Yamaha compressed music enhancer

[bubslewis]

Yamaha HTR series A/V receivers are offering a "compressed music enhancer to improve compressed music sources". Anybody have one of these? If so, could anybody see any enhancements? I wonder how it works.

It's nice to see some attention being paid to over compression of recorded music by a high profile company.

Bill

[caltech]

I have a Yamaha RXV2700 with the compressed music enhancer and I was surprised at how well it works. It seems to enhance the higher frequencies and make the music sound more full. One interesting thing to note is that if you enable the music enhancer when the source is not compressed (CD or DVD) it sounds awful.
Compressed music is never going to sound as 'good' as the source, but having the convenience of 160GB ipod on a dock linked to your system is worth the sacrifice as far as I am concerned.

[bubslewis]

Thanks Caltech.My daughter got me an I Tune card for my birthday, so I am relatively new at downloading music. Formerly I always bought commercial cd's. Basically I'll say that I was disturbed by the distortion of some of the I tune downloads. I also had to turn the volume level down substantially from my normal listening volume setting when I listened to some of the I tune music (another sign of overcompressed recording).

I'm not currently in the market for a new A/V receiver, but it's nice to know that at least one company out there at least acknowledges the overcompression issue. Are you aware of any other receiver/amplifier manufacturers offering anything like Yamaha does?

Bill

[f0rge]

my denon has this too, i have mixed feelings about it.

i cant tell if it sounds better cause the mids are boosted or if it's cause it's actually better.

so far i've been leaving it off.