Yamaha RX-V677 Review

The 600 Dollar Class in the AV-receiver world is highly competitive and most major electronics manufacturers wants to please the home theater fans with the best. Yamaha RX-V677 is the eagerly awaited successor to the RX-V675, and is a hot iron in the fire of this competitive price class. We have tested the 677 in detail for you.

Yamaha has kept the design of its RX-V line and once again presents us with a very neat home theater machine with a split front panel. The approximately 17 cm (6-3/4”) high AV receiver is adorned with a brilliant display with an underlying matte control section in a brushed steel look. This invites a comparison with the previous model, and it requires a close examination to detect any differences. New on the front is the Wi-Fi logo and the corresponding button to recognize that wireless network functionality is added. Otherwise, the fronts are alike as two peas in a pod.

Features n´ Stuff

Why change all the great things that have been proven to work well in the previous model? The large knob on the right of the front and the line of function keys in the display area make for a neat look and allow easy control of the device.

The four centrally located "SCENE buttons" are assigned to a specific input source and sound program, and the "Compressed Music Enhancer" can be selected by simply pushing a button. By default, the SCENE buttons have pre-stored settings, but any personal preferences can be easily reprogrammed.

The Yamaha AV receiver can play high-resolution audio formats such as FLAC and WAV with a sampling frequency up to 192 kHz without interruptions (Gapless-Playback) and also works with the Apple Lossless audio format. With network and AirPlay streaming, and the stream from HTC-Connect compatible smartphones, Yamaha RX-V677 makes sure that everyone is invited to the party.

The Japanese manufacturer integrates the music streaming services Spotify and JUKE Connect, providing millions of songs to listen to for subscribers. For even more entertainment you can listen to traditional and Internet radio with the vTuner and the integrated FM radio. Yamaha RX-V677 uses Burr-Brown 192kHz/24bit DACs for all channels to process the audio formats. Compressed formats such as MP3 can be optimized with the Compressed Music Enhancer.

According to your own personal taste, the sound can be adjusted manually or customized by different DSP presets. With the "Dialogue Lift" voices in the center speaker can be raised optimally in the center of the screen. "Dialogue Level Adjust" ensures a clear and comprehensible dialog. Thanks to DHCP, WPS Wi-Fi and Wireless Direct you´re able to integrate the receiver into the home network in seconds. If your iPhone is already in the home network, the Yamaha RX-V677 simply transmits the network data via "Wi-Fi AVR".

The RX-V677 In Practice

In everyday use, the Yamaha receiver is conspicuous by its excellent and convenient operation through various apps available for free for Android devices or iDevices. I particularly like the graphic display on tablets very much. With this, it is effortless to set up the RX-V677, rename inputs or listening zones as well as make acoustic settings.

Sound Quality

After a calibration with the supplied calibration microphone using the YPAO R.S.C., Yamaha´s bass sounded much more powerful and more open in the midrange. Multi-channel recordings of room-filling live performances can be quite thrilling to experience with the RX-V677.

Selected scenes from block buster action movies showed that the Yamaha is doing an excellent job at decoding the 1´s and 0´s. From deep, juicy, precise sounding bass to surround effect storms from all angles and corners and clearly understandable dialogue scenes with very fine resolved details, this powerful receiver offers everything that may thrill the soul of a home cinema fanatic.