Yamaha MX-A5200 11-Channel Power Amplifier Review & Comments

@SonOfSJ
If you're happy with the sound from the 2010 then save the money and keep it, I'd only swap it out for a model with newer formats / Hdmi revisions ect.
The Yamaha 5000 and 5200 are solid, dependable, high quality items that have been well reviewed and as you say vouched for by owners on here.
@ian34g I would be curious to see how a pretty high-grade power amplifier like the Yamaha MX-A5200 would do in my kitchen. I'm not denying for a single moment that it would be a substantial step up over my existing eight-year-old Yamaha RX-A2010, but would I really need the improvement, given that my existing machine still has a lot more power that I never use, maxing out the volume control at -15dB for films? Sure, if I had the chance to make the comparison I would listen with open ears, but given that I have to be very careful with my money, I'm not convinced that it would a cost-effective upgrade, for me, compared with saving to buy a bigger television for my parlour. If I did ever get the chance to listen to this Yamaha power amplifer, or similar, I'd be hoping for an increase in clarity and dynamics which would come from the greater headroom that it would possess over my existing 2010. Then I would have to judge whether the increase in performance in my kitchen is worth the extra money.

Since I started buying AV stuff in 2008 every time that I've bought a new item (nearly always without seeing or hearing it first) I've noticed an increase in performance over the previous item. The only time that that did not happen was when, very rarely, I auditioned a new subwoofer. I had, and still have, the Tannoy TS-12 subwoofer, at that time it was the only one that I had. I was considering buying the Paradigm Seismic 110 subwoofer, which was thrice the price of my Tannoy, but at the time I did have the money. So I took my Tannoy along to the shop that was selling the Paradigm, and was able to compare the two. To my ears, there wasn't much of a difference, or certainly not enough of a difference to justify the purchase. So I kept my Tannoy, and in time I bought two more!

As it happens, I wouldn't have to consider changing my existing Yamaha RX-A2010 receiver because of changing formats or HDMI revisions, because since my kitchen has such a low ceiling I really can't have Atmos speakers, and my blu-ray player has twin HDMI outputs so that if necessary it would send the newfangled HDMI video signal direct to the television while sending only the audio signal to my Yamaha.
 
You'll have to find a suitable amplfiier with 1v input, as yamaha av amps don't have high voltage on the pre outs


The power between your 2010 and this 5200 amplifier is about the same, 60-70w

So not worth bothering. That iota looks to be more powerful, check it has 1v input though.
 
That iota is 110w per channel, all channels driven. 1.2v input.

So twice as powerful. With three times as much uf capacitance.

I can't find voltage spec on your yamaha pre
 
@ian34g I would be curious to see how a pretty high-grade power amplifier like the Yamaha MX-A5200 would do in my kitchen. I'm not denying for a single moment that it would be a substantial step up over my existing eight-year-old Yamaha RX-A2010, but would I really need the improvement, given that my existing machine still has a lot more power that I never use, maxing out the volume control at -15dB for films? Sure, if I had the chance to make the comparison I would listen with open ears, but given that I have to be very careful with my money, I'm not convinced that it would a cost-effective upgrade, for me, compared with saving to buy a bigger television for my parlour. If I did ever get the chance to listen to this Yamaha power amplifer, or similar, I'd be hoping for an increase in clarity and dynamics which would come from the greater headroom that it would possess over my existing 2010. Then I would have to judge whether the increase in performance in my kitchen is worth the extra money.

Since I started buying AV stuff in 2008 every time that I've bought a new item (nearly always without seeing or hearing it first) I've noticed an increase in performance over the previous item. The only time that that did not happen was when, very rarely, I auditioned a new subwoofer. I had, and still have, the Tannoy TS-12 subwoofer, at that time it was the only one that I had. I was considering buying the Paradigm Seismic 110 subwoofer, which was thrice the price of my Tannoy, but at the time I did have the money. So I took my Tannoy along to the shop that was selling the Paradigm, and was able to compare the two. To my ears, there wasn't much of a difference, or certainly not enough of a difference to justify the purchase. So I kept my Tannoy, and in time I bought two more!

As it happens, I wouldn't have to consider changing my existing Yamaha RX-A2010 receiver because of changing formats or HDMI revisions, because since my kitchen has such a low ceiling I really can't have Atmos speakers, and my blu-ray player has twin HDMI outputs so that if necessary it would send the newfangled HDMI video signal direct to the television while sending only the audio signal to my Yamaha.

Had a look at that iota? Or what about emotiva? There's also a jbl 7ch amp also.
 
I'm using the phone at the minute so I cant see your signature but if it's your kitchen system and I take it you have a main setup elsewhere, then I think you've answered your own question. How much critical listening can you do in the kitchen? Again I haven't seen it so your kitchen could well be a palace!
If you can find a dealer that offers home trails of power amps that would not only let you find out if the power amp route is worth it for a kitchen but also try different power amps to see if you can hear a difference.
Not always easy to find that trial though.
 
I'm using the phone at the minute so I cant see your signature but if it's your kitchen system and I take it you have a main setup elsewhere, then I think you've answered your own question. How much critical listening can you do in the kitchen? Again I haven't seen it so your kitchen could well be a palace!
If you can find a dealer that offers home trails of power amps that would not only let you find out if the power amp route is worth it for a kitchen but also try different power amps to see if you can hear a difference.
Not always easy to find that trial though.

tip for you mate, flip your phone into landscape mode and you can see signatures 👍🏻
 
I'm using the phone at the minute so I cant see your signature but if it's your kitchen system and I take it you have a main setup elsewhere, then I think you've answered your own question. How much critical listening can you do in the kitchen?
I couldn't list everything in my signature (when you can see it again), but as it happens I listen much more in to films in the kitchen than in the parlour, or in my bedroom system for that matter. I use my parlour system only for special occasions maybe once a fortnight, upon which I'm reminded that yes, it is overall quite a bit better than my kitchen or bedroom systems, both for picture and sound. But hey, I'm greedy and lazy, so often I like to eat as I watch a film, or even to lie down ...

Again I haven't seen it so your kitchen could well be a palace!
It would be if it were tidy, which is certainly isn't at the moment! This is how the chairs in the kitchen look, facing the television which is just out of shot. So I use a chair in the front row if I'm eating at the table. If I'm not eating but I can't be bothered going to the parlour, I use the second row of more comfortable seats, of which the middle seat (which has now been replaced) expands into a recliner!
Image079_269.0_kB_11-May-2014_21h09.jpg


If you can find a dealer that offers home trails of power amps that would not only let you find out if the power amp route is worth it for a kitchen but also try different power amps to see if you can hear a difference.
Not always easy to find that trial though.
That's the point. So I might have to buy blind, or deaf, and maybe send the item back if I don't like the item. However, it's quite some way into the future for me though: my priority, when I next get some money which won't be until December 2021, would be to get a bigger television for the parlour.
 
@mb3195 There's some very impressive stuff in your signature!

Thanks mate, not sure if you've seen my build thread
(Outbuilding dedicated cinema room 7.4.6), but I've gone through a fair bit of equipment to get to where I am now, my new 4 channel Gen3 is arriving on Friday and I'm hoping to change my atmos speakers to Arendals new height range when they are finally released sometime in the summer.

I've also got a Sony 65" A1 in my lounge and a Sony 65" ZD9 in my living room.
 
back on the laptop, bigger screen. I've noticed I'm needing reading glasses these last few months but not been able to see ( I'll get me coat ) the optician to try bifocal contacts.
It's good to see photos to get a sense of size/scale and in that size room the Yamaha would have no trouble whatsoever, but what configuration do you run? If no Atmos ect you would'nt need an 11 channel amp and would be better with less channels or at least something like the Emotiva's that you can chop and change amp units as you expanded the system, if you ever do.
I had a mid to high end Onkyo Avr before moving to the Yamaha pro/pre combo and unsuprisingly the difference was huge. It was from a £1500 ish Avr to £5000 of separates. Still even though I was getting a huge discount on the processor and Amp I was buying blind with just the online reviews to guide me.
At that time the Yamaha combo had been awarded the best high end equipment by EISA and again very well reviewed pretty much everywhere.
I currently use the Amp with an Arcam processor as I wanted to try Dirac. Someone has said on these threads that they wished Yamaha would embrace a Dirac type of sound processing, I cant see this happening as Yamaha are too entrenched in their own format.
But I agree with what he said the Yamaha high end equipment has higher build quality compared to Arcam ect but is let down by not having as good a room correction software the Dirac and RP ect options provide, especially with the bass but that can be sorted with a antimode or minidsp.
I personally believe you would notice an improvement with a power amp, I certainly did but only you can answer if it would be worth it.?
I'm sure thats the cast of Still Game, wheres me glasses.
 
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back on the laptop, bigger screen. I'm noticed I'm needed reading glasses these last few months but not been able to see ( I'll get me coat ) the optician to try bifocal contacts.
It's good to see photos to get a sense of size/scale and in that size room the Yamaha would have no trouble whatsoever, but what configuration do you run? If no Atmos ect you would'nt need an 11 channel amp and would be better with less channels or at least something like the Emotiva's that you can chop and change amp units as you expanded the system, if you ever do.
I had a mid to high end Onkyo Avr before moving to the Yamaha pro/pre combo and unsuprisingly the difference was huge. It was from a £1500 ish Avr to £5000 of separates. Still even though I was getting a huge discount on the processor and Amp I was buying blind with just the online reviews to guide me.
At that time the Yamaha combo had been awarded the best high end equipment by EISA and again very well reviewed pretty much everywhere.
I currently use the Amp with an Arcam processor as I wanted to try Dirac. Someone has said on threads
they wished Yamaha would embrace a Dirac type of sound processing, I cant see this happening as Yamaha are too entrenched in their own format.
But I agree with what he said the Yamaha high end equipment has higher build quality compared to Arcam ect but is let down by not having as good a room correction software the Dirac and RP ect options provide, especially with the bass but that can be sorted with a antimode or minidsp.
I personally believe you would notice an improvement with a power amp, I certainly did but only you can answer if it would be worth it.?
I'm sure thats the cast of Still Game, wheres me glasses.


Double check voltage on the arcams they seem to have a voltage where they rule out all majority of amps, forcing you to use arcam power amps as the voltage matches
 
Double check voltage on the arcams they seem to have a voltage where they rule out all majority of amps, forcing you to use arcam power amps as the voltage matches
Its a bit late now I've been using it for nearly two years:laugh:
 
It's good to see photos to get a sense of size/scale and in that size room the Yamaha would have no trouble whatsoever, but what configuration do you run? If no Atmos ect you would'nt need an 11 channel amp and would be better with less channels or at least something like the Emotiva's that you can chop and change amp units as you expanded the system, if you ever do.
I run an 8.1 configuration, the normal 5.1 augmented by front height (what Yamaha call Presence) speakers and a single surround back speaker. In my kitchen I simply cannot run any more speakers! My front height speakers are right up against the 7'6" ceiling. If you look at the picture again you can see the fridge (with an Oppo poster stuck on the door), then to the left of the fridge as we look there is a small very old shelving unit, and to the left of that, overlapping the gleaming white gas heater you can see the left surround speaker. The speakers in the kitchen are the most homogenous of all my four systems, they are all from the Eltax Shine 5 Speaker pack. I have another pair of the floorstanders, which come in mirror image pairs with the side-firing subwoofer driver, as the surround speakers. I have an additional centre speaker that I use as the single surround back speaker. The tops of the surround speakers, because they are fairly big and sitting on the worktop surfaces, are within 18 inches of the false 7'6" ceiling, so even with unlimited money I couldn't run an Atmos system, because with Atmos there must be a clear height difference between the Atmos speakers and the base 7.1 layer, which is not possible in my kitchen with the surround speakers being positioned quite high.

I know that many people decry using the many Digital Signal Processing sound programs that Yamaha receivers offer and say that you should stick to the simple 5.1 or 7.1 soundtrack, but I have found that, for me, engaging the Movie Spectacular mode is the most satisfying for playing films from Blu-rays. The Yamaha DSP modes generate signals for the Presence speakers and for the surround back speaker, even from only a 5.1 DTS Master Audio or Dolby True HD Blu-ray soundtrack. I find that using all eight speakers as activated by the Movie Spectacular mode is distinctly better than the pure 5.1 or 7.1 track.

I personally believe you would notice an improvement with a power amp, I certainly did but only you can answer if it would be worth it.?
Oh, with lots of money using a separate power amplifier along the lines of this splendid Yamaha MX-A5200 (though probably not this very model because I wouldn't be using at least three of its eleven channels of amplification) in the kitchen would certainly be very nice, and I could make room in the stack of electronics for another box. However, for me, that's about five years and four purchases away, because before then I would want to get: an 85" LCD television for the parlour; a 4K Blu-ray player for the kitchen; and a separate power amplifier for the parlour. But I am a patient man.

I'm sure thats the cast of Still Game, wheres me glasses.
Hey, don't you go dissing my pals in the photo (two of whom were ex-girlfriends and yes, they both knew that!) :) I forgot to say, they'd all been watching Life of Pi 3D, hence the glasses.
 
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:DOnly messing.
I'm thinking of buying a larger TV like the Sony 80+ inchers and doing away with the Projector which is 94" but I'm not sure whether I want to be watching normal tv programes on a huge screen all the time.
Plus I quite like watching the 58" TV and then dropping the screen for movies.
 
I do most of my watching in either the kitchen or the parlour, in that order, and one of the few good things about my life is that when I'm in the kitchen in the evenings I get to see, from between 7 and 12 feet, a 75" television, albeit only 1080p resolution. I look forward to getting a 4K or 8K resolution 85" for the parlour, which I use less often than the kitchen, to get a similar effect. This is because the ceiling in the parlour is 10' 6" high compared to 7'6" in the kitchen, and so the same size 75" television has less visual impact in the parlour than it does in the kitchen.
 
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Talking of which just checked my analogue stereo pre amp apex, pre out voltage 7v . Audiolab 8000q

Wow. So drive any power amp no problem


So why is it avr and av pre amps fail so badly compared to stereo pre?
 
Was reading the spec of this amp.

27,000uf total for all 11 channels from the Yamaha
30,000uf for each and every channel of my amplifier, so 210,000uf total.
 
Thanks mate, not sure if you've seen my build thread
(Outbuilding dedicated cinema room 7.4.6), but I've gone through a fair bit of equipment to get to where I am now, my new 4 channel Gen3 is arriving on Friday and I'm hoping to change my atmos speakers to Arendals new height range when they are finally released sometime in the summer.

I've also got a Sony 65" A1 in my lounge and a Sony 65" ZD9 in my living room.
@mb3195 About two years ago a "full" domestic Atmos system was regarded as 7.x.4, where x is the number of subwoofers and can vary from 1 to 4. (For this purpose it doesn't really matter too much whether or not the AV processor has several or only one subwoofer output, since if the processor has only one subwoofer output, then more subwoofers can be daisy-chained together.) Now the Marantz 8805 processor allows 7.x.6 or 9.x.4, and currently costs £3199. However, since there is benefit to having front wide speakers as well as six Atmos speakers, I think that the new domestic standard that we are moving towards, (space permitting for all those speakers of course, and my 18' x 14' x 10'6" parlour could accommodate it), is 9.x.6. So all that is then needed is a relatively cheap processor that does 9.x.6, I mean cheaper than the Lyngdorf MP-60, which costs £12K. For some reason, unless Marantz comes to the rescue and makes a cheapish 16-channel processor, those final extra two channels are helluva expensive! It's almost like the price jump in going from a 75" LCD television to a 85" television in the same manufacturer's range - those extra 10 inches don't come cheap!

It might seem incongrous to mention this in a discussion about a power amplifier, but if 7.x.6 or 9.x.6 processing does become standard, then getting power amplification for the extra channels is no difficulty, there is no shortage of 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, or 11-channel amplifiers that can be combined as required to form 15 amplifier channels.
 
@mb3195 About two years ago a "full" domestic Atmos system was regarded as 7.x.4, where x is the number of subwoofers and can vary from 1 to 4. (For this purpose it doesn't really matter too much whether or not the AV processor has several or only one subwoofer output, since if the processor has only one subwoofer output, then more subwoofers can be daisy-chained together.) Now the Marantz 8805 processor allows 7.x.6 or 9.x.4, and currently costs £3199. However, since there is benefit to having front wide speakers as well as six Atmos speakers, I think that the new domestic standard that we are moving towards, (space permitting for all those speakers of course, and my 18' x 14' x 10'6" parlour could accommodate it), is 9.x.6. So all that is then needed is a relatively cheap processor that does 9.x.6, I mean cheaper than the Lyngdorf MP-60, which costs £12K. For some reason, unless Marantz comes to the rescue and makes a cheapish 16-channel processor, those final extra two channels are helluva expensive! It's almost like the price jump in going from a 75" LCD television to a 85" television in the same manufacturer's range - those extra 10 inches don't come cheap!

It might seem incongrous to mention this in a discussion about a power amplifier, but if 7.x.6 or 9.x.6 processing does become standard, then getting power amplification for the extra channels is no difficulty, there is no shortage of 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, or 11-channel amplifiers that can be combined as required to form 15 amplifier channels.

emotiva and Arcam are already doing 16 channels, but these are obsolete at the moment as only very small % of Atmos mixes actually use all of these channels.
Dolby Atmos mixes are mainly pinned at 7.1.4, meaning you can’t use front wides.

The Dolby upmixer won’t upmix to wide channels either, although it will to the height channels. Basically the maximum amount of bed channels you can use is 7 on the vast majority of Dolby Atmos mixes.

Unless DTSX Pro is launched to a variety of processors, 7 base channels is the most required at the moment.

Im re-wiring my rack this weekend, I will probably wire in 2 spare set of speaker cables just in case this changes as I have 2 spare power amp slots.

I did some testing with wides a couple of weeks ago on around 20 discs, only 2 of these had any info coming from the wide channels.
 
@mb3195 That's why it's useful to hear from someone who has actually used a variety of processors! I didn't fully realise that for the time being the number of base channels is limited to seven, though that may change in time. However, I believe that the Denon AVC-X8500H amplifier, which has been around for over two years now, does upmix to front wide channels from Dolby Atmos soundtracks, though not from DTS:X tracks.
 
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