Denon avr 888 vs yamaha rxv 663?

Question

Iam lookin for an audiophilist help, ok well this is the story. I bought the Denon Avr 888 From Dakmart and was very excited for it to arrive but when it arrived it wouldn't power it up, so i contacted dakmart and they said they would contact denon because it was still under warrenty and denons refurbisher united radio would fix it. i was cool with that so i had to wait for and ups shipping lable email bought it took a week for me to get it so i got a little upset and told the guy at dakmart i would like a refund, he said fine he needed to contact united radio to have them ship the unit to dakmart and they would refund me, so in the mean time i went out and found the yamaha rxv 663. so to make a long story short i got the yamaha dakmart didn't contact united radio in time and the denon is being sent back to me. so my question is which is a better built reciever, i like the future proofing of the yamaha with decodin of dts hd and dobly hd but i am running a ps3 so i am not really using it. i like the idea of the presence speakers event though i havn't tried it yet. now for the denon sense it was broke when i first recieved it i havnt had time to audition it but i like the idea audyessey and i am assunming the video up conversion is better on the denon because it has the dcdi chip compared to what ever chip yamaha uses. so which is a better build, which gives better sound, basicly which one should i keep and which one should i take back, they cost me the same amount of money 450.00

Answer 1

Both are good units for the money, but don't ask for audiophiles to agree. They are in an esoteric world all their own.

I've been using Yamaha receivers with Topart including presence speakers for many years. I am convinced they are a useful addition.

I wouldn't be too sure that Denon upscales standard definition better. ABT, DCDi and Reon all do an excellent job. I believe Yamaha uses ABT.

Audyssey does a pretty good job. I own a real time analyzer and a sound pressure meter that I use for room calibration in my work. Testing the prefab set-up program performance from Yamaha and Denon (Pioneer Elite and Marantz too) I've found the set up to be pretty good on all of them. There are limitations of course, but I'd say that preprogrammed calibration is far better than no calibration at all.

The Yamaha company is stronger than Denon. Yamaha is a music company above all else. They make excellent instruments and excellent electronics. One of the reasons they sound so good is because they develope and manufacture their own sound processors and related chips, and they have proven to be very good at it. Sound Blaster, the king of sound cards, earned their distinction in the early days while running on Yamaha chips. When Yamaha designs a new product, they involve people from every area, including the musical instrument engineers. I believe that's why their receivers have always been top performers in their price ranges.