Quote Originally Posted by nick4433
Bala, the Yamahas have weaker amps compared to some other brands as tested by HT mag and S&V. I believe ventialltion might help you but not as much as you'd think. Get some highly efficient speakers or simply add an external amp if you want to listen and watch movies/music real loud.
Actually, it's not a weakness in the amp, but in how aggressively the protection circuit kicks in. The receiver can sustain far higher output with just the main channels driven, but the protection circuit limits the all channels driven output. Normally, a bench test would measure how high the output goes to the onset of distortion, but the output ratings that S&V and HT have been obtaining don't necessarily reflect that.

Apparently, S&V observed this with recent Yamaha and Onkyo models, and I've been seeing that type of footnote appear in more bench tests lately. That could be the reason why the typical all channels driven output ratings for receivers dropped so much when the industry transitioned from 5.1 to 6.1 and 7.1.

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/ass...7200314244.pdf