**Offical** Yamaha RX-V665 AV Receiver thread - Page 3

What percentage of all 6xx owners use terminals 8 and 9 to biamp, or run Zone2/Presence speakers? Somehow I expect the number is only a few percent. By using spring clips for terminals 8 and 9, Yamaha gets to use the small chassis for the 665, and common electronics/rear_apron with the 765, to reduce costs.

One of the great features of the 663 was that terminals 8 and 9 had their own, private amp. It turns on and off separately from the rest of the unit with independent volume control, source selection, etc. Half of my friends with the 663 plan to use those zone 2 terminals to drive two out-side speakers near their pools. So - personally - I'm seeing 50% (2 receivers out of 4).

So I emailed Yamaha and asked about the weight difference between the 63 & 65 series here's their reply:
Juan,

The engineers were able to slim down the case, which makes it lighter.

Best Regards,
The Yamaha Customer Support Team
P.S. Please do not remove the " [ref: " in the Email Subject when replying to this email.
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Receivers [AV and Stereo]
Model:
Why does the new RX-V65 series weigh 7.5 lbs less than the 63 series?
Thanks,
Juan

Thanks for E-mailing them Juan. How many people actually believe Yamaha on this one?

1-1/8" less depth and 3/4" shorter. I guess the material they make their cases out of is heavy.

As I don't listen at loud volume, is the power going to be that important to me?

I may be driving two 4 ohm and 2 8 ohm speakers with it. Will it have enough power if I don't need the voume high?

Probably always ways to shave off weight. Seems hard to believe they saved off as much as they say they did. You would think the whole case weighs less than the weight difference. But what do I know? I am not an engineer.

As I'm in the market for an AVR - In my searches on this forum to understand what, if any, ramifications are of the considerable drop in weight on the new crop of Yamaha AVRs - I keep seeing references to Yamaha 'families' or 'lines' of receivers. I no longer buy into this. E.g. the "6xx" family" or the "7xx" line etc. I'm not sure any such thing exists...?

IMHO there is no "6xx" line. The 659 is a replacement to the previous years 757. And the 757 is a replacement of the 750. E.g. Yamaha merely re-numbers last year's models sometimes one, two or all three digits. Perhaps marketing gamesmanship on their part to span a basic design over a couple few years..? For example from a few years ago: it might make it it seem the 'new' 659 is an 'improvement' over the 'old' 657 when it's really last years 757 renumbered to a lower 'series'.b

The 750/757/659 are virtually identical (659 added iPod port?) so as to warrant considering these three models as a 'family' as it were. Some years they may have as little as 3 or 4 AVR modelss and in other years as many as 6 or more...

I don't know of any other such groupings - I've just read through the 750/757/659 manuals and a few others in considering going with a used or new AVR for my needs (I'm leaning towards a used 750/757/659 over a 665).

pgtr, I'm not sure where you are going with your comments. There is a 6xx line. The new years model comes out and "replaces" the prior year's model. Replacement usually means adding some features (new decoders, iPod hookup, HD Radio, etc.) and a slow decline of the amp as well.

There is the 863 > 663 > 563 > 463 > 363.

In the 6xx series, there have been to my knowledge the 620, the 630 (which I just replaced), and the 640. All were at the $500 price point. Then the 650 came out at $550 in 2005. YPAO and lots of amp power. then 657, 659 at $550 a year later, 661, 663 last year, and now 665. The 6xx is the Yamaha mid-range receiver.

Any opinion on if these new receivers are better/worse then my old Yamaha RX-V995?

I want the new audio formats, and component conversion to HDMI but don't want to get any loss of sound quality.

I'm considering the RX-V765 because of the extra power which I believe is closer to what my current receiver has.

DSP is worlds better, as is the setup routine and room compensation. Over-all a large improvement.

Your post confused me. The 663 and 665 have the same number of amplifiers, seven.

If you biamp, you have only three more amps for the main zone.

If one zone is one, your main zone only has five amps available. If two zones were on (if the 663 does two zones,) you would lose two more.

Presence speakers require the use of two amplifiers as well.

All of this of course, does not add up, so some situations require that some application will lose it's amplifiers. For example, if you turn on a zone, while using seven amplifiers in the main zone, either the main zone loses it's rear surrounds, or the zone won't turn on (I forget which.) If you biamp, you may not be able to turn on a zone.

Speaker terminals don't map one to one to amplifiers. Amplifiers are assigned to speaker terminals based on the receivers settings, and if zones are on.

Just noticed a review on amazon that says the digital inputs aren't assignable. They couldn't possibly be that short-sighted, could they?

Anyone already read the manual and have an answer on this?

What digital inputs? The manual is available for download from Yamaha. With the 4 HDMI inputs, what would be gained from "assignability"?

We have used a couple of these receivers but I haven't needed an assignable input yet, but I can see the possibility of needing it in certain situations. For instance there are 2 component connections, one has an optical input and one has a digital coax input. Hopefully both components don't need an optical or coax and your equipment has enough flexibility.

Another problem I see is the Wii with the component cable. There are no analog inputs for audio on the component connections and I don't see a way to assign other analog inputs to correspond with a component input. You'll have to use composite for the Wii with this receiver or run the component cable directly to the display. We haven't run into this situation yet, but I imagine we will.

Not having assignable inputs is an oversight on Yamaha IMHO, but not a deal killer for most.

Bob

Well no not exactly that simple. There is renumbering... see below


True. My point is comparing current models to previous models - they should be apples to apples, not apples to orange. Simply ensuring the first digit is the same is not an accurate way to compare to previous models. 'Hundred' series lines do not span the years - only valid for a given year.


Nope not accurate. You seem to follow a 6xx line as in:

620->630->640->650->657->659->661->663

Yamaha's top of the line receiver in their basic AVR line in 2005 was the 757. What some people might refer to as the '7xx' line or family. It had 100W, 400W power supply, 7.1, etc. etc. etc. What appears to be the same exact receiver was apparently renumbered the following year as the 659. Notice the 1st digit change. Again it had 100W, 400W power supply etc etc etc. THe only real difference appears to be the addition of the iPod port.

People seem to make apples to oranges comparisons between say the 657 and 659. A better comparison would be the 757 to the 659.

For example:

750->757->659->861->863->865

Or perhaps:

650->657->559->661->663->665 and so on.

So saying the 665 doesn't compare well to say the 659 because they are both simply '600' series can be somewhat misleading. There really isn't much of a '600' series spanning the years. It's better to look at the AVRs position within an overall lineup for a given year and match to same/similarly positioned receivers from previous years.

Has anyone bought this amp yet (rx-v665) and if they have did you like it?
Pros and Cons?
Does it have enough power over your old amp?

Reason I ask is because a mate is buying one of either the 663 or this 665 today (sunday in Australia) and now that I have heard they are possibly skimping on the power output he may go the 663 but this amp never passed PLUGE test!

Is this a trade off for power? His speaker package is the Jamo S606HC S6
He uses a PS3 so upscaling isn't necessary either but a good addition.
Also a Samsung series 6 Plasma.

He can get the 665 for $1000 Australian (retail $1399) or the 663 for maybe $750-$800
(retail also $1399)

All answers are welcome.

Thanks,
Brett

John,

"to fully pick up all the free public stations."

I'm sorry but they do.

Nevermind about my previous post as my mate ended up purchasing the rx-v665

I bought the RX-V665 and didn't like it. I sent it back to Crutchfield. It sounded hollow and after messing with it for about 3 hours I gave up on it. I switched to a Denon. My parents 5+ year old Yamaha HTR-5240 sounds better than this one to me anyway. I don't know if it was my setup or what, but I wasn't happy with it. I would buy it from somewhere that has a good return policy in case you don't like it either.

I'll admit it didn't sound that bad when I was sending it a dolby digital or dts signal, but there was no way I could find to get stereo channel tv to sound good on this thing. The HTR-5240 has a disco DSP setting that you can use for regular tv to get full bodied sound out of 4 channels (the center channel doesn't work on this DSP). It sounded pretty good. On this model I couldn't find a setting that sounded quite like that. All of the DSP modes sound hollow. The only one that sounded semi-decent was when you press the Stereo enhancer button on the remote, but even that sounded like it was missing something. I guess this receiver is nice if you solely listen to dts, DD, etc signals, but I doubt that is the case. The programmed settings are pretty useless for regular stereo processing.

If I got this unit ,It would most likily be used more as a pre-amp , I have two old high output amps from the good old days ( When you turn them on the lights in the house dim!) for the front and center. I would use the 665 amps for the rear .So would this be a good unit ? Is the video any good btb/wtw and clean. Looking at the new A/V units for this year , nothing looks that hot , But I need to update my formates with the BR player. This may not be a good year for low priced entry level audio hardware.

I am pretty much in the same shoes as you, I am looking for something as cheap as possible with HDMI (the more the better), analog to HDMI and pre-outs. Right now the Pioneer VSX-1019 is looking better only because of the lower MSRP.

Sony also has one, but it is coming out in June or so and I am not willing to wait. I am looking to finish the basement and need something as a stop gap until I can get/afford something like the Emotiva XMC-1. I thought about the DVDo Edge to get the job done, but I am just not in the mood to pay that much right now, especially if the XMC-1 can take care of the scaling.

Pioneer VSX-1019 looks nice , but no pre-outs for all channels only sub.
665 has pre-outs for all channels , which with these light weight amps is a big plus ..Unless these amp is magic , it will sound weak ,is a good guess..

I don't think anyone should plan to use this or any other low to mid priced AVR for video processing and scaling. Your monitor is more than capable for that job.
Even A-D video conversion is a questionable feature that should only be used if your monitor lacks enough inputs. The 665 has a decent scaler but terrible de-interlacer which will not result in pleasing conversions of SD video. Leave it to the monitor if at all possible, and do not use scaling. Pass 480i to 480i, etc.

That said, I think this is a terrific candidate for a pre/pro application, just as the 661 and 663 are. The front end is the best we've seen yet from Yamaha in this class, audio processing and room setup is right up there with much more expensive AVRs.

Well crap, I have been looking at too many receivers, I could have sworn the VSX-1019 had them. I guess it is the 665 for me as well.

I have thought about picking up the H/K 254 because you can get them for less than half of the MSRP, but the 3 HDMI is holding me back, however it does have 3 component vs the 2 of this years models. It also looks like a refurbed Onkyo TX-SR706 also slips in around the same price range as the 665.

does anyone know if the 665 has the same dac's compared to the older 663? What about the new 765? I'm looking strictly for using as preamp.

With most of the new BR discs English DTS-HD 7.1 and NO English DD 5.1.. I feel I'm forced to upgrade ! DTS just took over BR and pushed DD aside.. Good thing they can't force me to buy a GM car ! I've had the sony SDP-E800 for over ten years and it still sounds great . I rarely use my LD player with AC3 The SDP-E800 doesn't do DTS which was ok till now. I took a look at the Emotiva XMC-1 a little more than I wanted to spend , it may be worth the wait to see and hear more about it ..

I don't think anyone knows yet for sure, because Yamaha are making it harder to find the service manuals than they used to (maybe they have something to hide?).

This unit have been out for some time now. Has anyone got one and likes it , If so please tell us. I would get one to try out , its not as of yet in the local retailers to play with at this time. Most important is the HDMI , I wouldn't want anything to lessen PQ. But with the 7.1 formats it must go though HDMI .To bad I don't like that fact, poor audio hardware could ruin a once great HD picture, A weak link that is not needed . I really hoped the audio (7.1) and video could be separated, but NO they had to stuff it all together in a HDMI cable.

Whats the best prices for the 665/765 ??

I love the 665 and am waiting for the price to drop a bit.