YAMAHA RX-V6A 7.2-Channel AV Receiver with MusicCast

This receiver replaced my 16 years old Yamaha receiver and I could not believe that it could make so much difference in sound quality. My entire family was blown away with its immersive sound quality, Hall of Munich is best setting for having deep immersive experience. One little annoyance in my view is the way volume goes up and down, you press button 2-3 times and instead of following your key press as steps to increase the volume by, it jumps volume by several digits, it will probably take some getting used to. I also wish the backscreen on panel could have better contrast - when you increase the brightness, it brightens the entire panel screen instead of text. But overall, its a very high quality, well built receiver. Love it!Thank you Amazon for fast shipping!

Replaced an old yamaha receiver that got struck by lightning. Better sound quality & picture than the old one.

The Yamaha rx-v6a, tsr-700, and yes, the rx-a2a, are all pretty much the same AVR, on the same firmware channel. Same power, same dacs, same dac implementation, same output stages, same construction, they’re the same. The a2a has a 5th foot, and 2 ten thousand micro farad capacitors in the power supply, while the v6a and tsr-700 have 2 eighty-one hundred micro farad capacitors in the power supply, and only 4 feet. These 2 tiny differences make no difference in sound quality or reliability, whatsoever. All three are simply awesome. From the DACS to the amps, and everything in between, these Yamahas sound better and out perform all the others. The HDMI boards have all been updated, and the firmware is mature. To even match these in sound quality and reliability and longevity, you would have to spend many thousands of dollars. Of the rx-v6a, the tsr-700, and the rx-a2a, which ever one is on sale for the least, get that one, because they’re the same device. In this case, that’s a good thing because you’ll love them.

Pros,1. A 7.2 channel A/V receiver that can do 5.1.2 Atmos. It also support DTS-X as well.2. 200 watts total power. Don't let that fool you. It powers my 5.1.2 speaker setup far better than my previous Onkyo TX-NR5100 that's supposed to 80 watts per channel. Also sounds a lot better and clearer.3. 7 HMDI inputs and 1 HDMI eARC output that support 8k/60hz and 4k/120hz with Dolby Vision. Additional speaker inputs for extra zones for run into other room.4. Uses banana plugs for easy installation.5. Has both WIFI and Bluetooth. Also includes an AM/FM antenna as well as a speaker calibration mic.6. Has two RCA subwoofer input jacks for dual sub units.7. Very well built and very sturdy unit. Looks very nice.8. Includes an extremely nice remove control.Cons,1. It's not the easiest to setup nor the most user friendly. Once setup you should be good, but it's a matter of the learning curves.2. Make sure you get the latest firmware. You may get unlucky, get an older unit, wonder where all the features are at and why they're not available.3. Lastly Amazon customer support is utterly horrible and useless. I order this produce and later that day they offered a discount. I called up customer support for a price match and THEY REFUSED TO DO IT!!!! I ended up canceling the order and reordering at the better price and Amazon ended up losing money because they were getting ready to ship the first order. LEARN TO PRICE MATCH LIKE YOUR COMPETITION!!!!!!!!I have this hooked up to my computer for movies and gaming, it works great because of the 120hz pass through. Other than horrible customer support the receiver is great and otherwise I'd have rated it a 5 star. I took one star for the customer support.

HDMI port constantly blows cables.

I selected this receiver based on spec sheet comparison to other receivers in its general class and price point, as well as reading through ‘professional’ reviews and assessments of various levels of dubiousness. The general specs as far as features and performance were the biggest factor. But there are things that can’t be discovered in ad copy and that are frequently omitted from even the most genuine and considered review.Thus far the sound output has proven quite satisfactory. It is these other factors that are dragging the rating into the proverbial pit.The display is a bit cheap, and the backlighting across the panel tends to wash things out about half as much as it illuminates. It’s very old tech—but forgivable if the result is better components elsewhere. Still, the display on my mini battery powered air inflator is a crisp full color OLED, so I have my doubts that that is the case here.The biggest problem is the lack of a physical manual. There’s something of a quickstart guide, but when you consider that most of the controls are via the remote and hidden in menu systems and that those menus have a certain opacity to them, it’s not enough information by long shot, especially if you’re not an experiential learner who strongly prefers to dive into the action and see what happens. If you prefer a more studious approach where you don’t even touch a button until you have some idea what it might do, this is going to be more challenging.There are digital manuals. You can get access to the manual via the Yamaha website, or by downloading via an app that exists to serve up Yamaha manuals. This dependence on screens for vital information is grotesque and should be considered unacceptable. There are multiple problems with this approach.One is the assumption the end user is going to have a suitable phone and be comfortable downloading an app and having a manual on a poor screen for reading technical information and diagrams on. I’m also averse to the idea of my manual requiring adequate battery power, and the only touch navigation I find acceptable in a manual is turning a page; for clarity, I mean physically moving a paper page, not tapping or swiping. Call me old fashioned, call me old, but I’ve had failures in these things before. I’ve never had a book fail to work without it being destroyed.Another issue is longevity. I’ve had too many devices outlive the availability of their digital documentation to be on board with that being the only way it is available.An app is also a requirement to get access to bluetooth as an input. Or at least, that is the only way I was able to get it to work, and then only because I decided to see if the “Musiccast” thing was going to get me access to bluetooth. If there is another way, it wasn’t documented, not that the way I found was particularly well documented. There was nothing saying that that was how to get access to bluetooth as an input, only a short sentence saying you had to set the input to bluetooth for it to receive audio over bluetooth—but cycling through inputs via the remote or the dial on the front never reached a bluetooth input until I had set up Musiccast.Musiccast requires a phone with a working wifi radio to connect to it.Once again, this dependence on an app on a phone, and presumption the end user will both have one and be willing to link it up this way is an obscenity. But it’s made worse by having basic labeled functionality hidden behind it, and poorly documented at that.There are at least two separate menu systems, and two means of accessing them. It is possible to access them from the front panel, using a dial, but the interface is incredibly cramped on a tiny display with bad contrast and worse use of space. The other method is using the remote to trigger an overlay on video out, assuming you are using the HDMI out of the receiver to connect to a display. You are not required to do so, and there are reasons why someone might not want to, like the questionable reliability of the HDMI ports (I am connected via HDMI 2.1 using eARC, but I occasionally find I am unable to get video to pass through and have to power cycle the receiver to get it to do so again), but if you don’t you’ll have a worse menu system experience, and it’s not that great at its best. Without that menu system you’ll be hard pressed to make good use of the functions of the receiver.There are a few buttons on the front of the receiver, but all but the power button are capacitive buttons, marked in faint white print with poor contrast. I only discovered them when peering at what I had thought was a blank face looking for the “Connect” button called out in the manual to get Musiccast working. These are terrible buttons, and it’s clear the engineers knew it when they made the power button physical.Internet Radio was apparently also locked behind the Musiccast app connection as it didn’t show up as an input until I connected the Musiccast app—again, not documented beyond saying you had to set the input to Internet Radio to use it.Overall, the user experience has been underwhelming at best with poor documentation where it exists, an absence of physical documentation, and some terrible choices in terms app dependency. I absolutely hate that I have to use my phone to get access to not just full function but a basic function like being able to pair a bluetooth source to the receiver for playback.