reviewsTes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized
7 MAXIMUMPC DECEMBER 2006
T
he consumer electronics industry
is finally beginning to deliver on the
much-ballyhooed concept of conver-
gence. Consider Yamaha’s new RX-V2700:
This high-end A/V receiver will accommo-
date every CE device you can think of. It
also features a USB port for MP3 players
and 10/100Mbps Ethernet for connecting to
a network. Own an iPod? Drop an extra 100
bucks for the custom iPod dock—it’s worth
every penny.Yamaha’s engineers didn’t just slap these
features into the RX-V2700’s 38-pound
chassis—they conceived of technologies
that enhance the media pumping from your
PC, streaming box, MP3 player, or iPod. The
Compressed Music Enhancer algorithm, for
example, re-infuses MP3, WMA, and other
audio files with much of the psycho-acoustic
vibe that gets stripped out during compres-
sion. The analog signals from composite,
component, and S-video sources can be
upscaled to 480p, 720p, or 1080i and output
through an HDMI 1.2a connection.
The receiver has such an abundance of
inputs and outputs, settings, and features
that setting it up could be intimidating.
Fortunately, Yamaha has developed an
intuitive GUI (displayed on your TV) and a
full-featured remote control that render the
basics exceedingly simple. (OK, we’ll fess
up to cracking the 150-page user manual
to figure out some of the receiver’s more
advanced features.)You also
use the GUI
and remote to
browse and
select the con-
tents of a docked iPod, a flash drive
plugged into the front USB port, audio
from shared folders on a networked PC
(via Microsoft’s Windows Media Connect
2.0), and podcasts and Internet radio sta-
tions (via an Internet connection to the
Vtuner database).
DRM issues do spoil the party some-
what: You can’t stream protected audio
files from your PC, and you can’t even
access unprotected tunes stored on a
connected MP3 player’s media parti-
tion—songs must be stored on the data
partition. And why can’t you stream video
over Ethernet? The remote control, mean-
while, is limited to browsing, starting, and
stopping tracks.
None of these restrictions apply to an
iPod, because Yamaha’s YDS-10SL feeds
remote-control instructions to the player and
accesses its analog audio and video outputs
via the dock. This deprives you of the receiv-
er’s exquisite 192KHz/24-bit Burr-BrownDAC on the audio side, but we’ve never
seen the iPod’s low-res video look so good.
The RX-V2700 features an improved
version of Yamaha’s Parametric Room
Acoustic Optimizer, a tool we first encoun-
tered with the company’s YSP-800 Digital
Sound Projector. To calibrate the RX-
V2700 and your speakers for your specific
listening environment, set the omni-direc-
tional mic at ear level in your normal sitting
position; plug the mic into the receiver’s
front panel; and press a
couple buttons on the
remote. The YPAO takes
care of the rest, including
testing the polarity of your
speakers to ensure they’re
wired properly. If you don’t
like the results, you can
override any of its choices.
The day you run out of
inputs to the RX-V2700 is
the day you’ve acquired
too many toys (or too many
Monster cables—the opti-
cal jacks on the back are
so close together that we
couldn’t insert two of these
cables next to each other
because their oversized
plugs wouldn’t fit.) In addi-
tion to the aforementioned
PC-centric devices, theYamaha RX-V2700
A/V Receiver
Now this is a powerhouse entertainment system
The RX-V2700’s front-panel display is too small to be useful,
but we dig the TV GUI.You’ll find front-panel inputs and a
few controls behind this drop-down
door, but we found ourselves wish-
ing we could choose each playback
source with one button.INS AND OUTS
AMPLIFIER 140 watts x 7 channels, 0.04% THD
AUDIO Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital EX,
CODECS Dolby Pro Logic, Dolby Pro Logic
II, Dolby Pro Logic IIx, DTS, DTS-
ES, DTS Neo:6, DTS 96/24, Neural
Surround (for XM), Yamaha Virtual
Cinema DSP, Yamaha Silent Cinema
(for headphones)SpecS
hDMI 1.2A Three inputs, one output
COMPOnEnt Three inputs, monitor output
vIDEO
COMPOSItE Five inputs, two outputs, monitor out,
AnD S-vIDEO zone 2 (composite only)
DIgIt AL AUDIO^ Three coaxial inputs, four optical inputs, two optical outputsAnALOg AUDIO^ Phono, CD, CD-R, MD/tape, video (5),
InPUtS multichannel, subwoofer) MD/tape, CD/R, DVR/VCR (2)(front, center, surround,
AnALOg AUDIO Front, center, surround, subwoofer,
OUtPUtS (RECORD) surround back, presence(^) SPEAkER Front, center, surround, surround back,
(^) COnnECtIOn presence/zone 2, zone 3
(^) FROnt-PAnEL A/v Composite and S-video, analog audio,
InPUtS/OUtPUtS optical digital audio inputs, headphones
bACk-PAnEL Two inputs, two outputs
IR REMOtES
OthER iPod Dock, Ethernet, USB, XM antenna, control outputs (2)