Enhancing Yamaha AVRs via RS-232 - Page 2

Thanks, but it's not great news because it looks like the 2700 isn't working as documented (top of page 11 in the document I referred to in the first post).

What if the OSD is currently being shown (i.e. you're in one of the menus). Does it show on screen instead of on the front panel? I'm almost out of ideas at this point.

So far we have three data points: it works well on my 1800 and doesn't work on two 2700s. And now we seem to have confirmed with the HyperTerminal test that the problem is with the 2700 and not my program.

BTW, I have Short Messages turned ON in the menu, I doubt if that makes any difference but could you please check your setting.

I would still like to know if the program works with the 3800, or even someone else's 1800, if anyone can try that.

Yes I later realized what you meant and answered here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...9#post14670999 (but I cunningly switched threads on you so you wouldn't find it ). I was thinking of writing an application to allow easy manual use of PEQ on the 1800, but it probably won't happen very soon. So if you figure it out first please let me know.

BTW if you have an 1800 and a PC set up with an RS-232 connection, do you think you could try my VolumeControl application (attached to post #3) as a sanity check that what I uploaded can actually work for other people. The only prerequisite is that you have to have the Microsoft .NET framework version 2.0 installed.

I'm not very familiar with the network interface of the 3800, but as far as I know it's not meant for control purposes. The new 3900 is advertised as having web browser control, but I don't know if they will document the protocol to allow 3rd party network control apps, and it's possible you won't be able to do everything with it that RS-232 supports.

Phew, so I wasn't just imagining that it worked (was beginning to wonder after the 2700's didn't work).

Not sure what happened there. I did notice that my laptop USB to RS-232 converter doesn't work after coming back from standby mode, but my old clunker with a real COM port has never failed. Did you have to restart the program or reboot the computer to get it back?

Good point. I never tested it with volume presets (are those the volume memories that can only be accessed through special remote codes?).

Yes, after a lot of experimentation I decided to do it that way. The flashing looks bad and it can't keep up with a lot of very rapid changes. So it goes back to the volume bar temporarily, and shows the number again just after you release the button.

Unfortunately when they moved from one line of text (like my old 5760) to two lines (like the 1800), the characters got a bit smaller.

I may PM you later with a test you can do to find out what the volume presets are reporting back to the program. It should be easy enough to handle them.

Thanks for the feedback. It could ultimately be ported to any small low-power device with a serial port, but it's maybe a bit early yet for that because there are obviously some things that still need improving.

Still no explanation of why the Volume Control program doesn't work on the 1700/2700, but I uploaded a new version (1.03) in post #3 that could be useful for anyone doing their own experiments with the RS-232 protocol.

If you run the program from the command line (or from a shortcut) with the /debug flag, it will open in a larger window and let you send arbitrary RS-232 commands and see the reports returned by the receiver. i.e. if you type "VolumeControl /debug" you will see this:



You can see at the bottom left the standard command 22001 (request main volume as text) was sent, and in the window above it the report returned includes the volume value -14.0dB.

At the bottom right the extended command 034000 was sent (read the current PEQ parameters for band 1 of the centre channel). The reply includes the frequency, Q and gain parameters.

For standard commands you type all the hex digits, and the program adds the initial STX and terminating ETX automatically. For extended commands you type only the data portion (DT0-DTx), and the program automatically adds the complete header (including the length) plus the checksum and terminating ETX.

Make sure you enable "Show bytes received" in order to see the reports from the receiver.

Since the READY command is a special case (it's a command that doesn't start with STX), just type the word READY instead of the hex digits.

For the bytes received, note that STX is shown as "<", ETX as ">", DC1 as "[" and DC4 as "(".

A program to let you make manual adjustments to the Parametric Equalizer (PEQ) on the RX-V1700/1800/1900, which normally don't allow it. It will look something like this,



You can also see a graph of the frequency response (shown in the next post), which makes manual adjustments easier. This should make the program useful even if you have a 2700/3800/3900. It also allows you to save your current PEQ settings to a file a lot quicker than you can with the Receiver Manager software.

Edited by kriktsemaj99 - 4/10/13 at 8:06am

I released PEQedit v1.0 (see next post). The main user interface is shown in the previous post, and the graphical display of the PEQ resonse looks like this:



This is an actual YPAO result for my front right speaker. Goodness knows what the big dip at 100Hz is, but that's one reason I don't like to use the YPAO results without checking them and possibly doing some manual tweaks.

The thick black line is the overall response, and the thin red lines are the individual PEQ filters (for which you can see the actual settings by looking at the other window, as shown in the previous post).

Edited by kriktsemaj99 - 4/10/13 at 8:07am

Here's the first version of PEQedit (see previous posts for screenshots). Even without an RS-232 connection you can play with the parametric EQ settings and get a feel for how the filters modify the frequency response. With an RS-232 connection you can upload your current PEQ settings and save them on your computer, or modify them and download them back to the receiver.

I've only been able to do intensive testing on my 1800, but hopefully it should also work on the 1700/1900/2700/3800. Just remember to save your current settings in a system memory before downloading modified values!

The filter responses displayed by the program should be very accurate, as they are based on actual measurements made on an RX-V1800 (thanks to OttoElectronic).

Suggestions for improvements are welcome (as are bug reports!).

Edit: I removed the attachment from this post as there's now a newer version (see the first post for a link to the latest version). The new version is known to work with the 1900.

Each time Yamaha introduces new models it seems they change slightly the way that different PEQ types can be selected. So until PEQedit is tried on each model I won't know for sure it works as intended (I only have an 1800 to test on, and I know it works on that model).

The attached file (PEQtest.peq after you unzip it) can be loaded into PEQedit and, as you can see from the response curves, it changes the tonal balance of the front L and R speakers dramatically so that you can easily hear the difference when playing the receiver's pink noise test tones (the front left speaker should sound much higher pitched than the front right).

If anyone can try it, please let me know on which model and whether it worked properly. Also please report the model ID displayed by PEQedit (the number just after the model name, R0227 for example).

And don't forget to save your settings first and restore them afterwards (in a system memory, or with PEQedit).

 

PEQtest.zip 0.876953125k . file

That's great, thanks for testing. If you have any ideas for new features, let me know.

It seems the new RX-V3900 (and presumably the RX-Z7) work a little differently and PEQedit needs to be updated to handle them (for one thing the first four PEQ bands now go down to 31Hz, not just the first two).

I'll make this change at some point, and maybe also support a network connection to these models as well as RS-232.

As the saying goes, it's a feature not a bug .

When VolumeControl is started it doesn't query the receiver for information, it just waits for playback status reports that the receiver sends when there's a change in status. So if the program is running before you start playing something, it will get a status report with the new signal info. And whenever you switch inputs the receiver will send another status report (so as you found out you can force the info to be sent by switching inputs, even if you only select the same input that's already selected).

This seemed to work OK as it's the kind of program that you normally leave running the whole time, so it can receive the signal info as soon as you start playing something.

(Also, since the text strings don't show up on the front panel of the 2700, I guess you don't need to select any of those timed messages --- not that it should do any harm.)

I assume the info was what you were expecting? Because I found out now that I can bitstream HD codecs to my 1800 (from a Panasonic BD35 BD player) that the playback status reports are wrong in some cases (they report 192kHz for TrueHD and DTS-HD bitstreams even for tracks that are only 48kHz). The signal info reported in the 1800 GUI is correct, it's just the RS-232 reports that are wrong. But this only seems to affect the new HD bitstream formats, not PCM.