Well I went down to my local Yamaha rep. to check out the Yamaha RX-v2700. I couldn’t stand it any longer and wanted to go see the darn thing before I bought it.
Reading the Yamaha website about the RX-v2700 before going in gave some idea of what this unit would do, but seeing it in action, and in person, kinda got me all excited!
This unit has a lot of great features and some exclusive to Yamaha only. At 140 watts per channel it has the juice to run just about most any speaker one would typically throw at a receiver. They had it hooked up thier to a pair of small bookshelf Jamos in a concrete room (gobs of bright reflective surfaces) so I really wasn’t paying attention to nor thier for an audio audition, that will be at my place on the 5th of May:)
My personal favorite features of the unit were as follows:
1. Probably the one thing next to the wireless feature that I am most looking forward to trying out is its 7 band parametric eq for all 7 speakers and a two band parametric eq for the sub! Or what Yamaha calls YPAO (Yamaha Parametric Room Acoustic Optimizer). This two band eq for the sub probably wont replace the Velodyne SMS-1 anytime soon but good lord that is awesome that they even have it for the sub let alone the speakers. You may not be able to change the room but you can eq the speakers to help with correcting in room response.
2. The ability to hook up an external hard drive to a usb plug on the front of the Yamaha and pull up all your music on screen. Again this will be a huge plus for my Tacoma wedding DJ business as I will be able to pull songs up instantly for a bride to demo for her wedding.
Or you can run ethernet or go wireless to your main computer. Actually you can do this with up to 4 computers in your home. Paying for satellite radio? You can pull up thousands of channels on the web radio for free. We listened to a police channel in one speaker and a fire department in the other from Arizona, music from some small island in the south. The list goes on but you get the general idea. Yamaha is making an all in one and very useful entertainment hub with the 2700.
Network Receiver
Using a local area network (LAN) connection and Windows Media Connect technology ver.2 or better, Yamaha Network enabled receivers allow you to play MP3, WMA and WAV music from up to four (4) PC’s. The receiver can even be used as a client for Yamaha’s MusicCAST home music server, seamlessly integrating with the MCX-2000 digital audio server within your LAN. The Network Receiver also provides the ability to listen to any of the thousands of stations available on Internet radio when connected to a broadband Internet connection. By using the included MP3 vTuner data service that is enabled, looking for content on the Internet couldn’t be easier, from your favorite Rock, Pop, or R&B to Podcasts that cater to your music interests. With a USB terminal on the front panel you now have a convenient way to play music from USB flash drives and portable USB music players. Yamaha Network Receivers get you connected to the vast music content available anywhere on your LAN and on the web.
3. I am not a big fan of playing mp3s or any compressed music for that matter, but Yamaha has added a very cool and noticeable feature called compressed music enhancer.
“Compressed Music Enhancer
Yamaha employs sophisticated digital signal processing with exclusive algorithms to enable playback that improves the performance of compressed music formats, including MP3 and WMA. With the Compressed Music Enhancer, highs and especially lows are richer and smoother, bringing music back to life to be as close to the original as possible.”
Another neat feature if you use the zone capability’s is, if you are running the main system in one room and say zone two on the patio outside, but decide to kick a movie on in 6 or 7.1 the receiver automatically shuts off the the zone out and reconfigures the amps for the main zone. With my current preamp I have to manually go into the menu to do this and it can get frustrating.
I found the GUI to be very easy to navigate through and had no problems understanding the menu at all. I have read reviews that said it could be a little daunting.
Cant wait to get this one in my system permanent!
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Tags: Receivers by James
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What can they play?
