Yamaha RX-V650

We run this amp at a my company, it is connected to 5 "turbo sound" speakers and a Jamo THX subwoofer.

The room is quiet large, seats about 60 plus serving area.

The setup is used for functions, watching sports, and the occasional x box night. So far no movies so i can't comment about its movie decoding capabilities.

Ideally a larger amp should have been selected for this room but it does give a good insight to capabilities of lower end models in higher demanding areas.

Running:

Gaming, handles it nicely, with the x box it did a decent job of creating a stadium environment when playing 4 player soccer match, has also the power to drown out the obvious arguments that insure.

The Ps2 sing star worked well with the big long brassy introduction very well handled and very clean. Voice was clear also, although the singers were not :)

Am interested in its Dolby capabilities but unfortunately will not find out until the ps3 is connected later this month..

Music (7ch mode), overall the setup is quiet nice, it handles background music no problems with sound quality being very clean. Functionality is a plus here because it is quiet simple for a semi confessed amp guy to look at the front and to find and chose what is needed without the need to consult the manual.

This is actually very important for us as techs come and go and functions happen infrequently which means you can't get to know the amp and the manual is lost many moons ago..

The negatives. At only 95W per channel you can tell, when the amp is in the loud range (+db) it has a tendency to cut out and shut itself down.

Most of the time it will come back up within 5 seconds and a small turn down of the volume can keep it running for longer periods (-2db is fine).

This looks to be mostly heat related but its location is alone and almost ideal, and probably much better than most home users could offer.

Also the front two speakers are slightly distorted in this range, I suspect a combination of speaker and amp as there is a hint of distortion before the extreme ends of this amp.

Layout is simple which is nice for a change. The silver model we have looks very clean, well made and expensive. The rear arrangement is also very simple, I run a Denon 3808 at home at its gets a bit confusing at the back with this one looking much less scary. Also the Denon took much more effort to setup than this model but in fairness to the both the functionalities are worlds apart.

Also we use this unit for basic video switching via s-video. It works very well here with no problems as of yet.

I gave it a 9 out of 10 for this category of amplifiers.

At first sight the Yamaha RX-V650 unit is a bit intimidating owing to its sheer size. My primary selection criteria was sound quality and power hotly followed by decoding facilities. I must admit that I went into my dealer wanting to buy a Denon AV1905 but was told that Denon had discontinued it so I plumped for my second choice which was the Yammy.

Having now set the whole rig up I am not disappointed. A nice touch is the use of the supplied little microphone that you connect to the amp for the initial set up. Once you start the automatic set up going lots of tones emanate from the speakers and the mic sends messages back to the amp that calibrates itself according to your romm and speaker environment - very clever.

The opening 'Round the room' THX sound at the start of 'Pearl Harbour' convinced me that I'd made a good choice of AV Amp. Quite stunning and very powerful. At this point I'd better describe my whole set up.

The TV is a 32" JVC widescreen that has a great sound on its own with built in Pro-Logic 11 and subwoofer. A nice feature on the TV is its ability to suppress all internal speakers if external amplification is to be connected. The DVD is a Toshiba SD-420E and finally an Aiwa VCR completes the source modules. KEF 2005.2 speakers and 250watt sub complete the package.

The amp has loads of audio and video connectors at the back catering for analogue, digital and optical in/outs. At first the back looks a bit daunting but everything is clearly marked and easy to understand. Speaker connections are best achieved using banana plugs that simply push into their respective sockets.

A good tip from my supplier was to connect the LR audio outs on my DVD player to the CD LR audio inputs on the amp and select CD on the amp handheld when playing ordinary music CDs. The digital out on the DVD player still connects to the DVD digital IN on the amp for DVD playing.

It is quite easy to select any one of the 29 sound stages but it is equally easy to get confused about the best one to select - trial and error eventually helped me pick the sound stage that appealed to me.

Overall I am very pleased with my choice and would recomend this Yammy to anyone.