General Asylum: REVIEW: Yamaha RX-Z9 Receiver by cjfrbw

Model:	RX-Z9
Category:	Receiver
Suggested Retail Price:	$4499
Description:	Current flagship receiver as of Nov. 2003
Manufacturer URL:	Yamaha
Manufacturer URL:	Yamaha

Review by cjfrbw ( A ) on December 14, 2004 at 18:21:01
IP Address: 68.164.159.64

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I thought I would do an AA thing for this receiver/processor. I will not cover every detail, there are several thorough articles on the operation of the RX Z9 unit. Audioholics has a nice run down:
http://www.audioholics.com/productreviews/avhardware/Yamaha_RX-Z9p1.php
I will stick with my consumer oriented observations.
I purchased the RX Z9 as an upgrade to my previous Yamaha RX V1. I made the upgrade because of: 1. The increased processing density of the sound fields in the RX Z9 2. the included video processor/scaler in the RX Z9, which would simplify my home theatre setup. I could sell my outboard scaler and its cables 3. My satisfaction with previous Yamaha products.
My home theatre is a 120 inch diagonal screen with a CRT projector. My home theatre is combined with my main stereo system, a separate tubed system for audio only. I switch to the tubes system for music and use an electronic crossover and separate amps for the main speakers.
When watching movies or TV, I use a passive crossover with the main speakers and use the Yamaha RX Z9 as the exclusive processor/amp.
When I have the tubed audio system engaged, I shut off the "A" speaker amplifier in the RX Z9 and run a preamp feed to the RX Z9 so that I can use the music surround modes in combination with my tubed audio system.
I have been a fan of the Yamaha surround modes since the Yamaha DSP-1 surrround preamp, which I used for many years. I have used an ambience recovery system with my stereo system since 1978, when I purchased the first Advent SoundSpace Control, which fed ambience and hall size information to two rear channels.
I have never understood why ambience recovery systems have never caught on with audiophiles, and only since home theatre has multichannel of any kind come into any kind of use or popularity. The traditional audiophile still tends to be a two channel die hard.
When I was less well heeled, ambience recovery seemed to be a logical thing to have.
You hear of audiophiles who spend huge amounts on equipment, but never touch their rooms or do room treatments. There are audiophiles who spend gobs on their rooms, and they wind up with a single (usually small) listening space, that may be good for what it is, but is still limited in its ability to convey a sense of space or dimension outside of the two dimensional presentation of the main stereo system. Currently, there is another group who use digital processing systems to tailor the frequency response of the main stereo pair to the room acoustics, but this requires digital processing of the main stereo signal in the digital realm, no pure analog, and still leaves a tailored small space.
With a good ambience recovery system, the flaws of a small listening space are merged into the soundstage presentation of a much larger acoustic space. Ambience recovery is incredibly effective at smoothing presentation, enlarging the sound space, scotching nodes and standing waves, creating presence, and reinforcing midrange and bass richness. The listening room still needs to be treated for frequency balance below 200 Hz, but otherwise, the acoustic space that is heard is from the ambience recovery, and is much closer to the kind of acoustic space in which music is actually performed. It is very effective. I have never once wanted to listen to stereo sources without some kind of ambience recovery since my original Advent Soundspace Control.
Yamaha has always taken its ambience recovery modes from microphone recordings done in real listening venues, and that is a good thing. They also add front presence speakers, which fill out the stage depth and height. No other home theatre receiver offers the front presence speakers. The different listening modes offer a lot of choice, and there are always a few modes that work out well with particular types of music.
At some point, Yamaha stopped offering its digital sound space technology in separate components and merged them into its receiver line. At first, I was a little annoyed with this. After the RX V1, however, I realized that this made sense to combine the amps and the processor in on chassis, especially with the additional complexity of home theatre. It certainly cuts down on the need for cabling and conserves space. I use a 8.1 channel setup with Apogee Speakers up front and front center, small Infiinity speakers for the front presence channels, small Apogees for the rear surround, and a Klipsch rear center surround with two Klipsch subwoofers, so the surround system is a mixed bag of speakers. This is generally not a problem with surround system, because the surround channels are generally contain a lot of unphased reverberation and ambience and don't necessarily need to match.
Amplifier Quality: The amplifiers in the RX Z9 are much improved over the RX V1. Although I thought the amps in the RX V1 were quite good for what they were, I wouldn't have called them audiophile grade. I prefer tubed amps for music, because I find that transistors will glare, flatten, grey or smear at some point, no matter how good the quality. The amplifiers in the RX Z9 are not only more powerful than those in the RX V1, they have outstanding sound quality. I would call the amplifiers in the RX Z9 audiophile or close to audiophile quality. They can play music with clarity and coherence with negligible comprimise. I was really surprised at how good these were in a receiver type component. I didn't try the pure direct mode in two channels, but I suspect that it must be outstanding, because the regular amp mode is so good.
Surround Modes: The surround modes in the RX Z9 have triple the sound density of the RX V1 due to greater computing power. They are better than ever, and are the most natural sounding that I have heard. The DSP-1 and the RX V1 sounded good in the surround modes, but when the sound fields became "wet", they could become oppressive. I usually stuck to fairly dry surround modes. In the RX Z9, even the dense, wet sound fields sound quite natural. I was thrilled with this, because I use the ambience recovery sound fields for music listening as well as home theatre.
Movie Surround Modes: The RX Z9 offers everything in the book, from discrete 9.1 channel digital/ 96/24 DTS, to synthesized multichannel modes (DTS Neo 6.1, Dolby proIIx, etc). This makes it great to listen to with standard tv sources as well as movies. I have a cable box that sends out HDTV signals at 1080i and digital sound. I actually prefer Yamaha"s proprietary 70mm movie modes to the standard DTS and Dolby or THX modes. The move surround performance is stunningly good. I use "The Matrix" as a kind of bellweather. The scene where Neo wakes up in the jelly bath and sees the Matrix for the first time the way it really is has some pretty astounding surround effects, with deep bass and crackling lightening and very wide deep sound. This scene never ceases to astound with the surround. It is mesmerizing through the RX Z9.
I have seen several HDTV movies with 5.1 soundtracks, including the Last Samurai, and the sound processing of the RX Z9 is top notch, with crisp, audible dialog and involving sound.
Video Processing: I have used a couple of scalers, including the i-scan and the focus quadscan pro combined with a faroudja comb filter/ composite to component converter. The video scaler/processor in the Yamaha RX Z9 is the best I have seen and is even better than the progressive scan output of my Sony DVP NS900v DVD player. It has better visual and color range and shadow detail, with negligible motion artifacts. It is very sharp, and seems to excel at recovering all available detail.
Unfortunantely, copyrighted material will only display at 480p, and will not scale to the available 720p or 1080i modes. This is less of a problem than it seems with DVD, because most are anamorphic, and when "squeezed" actually have about 700p resolution in the picture area. In anamorphic mode DVD, no scanning lines are visible and the picture is sharp. The "squeezed" 480p picture of the RX Z9 is not shamed by the 1080i HDTV picture from my cable box. However, the HDTV 1080i direct signal from the cable box is noticibly sharper and more saturated, as you would expect from HDTV.
The RX Z9 does not have DVI input and output. I don't really care, because I plan to use CRT projectors anyway, and the picture quality on my 120 inch diagonal screen is outstanding without it. I am not really a fan of this technology, it is really a copy protection scheme even though it is marketed as a direct digital technology. My cable box does not use it, and transmits an HDTV signal that is of outstanding quality through its component outputs into the RX Z9. It is nice to have a scaler in the receiver because, again, it cuts down on cables and complexity for non HDTV and non scaled sources. I will be selling my other scaling components.
Automatic room equalization with included Microphone: I admit I was a little skeptical of this technology. However, it extremely useful because of the many speakers and amplifiers in the home theatre setup. Basically, you set the microphone in your preferred seating position and the RX Z9 runs test tones that automatically give you speaker distance, phasing, size (frequency range), volume levels and performs parametric equalization to make dissimilar speakers the same in frequency range and response. I wound up tweaking it some, because I preferred more bass than allowed by the automatic equalization, but the automatic room correction is really invaluable for finding incorrect phasing, time aligning speaker output because of asymmetric speaker positioning, and setting output levels for a myriad of speakers throughout the room. It is certainly a lot better than guessing at these, and I realized that complex home theatre/surround setups really require this type of technology to be set up at their best. I would count this as another desirable feature of the unit. There are three separate configurations for using two different subwoofers with multiple crossover points available, also extremely useful for bass management and tailoring the sound of the setup.
The GUI is a pleasure to use and us quite easy to navigate with it's own remote. After the automatic equalization, you can view the compensation curves for the various speakers.
The RX Z9 will decode multi channel DSD/SACD directly from a digital stream through its i-link hookup, though I could not test it since I don't have an i-link component. Also, if you use the multi channel direct inputs to connect a multi channel source, the digital processing soundfield modes can be used. I hooked up the SACD 5.1 output from the Sony DVP N900v to the direct multichannel input mode, and was surprised to hear the surround processing engaged. In the RX V1, the multi channel input was volume controlled only, and did not go through the surround processing circuitry.
All in all, this is a great component. The high quality of the amplifiers makes it suitable as a true all in one audiophile component, a genuine surprise to me in a receiver type component. I love the surround modes for both music and home theatre and the inclusion of the video processor allows for greater efficiency and convenience in my CRT based home theatre.

Product Weakness: No DVI input or output, need to connect these directly to monitor without going through the RX Z9
Product Strengths: Excellent Amplifier Quality, Surround Modes, GUI interface, Automatic Setup,

Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier:	See my system in Inmate Systems
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	See my system in Inmate Systems
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	See my system in Inmate Systems
Speakers:	See my system in Inmate Systems
Cables/Interconnects:	See my system in Inmate Systems
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	See My System in Inmate Systems
Room Size (LxWxH):	19 x 13 x 10-16
Room Comments/Treatments:	See my system in Inmate Systems
Time Period/Length of Audition:	Weeks
Other (Power Conditioner etc.):	See my system in Inmate Systems
Type of Audition/Review:	Product Owner

Product Weakness:	No DVI input or output, need to connect these directly to monitor without going through the RX Z9
Product Strengths:	Excellent Amplifier Quality, Surround Modes, GUI interface, Automatic Setup,