Anyone Had A Chance To Demo The New Yamaha RX-Z9 Yet?

[meephis]

Hey, I am thinking of getting a new receiver, I have kind of got my heart set on Yamaha for this but don't want to have to spend $4,000 on it. However I have heard some VERY good things about this receiver and am wondering what your opinions are. Like I said I am pretty set on Yamaha because I love their musical presentation. Not sure If I want to go all out yet but am seriously considering it and will, of course, audition it before I decide but wanted to know your standpoints.
Thanks-
Meephis

[JamezHill]

I too am looking, but I think I might settle for the RX-Z1 instead. It's a little more within my budget now. I just got the S2300MKII and have been hooked on Yamaha since.

[kexodusc]

I really like Yamaha's stuff, and the RX-Z1, and RX-Z9 sound as good to me as anything I've heard from Rotel, Anthem, Lexicon, etc, but do you guys really need to drop that kind of coin on an A/V receiver?
If I was going to build my system based on that budget range, I would definitely look at going the separates route. 3 stereo amps and a mono block or, 7 mono's. You'd have more juice than you'd ever need. Throw in a great pre-pro like an Anthem or Krell or something and you'd be set. That way you'd only have to upgrade the pre-pro every several years and you'd save yourself a ton of money when doing so. And I'd even venture as far to say such a setup would be more faithful to music sources and sound better!

But, if you have your hearts set on the a/v receiver route, the Yammies are probably as good as any at that price range.

[JamezHill]

Yeah, good point. I actually have been debating going that route for some time now. I'm not *exactly* sure which way im going. All I know is that I'm coming from the Kenwood Sovereign line (which was awful in my opinion). I liked the idea of having the entre (which never worked correctly), the dvd-5900 (i returned 3 due to problems), and the vr-5900 (the first one came with a big dent in the back where the speaker terminals went). I was soo pissed off, I even ripped the Kenwood Excelon deck out of my truck and put in that new Clarion CD Transport with the Burr-Brown DACs. I'm thinking of starting an Anti-Kenwood website :P

[Woochifer]

I've only heard the Z9 once, and that was a unit patched into a set of Monitor Audio speakers. Very nice combo and a solidly built receiver like all of Yamaha's past flagship models.

However, the thing about the Z9 is that it includes a lot of video processing features that I question the value of. The receiver includes a Faroudja DCDi video processor and a whole slew of video adjustments. This feature is useful if you don't have a progressive scan DVD player, but if you already have a good DVD player (a lot of low priced DVD players now use the same Faroudja video processor) and a lot of adjustments available on your TV, then a lot of this is redundant.

Furthermore, HDTVs and DVD players have started going to HDMI interfaces in a big way (by this time next year, I think all HDTVs and DVD players will come with HDMI outputs/inputs), which are digital video connections. All of the video processing done with the Z9 is output through the analog component video cables. While this should look great, this is an increasingly antiquated connection format. With the way that HDTVs and video sources are evolving, I think that video processing will be a fairly common feature with receivers in the near future, but with everything getting routed and converted through the HDMI output.

As far as the Z1 is concerned, I believe that it's discontinued and you can find some very nice closeout deals on that unit right now. The main disadvantage of the Z1 is that it does not have the YPAO acoustic room calibration feature and its bass management still uses Yamaha's now phased-out 90 Hz crossover frequency for the subwoofer output (their newer receiver all have adjustable crossovers). I would expect that the Z1's successor will at least have those two new features and hopefully incorporate some kind of HDMI switching.

[Woochifer]

Hey Kex, you been drinking a little too much of the Kool Aid lately?

Sheesh, of all the things that I try to be on this forum ... a role model is NOT one of them! (Although if I can persuade anyone to line up a bunch of acoustic ceiling panels around their listening room, then I can go to my grave knowing that I've done some good.) But, pretty funny that you changed your moniker to reflect your newfound aspiration! Had I known all this newfound responsibility to succeeding generations, I might not have started that woofer porn thread ... uh, here it is ...

For you bass freaks -- here's your PORN!

-- The Original Woochifer