RX-V2500 Listening Tests - Music and Movies

Our prior review of the RX-V2400 detailed some subjective tests for that model and the evaluation of this unit agrees with our previous assessment. This receiver is clear and powerful. Even when feeding it analogue 5.1 sources from the Denon DVD-3910, the noise floor on this unit was extremely low. For a receiver at this price point to be able to drive a pair of 4-ohm, 88dB sensitivity reference speakers tells you something about the quality that goes into Yamaha products.

The solid bass lines of Track 12 really exercised the system in general and I couldn't help but crank up the music until the Yamaha was pushing over 95dB at the listening position. After a while I stopped and noticed the automatic fan mode had engaged. I felt the top of the unit and noted that it was warm, but not hot, to the touch. While not surprising at all, just be sure to have some ventilation around the top and rear of the unit as you would with any high performance amplifier. Keep in mind also that larger rooms demand higher continuous power output levels to achieve the same listening levels of a smaller room, so if you plan on cranking this receiver to insane levels for long periods of time in a large room, you may want to consider supplementing your system with a robust dedicated amplifier.

I next turned up Track 7 "I Can't Tell You Why" of the Eagles: Hell Freezes Over DTS DVD. Vocals sounded natural and uncompressed and the drums had a very smooth sound that arrived at the listening position unimpeded, as I expected. There were no surprises as I moved on to Track 13 "Life in the Fast Lane" and listened to Don Henley's lead vocals rough their way through the song while Joe Walsh creatively nursed his guitar to speak. Overall, multi-channel music sounded natural and convincing even at high SPLs.

Two-Channel
I listened to a host of my favorite 2-channel selections, including James Taylor's Greatest Hits and some relative unknowns such as Laura Story's Indescribable , which has become one of my recent favorites. Add to these selections tracks from Steely Dan, Seal and Toto and you have a well-rounded suite of listening material.

Using Yamaha's Pure Direct mode I was able to really experience what the RX-V2500's amplifiers were capable of putting out. Pure Direct puts the unit in 2-channel bypass mode with no sub output. With my main speakers set to Large the Yamaha's amp was working hard, driving full range frequencies to both of my 4-ohm RBH 1266-LSE mains. This receiver can play loud and was able to accurately reproduce bass transients in a way that was remarkable for a receiver priced just over $1000. The overall sound was capable of being precise and detailed while still retaining the ability to power through demanding material.

I wanted to give the Yamaha RX-V2500 amplifiers a thorough workout by driving all of its channels at fairly high SPLs. Placing a few select DVDs into the DVD player, I sat back to watch some high-impact movie scenes. Remember that for these tests, the Yamaha had configured all of my speakers to "Large", including the surrounds, so the amplifier was sending full range signal to all the speakers, including the low frequency information. The only sound going to the subwoofer was the dedicated LFE track. I engaged the Presence Channels and turned off the EQ for these tests as well.

In addition to playing my all-time favorite film, The Fifth Element, I popped in the newly-released Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope to see how it sounded coming through the Yamaha. I wasn't disappointed. When explosions and laser fire weren't arcing through the speakers, John Williams' score was certain to be bellowing through on all sides. These movies do a great job at surrounding the listener and really pulling you into the action. With Yamaha's presence channels activated, the experience was, quite literally, lifted onto the big screen as we watched the films on a 100" diagonal Stewart Filmscreen Studiotek 130 powered by Yamaha's LPX-510 LCD projector. Turn on one of the 70mm Cinema DSP modes and you may never again watch a movie in your home without Yamaha DSP!

For some additional explosive action, I continued my listening sessions with Farscape: The Complete Third Season . Farscape is, in my opinion, one of the greatest series ever to arrive on television. The quality of the show is equaled by the soundtrack and score which came through with flying colors, at times audibly transforming my listening room into the living ship that is one of the primary Farscape sets.

Back when I had my RX-V3000, I would use some of the attack scenes in Pearl Harbor to demonstrate what the Presence Channels and Yamaha's Cinema DSP could do. I felt it appropriate to review the same scenes with the RX-V2500 to see how they fared and if my experience was as dramatic as it had been with the older receiver. I was not disappointed. In fact, I was again blown away by the stark contrast between standard 5.1 content and a 5.1+2 mix with Cinema DSP. For those utilizing a front projection system, Cinema DSP simply makes the movie going experience more epic with a wider soundstage and a great illusion of being part of the action. In addition, for those of you with an elevated screen, you can utilize the RX-V2500's Dialogue Lift to place some of the center channel content into the presence channels. The result is dialogue and action that is more aligned with the projector screen (rather than below it). When utilizing Dialogue Lift I actually preferred to engage the YPAO EQ into "Front" mode so that the Presence channels were EQ'ed to more closely match the timbre of my main speakers.

For movies I consistently found the General Cinema DSP mode to enhance the presentation without becoming distracting or artificially corrupting the surround track.

Editorial Note: Presence Channels
The Yamaha RX-V2500 allows you to select either Presence channels or Back Surround channels, not both. Even if you have an external amp, there is no facility for providing preamp outputs to both Presence and Back Surrounds at the same time. It would be great to see Yamaha to allow for both (even if one set is not amplified) in future iterations of this model.