YSP-4000 Menus, Remote, and Beam Modes

There are four menus on the setup screen, only two of which you'll probably need to look at more than once or twice. I already addressed the Auto Setup menu above. The Memory menu is where you can load and save your audio settings. If you have run the automatic setup more than once, you can store each here. It would be nice to have a way of renaming each of these memory slots but you are stuck with Memory 1, 2, 3. The Language menu simply sets the language of the display. There are choices of English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Russian. The other menu has a little more depth to it so I'll go into them in more detail.

Manual Setup menu

The manual Setup menu has four options - Sound, Beam, Input, and Display.

Sound

From this menu you can adjust the Tone Control (adjust the treble or bass from -12dB to +12dB) Subwoofer Settings (which includes turning on and off the sub, setting the crossover (80, 100, 120Hz), setting the LFE level (from 0 to -20dB in 1dB steps), and setting the subwoofer distance in half foot units), and the Mute Level (either complete mute or -20dB). The Audio Delay can be adjusted if you're having lip syncing issues from 0-160 msec in 1 msec units as well as the Room EQ (which asks you to indicate if the unit is on the wall or a shelf and whether the room is Normal or Hi Echo). Dolby Digital and DTS Dynamic range has a min/std/max setting where min is the least dynamic range (most compression) is and max is the most dynamic range (least compression). I'd suggestion Max unless you are listening at night and don't want dramatic volume changes to wake up your neighbors. The TruBass was set as Mid for me which I didn't prefer. I adjusted that to Off rather than Mid or Deep. This setting is really more to boost the bass when you are not using a sub. The other option is to turn this off and raise the crossover to 120Hz, giving the sub even more of the bass duties and further taking the strain off the YSP-4000. You should definitely play with these options and see what works for you given your configuration and room.

Beam

Under the Beam menu, you are directly controlling how the sound is reflected around your room. If you decide to start messing with these settings you're going to want to make sure that you have them saved somewhere. Under the Setting Parameters option you can define the location of the unit and the shape of your room. Remember, the room may appear to be larger than it is if some of the sound is being absorbed by room treatments or furniture or is getting lost through openings. The Beam Adjustment option allows you to adjust the horizontal and vertical angles, the beam travel length, the focal length and the treble gain. This menu is really for those interested in eeking the most out of their YSP-4000. You can make these beam adjustments and then re-run the auto-setup with only the sound optimizer to balance everything out. Of course, you can just grab your handy SPL meter and tape measure and do the same thing. Honestly, there is about 1% of the population that wanted this menu and Yamaha gave it to them. For the other 99% of us, it isn't worth the time. Let the auto setup do this for you. Image Location simply adjusts the mix of the front left and right channels that gives the illusion of a central sound in the soundstage. If you are sitting off axis (not directly in front of the speaker) and will always do so, you'd want to adjust this toward your listening position.

Input

Under the Input Menu you can assign inputs, choose to have the YSP-4000 auto detect incoming digital signals upon power up or default to the last input used, adjust the input trim (where you lower or raise the volume level of each input from -6dB to 0dB), and rename inputs. With the rename function, you have up to 8 characters to assign any lower or uppercase letter or number or a variety of symbols (such as -,/,&). While 8 isn't a lot of characters to play with, it is great that you aren't relegated to choosing from a predetermined list which invariably won't have the choice you want. The XM Antenna Level menu simply displays the strength of the XM signal.

If you have HDMI inputs, you're going to want to spend a few minutes on the HDMI Set submenu. Here you can select to have the YSP-4000 play the audio coming from the HDMI inputs or to pass it through to the HDMI output from the Support Audio submenu. If you connect up your HDMI cables and get no sound, make sure you check this option. It might have been switched to "other" which is the pass-through mode. The Video Info. submenu just gives you information on what type of signal is coming in to the YSP-4000. This is a good menu to visit if you are having HDMI issues as any error messages will be displayed. The Up-Scaling submenu will allow you to select the resolution to which the analogue signals are upscaled to (480p, 720p, 1080i). Since the YSP-4000 does a better job of scaling than deinterlacing, I'd suggest starting with 1080i so that you'll get whatever deinterlacing your display can provide if your source is non-progressive (standard definition). Otherwise, you can send a progressive signal and have the YSP-4000 upscale it to whichever is the native resolution of your display. Of course, if you'd like it to leave the signal alone, you can select "through" (our preferred setting) which you would think would send the signal through unaltered (see below). The Aspect Ratio submenu allows you to send a signal through unaltered or to adjust it using the "Smart Zoom" options (fitting a 4:3 picture to your screen) or "16:9 Normal" (black bars on the sides for 4:3 signals). More than likely your display or your source (or both) already do this. Again, "Through" is probably your best bet. If you have an HDMI Control-capable display or other component (such as a Panasonic's with EZ Sync) you can turn on this option from the HDMI Set menu as well. This will allow, with no additional programming, your YSP-4000 remote to control your device.

Editor's Note - Upconversion for upconversion's sake
The YSP-4000 is not equipped to deal effectively with an interlaced 480 signal. It will not accept 480i over HDMI at all and if you decide to send it over analogue, it upconverts it to 480p (even if you select "Through"). Why is this a problem? Well, if your display "sees" a progressive signal coming in, it won't do anything to it except upscale it to the native resolution of the display. But if it sees an interlaced signal, it attempts to deinterlace the picture before scaling. It is in the deinterlacing where problems can occur and better electronics equate to a better picture. The YSP-4000 doesn't do deinterlacing particularly well and seems to provide little to no 2-3 pull-down correction to compensate for film to TV conversion. As a result, when it converts the signal from 480i to 480p, you will get just about every artifact and visual problem available. Your display will likely do a better job every time. For those of us that have spent our money on sources that have good deinterlacing - this is not a problem. Just set your source to provide a progressive signal and you'll be money. But for those that spent their hard earned cash on a high-powered display with great deinterlacing features, there is virtually no way to get that 480i signal to the display over HDMI. In this case, we recommend bypassing the video connection on the YSP-4000 and go directly to the display.

Remote Control

The remote for the YSP-4000 is very utilitarian. There are dedicated buttons for each of the inputs, surround modes, and controls. Honestly, it is like they had more buttons than they knew what to do with so they just gave everything its own. I'm all for that. The unit is extremely responsive and the remote worked well off axis from the YSP-4000. My only strike against the remote is the lack of backlighting and the fact that most of the buttons are the same shape (or similar). For instance, the surround modes are all on the numeric key buttons which are all the same size and evenly spaced. In the dark, you're going to have to find the Braille dot on the five or do a lot of counting to find the right button.

Beam Modes

You've got a few different beam mode options (5-Beam, 3-Beam+stereo, 3-Beam, My Surround, My Beam) and you're going to want to test them out for yourself. 5-Beam uses the walls to bounce the sound around the back of you while the 3-Beam modes bounce it just to the sides of you. The 3-Beam is designed to expand the "sweet spot" by giving you a direct center channel with reflected front channels (left and right). The +stereo mode further accentuates the front channels while still providing the reflected sounds. The My Surround mode is different in that it provides a surround experience without reflected sound. This is how the competitors of the YSP-4000 usually present a pseudo-surround experience. Essentially, you are getting all the advantages of the YSP and the competitor's technology in one box! That's pretty cool. The advantages of the My Surround mode is that it doesn't reflect sound so it is not affected (as much) by the shape of the room but the disadvantage is that is isn't quite as convincing as the 5-Beam set up in a properly shaped room. I found that in my less-than-optimal room, the My Surround mode actually sounded better than 5-Beam.

The My Beam mode is a bit different than the others. If you are in a loud environment and you are having trouble hearing the YSP-4000, you can point the remote at the YSP, hold down the My Beam button for 2 seconds while holding the remote steady, and then release. The YSP will send out a quick couple of tones to see where you are sitting. There is a mic in the remote that will register those tones and send the information back to the unit. The YSP-4000 will then direct the sound to your location in a single channel setup. You won't experience surround, but you will be able to hear the game while all your wife's friends are yapping about scrapbooking or whatever. The problem? For some reason it shuts down the subwoofer.