:frowning: