[bobn4burton]

Any suggestions?


I'd like to keep it under 600 if possible.


I've considered getting the yamaha 663/665 or onkyo 607 or a comparable denon?


Any real advantage to any of these as a pre/pro? Or will any of these work as good as the next?


Thanks in advance!

 

[phantom52]



Quote:
Originally Posted by bobn4burton /forum/post/18122451


Any suggestions?


I'd like to keep it under 600 if possible.


I've considered getting the yamaha 663/665 or onkyo 607 or a comparable denon?


Any real advantage to any of these as a pre/pro? Or will any of these work as good as the next?


Thanks in advance!

You'd have to go with the 663/665/765 out of these because the Onkyo 607 doesn't have pre-outs for an amp. The Onkyo 707 does. I believe RDGrimes is using a 665 as a pre-pro and seems to like it for those duties. Not sure though ask him. You could use a Yamaha 863 also and it gets good reviews. It's under that price range and should function very well as a pre-pro. Check it out at onecall. For a Denon you would have to start with 3310 for pre-outs or get one of last years models. 2809 would be excellent, but problably over that budget.

 

[Emig5m]

I use a Yamaha 663 as a pre-amp with an Emotiva XPA-5 and B&W 800 series and I think it sounds and performs great. I also in-home demoed the higher end Yamaha 3900 back-to-back with the 663 and the baseline sound quality was identical. They all should have near identical baseline sound quality (at least Yamaha to Yamaha) so buy for budget and feature needs. I could of owned a 3900, but it didn't sound any better than the 663 and I only needed the feature set of the 663 so the 663 won for me. I have to compliment Yamaha for including pre-amp outputs on most all of their receivers. I probably would of never even bothered with Yamaha if it wasn't for this feature.

 

[bobn4burton]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Emig5m /forum/post/18122759


I use a Yamaha 663 as a pre-amp with an Emotiva XPA-5 and B&W 800 series and I think it sounds and performs great. I also in-home demoed the higher end Yamaha 3900 back-to-back with the 663 and the baseline sound quality was identical. They all should have near identical baseline sound quality (at least Yamaha to Yamaha) so buy for budget and feature needs. I could of owned a 3900, but it didn't sound any better than the 663 and I only needed the feature set of the 663 so the 663 won for me. I have to compliment Yamaha for including pre-amp outputs on most all of their receivers. I probably would of never even bothered with Yamaha if it wasn't for this feature.

Excellent....this is good information.


Couple questions for you. Do you use HDMI inputs for audoi? Do you use the 7.1 analog inputs at all? If you use the 7.1 analog inputs...does it skip all internal processing?


Oh...is there anyway to store two sets of speaker configurations? For instance...can you run YPAO and store all the speaker delays/frequency cutoffs/etc and save it as a preset. Then run it again and save a second set of settings under a second preset? I'm guessing not...but thought I'd ask.


Anything you don't like about the 663? Seems like a lot of people think they 665 is a little bit of a downgrade, should I try to get a 663 or the newer 665?

 

[Emig5m]



Quote:
Originally Posted by bobn4burton /forum/post/18123409


Excellent....this is good information.


Couple questions for you. Do you use HDMI inputs for audoi? Do you use the 7.1 analog inputs at all? If you use the 7.1 analog inputs...does it skip all internal processing?


Oh...is there anyway to store two sets of speaker configurations? For instance...can you run YPAO and store all the speaker delays/frequency cutoffs/etc and save it as a preset. Then run it again and save a second set of settings under a second preset? I'm guessing not...but thought I'd ask.


Anything you don't like about the 663? Seems like a lot of people think they 665 is a little bit of a downgrade, should I try to get a 663 or the newer 665?

Yes I use either HDMI or digital optical (always digital and un-processed to the AVR when possible). I don't use analog at all (except for connecting to the power amp from the pre-amp outs). So I can't comment on analog performance. As far as storing difference speaker configurations they do have scene buttons that you're suppose to be able to customize and save different settings for each scene button but I think it's limited to say what decoder or surround field is used and more basic settings. The same YPAO or EQ settings will be applied. But I know what you're saying, it would be cool if you could. Now about the 663 vs the 665 - this is something I wondered myself. I think the main beef is the internal power amps are better in the 663 which should be irrelevant when using an external amplifier. Is the baseline sound quality on par with the 663 or 3900 at the pre amp outputs? I couldn't comment on that unless I tried it back to back myself like I did with the 663 and 3900. My worry about the 665 is if they skimmed on the power amp from year to year, what would make you think they wouldn't skimp in other areas? Maybe it's just the amp section that got downgraded, maybe not. I don't know personally. They both spec the same burr brown dacs for all channels for example. So I would like to assume that the 665 is as up to par with the 663 at the pre amp outputs.

 

[phantom52]

Yamaha does have the ability to save different presets in its memory function. You can go into the YPAO settings and manually change them then save as Memory 1 and so forth. I know my 2600 has this ability. As for analog use the 2600 worked great for these. It does have a Pure Direct button that bypasses all processing. You really should give that 863 a look, especially for what they are selling for right now.