Yamaha RX-A830 7.2-Channel Network AVENTAGE Home Theater Receiver

I'm very impressed with this receiver. I don't have a lot of experience with expensive AV receivers, but am a musician and have run sound for live events for 15 years. I purchased an inexpensive set of floor standing speakers, JBL ES80 for $125 each when JBL had them on sale, and an Onkyo TX-8050 stereo receiver to power them as it had all the features and specs on paper that I wanted and was only $240. When I got everything and put it together the sound was pretty disappointing. I assumed it was because I got cheaper speakers, but it turns out I was wrong. A friend brought over an older yamaha 5.1 receiver, I think it was an RX-361 and everything sounded way better. At this point I realized I needed a receiver upgrade. I did a lot of reading and visited a few electronics stores before I landed on the aventage series from yamaha. When I got this from amazon it was an amazing close out price of $499, but after using it I know its worth much more. After I got everything hooked up I was blown away (almost literally) by how good it sounded. Even with the fairly inexpensive JBL speakers it sounds awesome. The highs are very crisp and well defined, the lows are punchy and not muddled at all. Comparing this to the inexpensive Onkyo, the difference was night and day, you would have thought I had different speakers plugged into each of them side by side. A more expensive Onkyo would probably be more comparable, but this yamaha is great. The network features are nice as well. I take advantage of the Pandora and Spotify apps, and they work nicely. The tablet app is also much better than any other brand I tried. The only complaint I would have about this unit would be that a lot of the on screen graphics look pretty bad, but this doesn't impair the functionality of the unit. Also, it does get software updates, so hopefully they will fix some of the GUI problems. If you are looking to upgrade sound quality this is a great choice for a receiver and I would buy another one if I had to do it again.

Yamaha gets right what many brands don't: sound quality comes first. In an age where modernized AVR's are increasingly dropping high quality parts to lower costs, it's great that Yamaha doesn't skimp out here. If you're going for ultra-high end, you'll want to move up the line a model or two for Dolby Atmos support, and if you're vinyl afficianado, this model doesn't have the phono input you're looking for, but otherwise, there's very little missing from this package for the vast majority of users--including audiophiles. Videophiles won't be disappointed either, with 4K pass through and fantastic resolution scaling that far exceeds that of most mid-priced LCDs on the market. The Yamaha UI and onscreen GUI is intuitive and easy to use, making for some of the most painless and quick AVR setup and customization I've ever had. There's certainly other good receivers out there on the market to consider, but the Aventage line has really stepped up the game in terms of quality, consistent sound, without any of the bugs or firmware quirks found in some competing brands. My biggest-yet-small complaint is Yamaha's iRadio tuner is clunky to set up, though realistically, I don't use it anyway due to AirPlay streaming from numerous other internet sources being so much simpler.

This is a very good working, high quality receiver. It makes most any speakers I have plugged into it sound well. I have yet to have any problems with Internet, HDMI, or anything else. There are a few things about it that could really use improvement though. Such as the graphics on the menus look very old and outdated compared to onkyo. The YPAO setup could really use improvement too, seeing as how it never seems to get my speakers set up quite right and it gets different results every time I do the test when I changed nothing. One thing that drives me crazy about it is that there are no cruiser/skip/menu buttons on the front of the receiver to I have to always use the remote to select a station or skip a song on pandora. The DSP setups also seem to be a little inconsistent and finicky. At this price point, the receiver should of came with wifi. But it is a very powerful, capable and nice sounding receiver. You have to read the directions to be able to work it properly. I would recommend this product.

Sound is very, very good. I had some back speakers I was looking at replacing because of the sound quality (or lack thereof). This receiver made me change my mind. I also like the Pandora integration though typing in the username/password is a pain. HOWEVER... Reliability seems to be lacking with their HDMI and HDCP implementation. On my first unit the HDMI ports 1 and 2 would no longer send any output to the TV, and then the TV would no longer display any images from the unit. This was after two weeks of use. This is a problem since you have to have a TV connected to adjust some of the settings. I went through all the standard things of trying different cables, different displays, different sources, and resetting the machine. Yamaha said it needed to be fixed and to mail it (at my expense) to a repair facility. Amazon replaced it. Now this new unit seems to also have failed with the TV no longer show any images from the unit after a month, and I'm passed the return time from Amazon. Will be going through the same things as before for Yamaha... and its Christmas time. It just makes me tired. Hopefully will get fixed soonest.

Yamaha hasn't made the RX-A830 for some years now. It belongs to their AVENTAGE 7.2-channel series. I had an RX-A820 that served me well for years. I loved it. Something internal like a speaker relay switch went on my unit and despite it's original cost of nearly $1,000 it's just not worth repairing Electronics anymore. So Receivers through Amazon was selling an A-830 for about $315. That was better than any deal I found on Ebay and with Amazon (and AMEX) one is very protected. Also pretty sure the unit I got from recievers was in better shape than any but the BEST I would get from ebay. Anyway after the inital surgery to replace all connections from 820 to 830 this Unit has been running like a champ. What I wanted was the SAME quality I had gotten from the A-820. The 830 has one or two minor features not found on the 820 but it is basically the same. Very impressed with Yamaha quality and with their Support. Also extremely pleased with "Recievers"--that is actually the name of the company. One HUGE plus with this Yamaha is that it will hook up to just about anything--with 8 HDMI's IN and 2 OUT, composit, componet, digital audio---everything but a preamp for a turntable. Cheap solution to that.

I purchased this receiver through Amazon a year ago and the order was fulfilled through Crawford Superstore. The receiver itself is fine, but began having issues. When I took it to a service shop to have warranty repairs done, I was informed that Crawford Superstore is not an authorized dealer and that because it was purchased through them they could not perform the warranty work. After speaking with Crawford, they confirmed that they are not an authorized dealer and refused to offer any assistance other than to tell me I should have purchased their extended warranty since the Yamaha manufacturer warranty didn't apply to their merchandise. I would have never purchased this unit through Amazon if I knew that they were selling unauthorized equipment that did not include the manufacturer's warranty. Luckily Yamaha has offered to stand by their product and authorize warranty work even though they are not required to. Lesson learned, I will never again purchase any high end electronics through Amazon without verifying who is actually selling the equipment.

If you use HDMI Control for Audio (control your receiver sound / power with one single remote) or (your tv turns off and on when you turn off the receiver / receiver turns off and on when you turn tv off) then read this review. Knowing what I know now I would not of bought this receiver / returned it as soon as I found out. So that's what the bulk of my review is about. When you have HDMI Control turned on then every single time you turn on your receiver it switches to your TV input (by default AV4). It doesn't matter if you turn ARC on or off. There is zero way to set a default. Google "Yamaha AV4" and you can see the thousands of people all with the same frustration. For whatever reason Yamaha doesn't have an option to turn this off. I've opened a ticket / support case with Yamaha over 2 weeks ago and they have ignored it. Zero response. The problem is every time you turn on your TV you have to wait 10 seconds, then hit the HDMI (or whatever) input button on your Yamaha remote. That's the only reason I have to keep my extra Yamaha remote. Once it's on then I can control everything with my 1 TV remote, but every single time the receiver comes on I have to grab my extra Yamaha remote and then press HDMI 1. I can't seem to teach my family to do this or have them understand why you have to. Why you can't default to HDMI 1 or turn off the auto switching I don't understand. My 6 year old Onkyo receiver I switched from had HDMI control and it never had this issue. This can be solved if you buy an expensive Harmony remote then program it to hit the HDMI button for you automatically, but I don't think I should have to spend a couple hundred dollars for a workaround for a serious design flaw. As far as a receiver goes I love all the other features. I primarily bought this to get ARC and AirPlay. I also bought it for Zone 2 Audio. All of which work really well alongside everything else you expect from a receiver. Airplay crashes every so often but it's not terrible. I love being able to stream music while the receiver is turned off. I can't speak for most of the features as I just use mine for Airplay, ARC, and primarily a HTPC. The mic auto setup is somewhat of a joke, where other brands (like my 6 year old Onkyo) uses Audessey EQ to actually equalize the sound it appears all Yamaha's does is set the sound levels and pick from "Large" or "Small" settings on the speakers. With that in mind though the sound is better than my old receiver through the exact same speakers so I can't complain. The only other reason I gave this 2 stars is because nowhere it was made clear the recent price drop was due to a new model on amazon. It would of been nice if somewhere it stated this has been replaced by a more recent model / discontinued. By the time I realized it, which was too late, the only thing I saw worth purchasing the new model for is 60hz 4K support. I would of purchased the new model, it would of been nice to know I wasn't getting an awesome Black Friday sale like I was led to believe, I was actually getting an outdated model of receiver that was replaced / discontinued.

This unit replaced an Onkyo TX-SR705 I purchased from Amazon in 2007. The Onkyo has always gotten pretty hot when in use and, more recently, I was getting some high pitched feedback through the speakers after long periods of continuous operation (i.e. football Sundays). The new Yamaha unit is a vast improvement over the Onkyo. I thought my B&W 680 series speakers were sounding a bit dull. The speakers now sound incredible with the new Yamaha receiver. Set up was fairly easy. I performed some manual adjustments after the YPAO calibration to perk up the bass. The Zone 2 connection was a slight disappointment as it is limited to an analog input. I already realized that the Wifi and Bluetooth connectivity was optional for this receiver. This unit does not support HDMI 2.0 and is not HDCP 2.2 compliant. This gave me some hesitation when I purchased it. I have noticed that 4k/UHD is picking up some serious steam and 4k content is becoming more available. I expect it will be at least a few years until I jump in to the 4K arena. I thought the $500 price tag was a steal for this AVENTAGE receiver. I hope that down the road, I will have another opportunity to pick up another closeout on an HDMI 2.0/HDCP 2.2 AVENTAGE receiver when the upgrade becomes more of a necessity. In the meantime, I will enjoy 1080P on my plasma TV with the spectacular sound from this Yamaha receiver.