Yamaha’s AV range is an impressive achievement in clarity and depth for both surround cinema sound and music, but does the RXV679 live up to its predecessor’s high standards?
Well the first good sign comes in the form of great power. The RXV679 from Yamaha is one of the higher spec models from their 2015 range and is certainly a wonderful piece of kit. Boasting an impressive 90W per channel at 8ohms it’s capable of pushing audio through almost any kind of speaker at their top potential.
The RXV679 offers 4K upscaling for making your movies even more amazing.
The design of this amp is classic yet robust and the inclusion of the Anti-Virbation heat sinks have been borrowed from their Aventage (RXA) range which gives a much more stable tone for all types of audio running through it.
It’s future-ready too, with added 4K upscaling and the use of 6 HDMI ports, 3 of which are HDCP 2.2 for when you plug in a 4K device such as a BT Vision 4k box or the upcoming new UHD Blu-ray player format currently in development. A true 60 fps 4K image from a PC is also a great addition to any computer fanatic’s system for great picture as well as great sound.
Connectivity options come in the form of Airplay and Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi to give a huge array of available streaming options – for the musical connoisseurs as well as movie fanatics. There are a huge number of phono connections on the back of the amp for legacy equipment like CD players or separate streamers (4 to be precise) as well as having 2 optical inputs and 2 coaxial inputs for digital sources.
Yamaha are well known for their impressive sound processing chips and the Cinema DSP in this unit cleverly adjusts itself to the correct mode to match your speaker configuration. Speaking of which, you can also calibrate the surround sound element accurately with their auto calibration microphone included, although we generally prefer a human ear for finding that really sweet spot (feel free to ask us for advice on speaker calibration, we can even do it for you).
Most other amps in this price range have Dolby Atmos or DTS-X capabilities but the RXV679 has neither – you’ll have to look toward Yamaha’s RXA range for this. It’s probably more comparable to the Sony STRDN1060 but to be honest there’s a lot of competition of impressive sounding amps in this price range.
So if it’s impressive sound performance that you’re after, I can’t fault this amp. It’s impressive and the smart build quality only adds to this, not to mention the vast range of connectivity options available making it a pretty versatile source of entertainment too.
Author – Andrew, Weybridge store
