Review on 🔊 Enhance Your Audio Experience with YAMAHA RX-V4A 5.2-Channel AV Receiver and MusicCast Integration by Doug Hook

First of all, I would like to say that I am not a music lover. I'm not interested in post-processing effects, sound zones or the support of various streaming services. I have a decent 5.1 speaker setup and just want all of my other devices including the PS4, Nintendo Switch, gaming PC and Blu-ray player to play surround sound properly. Before purchasing I had a rats nest of splitters and switches wired together to toggle between them all but it never worked the way I wanted it to so I decided to buy a proper receiver to handle it. Note that although the title of my review says "inexpensive", it's just in comparison with other AV receivers - a mess of cables and boxes. that I replaced can total $100, and part of me finds it hard to believe that there isn't a better solution to my problem that costs less than $550. but receivers with similar capabilities will be more expensive than this one. The good news is that it works! Setting everything up was easy; I connected my speakers, connected all my devices to the receiver and connected the receiver to the TV and multichannel audio works with everything. It also has a few other features that I wasn't expecting but really liked; It can play music directly from DLNA servers on the local network, as well as play audio to and from Bluetooth devices. Very convenient, when I want to play a game on TV but listen with headphones. There are also a few small issues that I'm not 100% happy with. HDMI eARC support is great. With eARC enabled on my TV, turning on the TV causes the receiver to turn on my PS4, which isn't usually what I want. When eARC is disabled on my TV, the included receiver does not turn on the TV and the TV does not play audio for its built-in applications through the receiver. Turning on either console does not turn on the receiver, although the receiver will turn on the TV and will pass the audio/video signal, except that it will only pass stereo audio, not 5.1. The bottom line here is, that I have to turn on the receiver and TV manually, which is annoying. Second, I would suggest that it will have a separate volume level for each input. It is not. The audio coming from the Switch is louder than the PS4. and audio from DLNA music sources is *much* louder than the Switch. The receiver has a "Tone Adjust" feature that allows you to make a relative adjustment of -6 to +6 dB for each source, but that's not enough; I still have to manually adjust the volume a bit when switching sources. Why not just adjust the volume for each input? The receiver's IR sensor is also incredibly sensitive to interference. My TV and Blu-ray player have never had any problems, but if there is another IR source, e.g. B. a remote control or even the sun shining through a nearby window, the receiver simply does not respond to inputs at all. It took me a few days to figure it out; I almost returned my receiver defective before discovering I just need to make sure all other IR sources are blocked. It's also a lot bigger than I expected. I've since learned that this appears to be just a standard size, but as I said, I'm not an audiophile; I look at the electronics in this box and see that it could easily be twice or even a quarter its size if they tried to make it as small as possible. It just shouldn't be that big. To me it's just a glorified A/V switch for my TV and it does what I need it to do. It has enough caveats that I can't sincerely recommend it, but so far it's the best solution I've found. maybe even a quarter of its size if they try to make it as small as possible. It just shouldn't be that big. To me it's just a glorified A/V switch for my TV and it does what I need it to do. It has enough warnings so I can't give a serious recommendation, but so far this is the best solution I've found. maybe even a quarter of its size if they try to make it as small as possible. It just shouldn't be that big. To me it's just a glorified A/V switch for my TV and it does what I need it to do. It has enough reservations