All my life I've wanted a home theater system. When I saw a YHT-797 on Amazon.com for a great price, I jumped at the offer. The system offered many key features I wanted included wood speakers, a 5.1 setup, dual drivers in each speaker, excellent frequency response, and Airplay (a feature I will get to in a minute). Music equipment is certainly an area that one can obsess on; Yamaha sells a $2,000 receiver as well. With only a Wii and a streaming BluRay player, I had no need for fifty inputs, or 7.1 sound.
The sound quality is excellent. The YPAO microphone does a superb job setting up the speakers, and the sound is quite natural. The bass is just round enough, warm, and round, certainly very pleasing to the ear. The satellite speakers also have a great frequency response and sound good in their own right. The center speaker is excellent for speech; the first movie I tested was "The Dark Knight", and Bane sounded much clearer right away.
The sound quality was also quite high in 5.1 stereo, with natural stereo separation. Many of the DSP presets are cheesy (not unexpected), but since I don't use them there is no worry. As stated, the sound quality is very high, certainly better than one would expect from a $800 HTiB system.
Physical setup was relatively painless although the "dual-keyhole" design truthfully prevents speaker brackets from being used. As I rent and my landlord already has speaker brackets up, I hung them on brackets anyway, although I can see why Yamaha doesn't recommend this. I didn't use the supplied speaker wire, and used banana connectors. Easy, easy, easy.
AirPlay works GREAT. Some reviews have incorrectly stated that you can't turn on the amplifier with a wireless device. This is only true if you keep the default setting regarding power via a network control. Turn this on, and you will be able to accomplish this. I LOVE this feature possibly more than anything on the amplifier. However, I did run into strange bugs, which I will detail as I was able to fix them. First, the system ships with V13 firmware, which is not up-to-date. If you update your firmware, I highly recommend that you do it via a USB drive rather than a network device, as the network update is very sensitive. Second, I had difficulty having all my family's iPhones and devices communicate with the amplifier. Four hours of troubleshooting and this was resolved by resetting the router (it was a router issue, not a amplifier issue, so no demerit there).
OK, you say, ANYONE can say in a review that it is awesome, they love it, it's perfect. I will repeat, this is a great system for the money, and it truly does sound great. However, in my OCD quest to read all reviews on this system, I will address common criticisms of the unit and my responses.
- The on-screen graphics look like they come from a Colecovision and the menu blinks each time you push a button.
Yes, the graphics are quite outdated, you can't display artwork or video via Airplay, but I just answer this with "I don't care". 99% of the time I don't even have my television on, so why would I care about graphics? Once again, sound quality is excellent, so why would I care about graphics quality in a receiver?
- You have to connect to Airplay via an Ethernet port.
Yes, you do have to connect via Ethernet. Yamaha never claimed otherwise.
- The remote is confusing and has lots of tiny buttons.
Yes, the remote is a bit much - but it works fine when you get used to it.
- There is no Pandora built-in.
EVERY device seems to have this, iPhone, BluRay, Roku, etc. etc. etc. So I'm not bothered that one does not.
- There aren't enough HDMI ports.
Once again, Yamaha is pretty clear about what you get. If you want more, buy a receiver that has more built-in.
I acknowledge these limitations may be detrimental to some, but not all. They do not bother me. I care predominantly about sound quality, and this unit delivers quite well in this department.
And, now for a few minor gripes of my own.
The default setting on the speakers requires you to go through an advanced setup and change the ohms from 8 to 6 (or less). This seems odd as the speakers are 6 ohm speakers. Why are they not set up this way from the beginning?
Some of the other settings are useless or counterintuitive as well. "ECO" mode is stupid. (Note: ECO mode on any product seems to be unbelievably stupid). It cuts out power and sound quality and does little to save energy. Why is network power-on disabled from the start?
An A/D converter for the component video inputs would have been nice. Also, it would be nice if Yamaha would allow you to re-program some buttons on the remote, as one or two key buttons did not work with my BluRay player.
My package was missing the FM transmitter. Amazon credited $10 for this omission. AM radio reception was pretty weak, no matter what I did with the antennae, but with an iPhone and a radio app, who cares? Streaming quality is way better, and it is way more convenient to utilize my iPhone for this function, so once again I don't really care about this.
In summary, I know people love to fight and praise the religion of their sound system. I'm no different. I hate BOSE systems with a passion. I love the way Yamaha amplifiers sound (very natural), the price is outstanding, and Yamaha customer support is legendary.
As I stated many times, you will NOT be disappointed with sound quality. However, read all the specifications for the special features carefully and make sure this is exactly what you want. It works for me, but if you were expecting built-in wireless Internet, you have rocks in your head.
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