Ever wonder if Yamaha AV receivers are worth it? Listen, if you are on the market for the best AV receiver on the budget, you have limitless options. While the market is not short of AV receiver options, the Yamaha brand, on the other hand, has stepped up a notch to deliver the best Av receivers on the budget. But, are Yamaha receivers good?
The Yamaha RX-V485 AV receiver is a perfect example of how good are Yamaha AV receivers, Yamaha AVR’s come packed with dream AV features compared to other known AV brands like the Denon AVRs, or Marantz AV receivers. The Yamaha stands out as the best AVR as their RX-model delivers an impeccable sound quality with balanced clarity.
In particular, the Yamaha RX AV product line is comparatively far superior to Denon AVR and Marantz’s likes. And that’s because Yamaha RX Model offers a more detailed listening experience with their impeccable midrange and treble frequencies. The downside of the Yamaha is how they provide the same level of control over the subwoofer.
Which Yamaha Receiver Is Best?
The brand new Yamaha multimedia surround sound receiver and the RX v485 Yamaha audio-video receiver is your best Yamaha AV receiver with the most up-to-date 5.1 channels home theater, an HDMI 4k Ultra HD, and ARC technology built-in.
The Yamaha RX v485 AV Receiver. Do You Really Need It?
The Yamaha RX v485 is a compatible Dolby vision Bluetooth and Wi-Fi certified audio video packed with rich audio features that could be a perfect upgrade for those who have the old Yamaha RX v 3 7 3. While the Yamaha RX V373 is still a fantastic AV receiver, the features you get from the Yamaha RX v485 AVR will undoubtedly serve you very well for many years.
What Is The Point Of An AV Receiver? Do You Really Need It?
AV receiver’s purpose is to augment and received audio and video signals from particular sources. It could be from as many as 9 or 12 depending on channels and the processing power behind the AVR.
Whether you need an AV receiver or not, its subjective; however, it would be best if you had the AV receiver. It provides the power amplifiers to drive loudspeakers and route the video to displays media content such as a television, monitor, or video projector using HDMI ARC, coaxial, or audio optical cables.
Why Yamaha RX v485 AVR Stands Out?
The Yamaha RX v485 AVR’s arc connectivity option to the TV and the wireless Bluetooth makes it really easy and clutter-free to connect the Yamaha RX v485 AVR to wireless surround sound Bluetooth speakers.
How Connecting Yamaha RX v485 AVR To A TV Works?
The Yamaha RX v485 AVR can be hooked up to a number of gadgets within your home, and the coolest part of all is that Yamaha’s RX v485 connectivity to gadgets like your Comcast Xfinity box, a blu-ray player or to your gaming rig like a ps3, a nintendo Wii and a classic ps2 a breeze with the HDMI arc.
Yamaha RX v485 Connection Toolkit: What You Need To Connect?
The Yamaha RX v485 comes with a toolset kit for quick connection inside the box.
- A device for testing the sound
- The Yamaha RX v485 installation manual.
The Yamaha RX v485 Look And Design
The Yamaha RX v485 audio receiver looks very similar to many of the Yamaha receivers you can purchase today. And that makes connecting your front right front left,center-surround sound, right surround sound, and left the surround sound speakers easy.
A quick glance at the back of your Yamaha RX v485, you have access to the plug for the subwoofer and also the receiver’s AM FM radio FM antenna and your AM antenna.
The Yamaha’s design is optimized for the best of your connections devoted to your audio and the video receiver.
Yamaha RX v485 Connection Design.
The modern Yamaha RX v485 design is a real example of today’s most versatile AVR connections to be done entirely with HDMI cables.
The HDMI arc ports at the back of your RX v485 have four inputs and one output. The Yamaha RX also has connections for composite or RCA connections; however, they’re fast becoming rarer and rarer as most smart TV on the market today do not have any composite inputs.
How The Yamaha AVR Send Audio And Video Out?
The only output connection for your composite plugs is this one monitor out, and that basically any video you input into your receiver can go out to your TV through this connection.
Now you don’t actually have to send any audio signals to your TV from your receiver; instead, your receiver is sending all those to your speakers and bypassing your TV.
You may also have a connection for an optical audio cable which allows the newest receivers to be connected to the internet with the help of an ethernet cable for a hard-line connection or using the wifi antena that you can connect to the internet wirelessly.
Because you can connect via Wi-Fi using the built-in antennas, the AVR also is Bluetooth capability for the speakers to be connected. However, if you prefer, your system can be hardwired and they just go straight from the speakers out to the back of the receiver. Still, many receivers including Yamaha RX are now Bluetooth compatible so you could purchase wireless speakers and those can communicate wirelessly to your receiver.
How To Connect Yamaha RX Audio Video Reciever To Your TV?
Long before Yamaha RX AVR came to the market, the simplest way to connect your receiver to your TV was simply by connecting all your AV devices like your Xfinity, your Blu-ray player, your ps3, etc., into your receiver and then outputting the signals to your TV.
For all the receivers, that’s how it was done; however, today, you have a little more AVR connectivity choices at your disposal. So the newest receivers can actually communicate back and forth from your TV to your receiver, which is done through the HDMI Arc connection port.
HDMI Arc, What Is It, How Does It Work?
Now, how the HDMI arc works is effortless, as it bundles all the signals to go out. In simple terms, the HDMI arc connection can even input audio signals from your TV, and your TV can actually control your receiver to a certain extent.
Connecting Yamaha RX AVR With Audio Optical Cable To Your TV.
Apart from the HDMI Arc, audio signals from your TV can also be inputted through your AVR’s optical connection, which is at the back of your Yamaha RX v485 receiver. Optical audio connection on any audio-video receiver is probably the most recent significant discovery for Smart TVs.
As smart TVs have a lot of apps that bring in signals to the TV; you want those signals to be sent to your receiver so you can have the full surround sound features. Audio optical cable connection between your AVR and TV allows you to achieve that seamlessly and have many more connections than just the four HDMI connections you have at the back of your TV.
Coaxial Cable Connection With Your TV.
The coaxial cable input allows your audio receiver to enjoy a direct internet connection apart from your HDMI inputs, which in the Yamaha RX model you have four.
In summary, your Yamaha RX receiver has four HDMI inputs and all of those additional HDMI inputs give you a variety of connectivity to utilize. That way, anything you choose to plug into your entertainment rig, the audio from these connections could be sent through the HDM arC connection back to your receiver, and that’s how you get to enjoy surround sound with the Yamaha RX v485 AVR.
How To Connect Your TV With HDMI Arc To The AVR?
To connect an AV receiver via the HDMI Arc, plug directly from all of your gadgets like your Xfinity box, Blu-ray player and your gaming rig connected directly into your TV, so that the audio from these connections is sent from the arc into your AV receiver to your speakers.
Simply plug the other end of the plug connected to the arc then plug in your TV on the other end of the output arc so that any audio
that comes from your Xfinity box or your Blu-ray player goes into the TV.
When you run your connection this way, the video signal stays in your TV while the audio will be outputted to the receiver and out to your speakers. While connecting your ARC sounds complicated, this is truly the preferred way of connecting your TV.
How The Arc Connection Port Works?
The HDMI arc connection port has dual communication so your receiver can communicate with your TV and your TV can talk back to your receiver too.
How To Connect Your TV To The AVR Using Optical Audio Cable.
Optical audio cables are a perfect way to connect your Yamaha RX v485 if you don’t have an arc plug connection on your TV. But, how do you connect your TV to the AVR, using the optical audio cable?
To connect your TV and AVR using an optical audio cable, plug your audio optical cable into your TV and the other end of the connection cable into the AVR. This connection pretty much replicates the Arc connectivity so you can send audio signals from your TV to your receiver effortlessly.
Your optical connection to your TV allows you to share the audio coming into your TV to your the receiver, which outputs it through the surround sound speakers.
To utilize the HDMI arc connections and the optical connection port, you need to purchase a high-speed HDMI cable and an audio optical cable off Amazon as there’s many different HDMI cables out there. If for some reasons you get the older ones, it wont work as they are typically not high-speed.
How To Tell The HDMI Cable Is Arc Compatible And High-speed
It’s very common for new AVR consumers to get wrong HDMI cables, so if you’re not sure if your cable is high-speed, here’s how you can tell their difference.
Labeled High-speed HDMI: The majority of reliable HDMI brands will label and show on their packaging of the cable itself as high-speed HDMI.
It also has to be said that every time you attempt connection into TV and an old gadget like the Wii or ps2 into the receiver, you are going to be dealing with composite connections with gadgets with others that actually are not HDMI compatible.
As modern smart tv do not have any composite inputs, you would have to send out the video through the optical cable. However, the trouble with such a connection is that the output video from those games would not behigh-definition.
So, in this case, what you can do here is to get an RCA to HDMI converter that you can plug all of your gadgets, requiring those games converted before outputting the video signal in high-definition.
The speakers on your Yamaha RX are an easy plug and play beginning with your best home theater subwoofer connected to your bookshelf speakers for a surround sound experience.
For HDMI Arc to work correctly between your receiver and the smart tv, you will need to set it up for the connection to work. And the way you do it is by activating the arc both in your receiver and your TV.
This way, your TV and your receivers will talk to each other and establish a unified communication that they are both using arc and want their functionality should flow through the HDMI arc port.
How To Setup HDMI Arc On Yamaha RX Receiver.
To activate the arc, navigate to your menu option and then go down to arc, if it is not on, you need to toggle it on or off. The RX receiver manual book has plenty of different settings for you to use.
The Yamaha RX and all of its product line come with a microphone component that Yamaha provides for all their receivers to help you balance the sound of your speakers.
While it may be a helpful feature for me, I Know everybody has a different setup for their speakers, and your room size dictates where your surround sound speakers sit. The microphone component helps you with speaker positioning location for varying room sizes.
The way it works is by going through a number of cycles, testing each connected floor standing, down-firing ceiling or bookshelf speaker sounds quality while you’re listening to the sounds, eventually getting a precise balance of your speakers based on the location you put your little microphone and optimize the sound in your particular room size.