Considering the price of some mid range AV receivers, it is safe to assume that your average AV enthusiast will be more than happy with a £500 unit.
At that price they tick a lot of boxes and comply with the majority of current AV standards, such as HDR, HLG, Dolby Vision etc etc. but that’s the tip of the iceberg. What if you’re not an average AV enthusiast, what if you’re more of an AV connoisseur, and enjoy your movie nights like a fine bottle of wine? Then a sub £500 unit just won’t cut the mustard, unfortunately.
Well Yamaha have addressed this troublesome issue and gifted us with the Aventage range, fewer bells and whistles in some cases but with a more refined sound for those of you after that “Je ne sais quoi”.
I’m here to discuss the new 2017 RXA2070, second in line for the flagship throne just underneath the mighty RXA3070, the 2070 is nothing short of a monster both inside and out. Coming in at a whopping 37.5lbs, it’s a little on the larger side at just over 18 inch’s long and around 8 inch’s tall, it may require some forward planning when it comes to housing this machine.
Premium components and sophisticated processing come together to make the Yamaha RXA2070 a powerful force with both music and movies.
It’s not all wasted space, inside there is a 155W amplifier that drives 9.2 channels as well as two ESS SABRE 9006AS 8-channel DACs and of course has full support of Dolby Atmos and DTSX object based surround, as well as Bluetooth, Apple Airplay and of course Yamaha’s brilliant Music cast, allowing you to introduce speakers around the home and control them from one dedicated application.
On top of that is Yamaha’s Cinema DSP which uses a very clever algorithm which helps create an incredible 3D sound from any source which is pumped through it using motion tracking technology the RXA2070 will fill in any Audio gaps.
Set up is incredibly simple using the YPAO-RSC microphone that is supplied, which is designed to calibrate your system, measure the room and layout and assign the perfect sound to each individual speaker no matter what configuration you have, this can of course be skipped, or even used as a rough set up, and can then of course be professionally calibrated based on your preferences.
We set the RXA2070 up in our demonstration room with some monitor Audio Radius speakers and plumbed in our Oppo Blu-ray player into one of the 8 HDMI inputs, our TV of choice was the Samsung 65Q8C which should certainly do the 2070 some justice!
We’re lucky enough to have endless amounts of Demo content sent to use from the likes of DOLBY or DTS. I opted for our latest 4K Dolby Atmos disc which features clips from various films, all recorded in Atmos, a perfect test. The first clip is a rather cheesy but impressive explanation of what Atmos is, now we have had this disc running on various receivers and I rarely hear it sound like this (with the exception of last years RXA3060).
The spatial awareness is utterly incredible, almost giving the illusion our tiny little demonstration room was twice the size. Some cheaper units can be almost suffocated in smaller environments, but the RXA2070 took it all in its stride, of course it would sound much better in a more suitable environment.
To really get an understanding on this unit, it really does need to be heard to be believed. So why not give us a call and arrange a demonstration and be your own judge, we’ll even provide the tea or coffee!
Click to find out more about the Yamaha RXA2070.
Author: Garrett, Plymouth Store
