Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I've had mine for a couple of months and am completely pleased with the purchase. At first I had my doubts, since I've always had much more expensive component systems. This is my fourth Yamaha receiver, but the others I used for the kids, and for the whole-house stereo system.
I had just switched from a 9" crt projector to a Panasonic 3000 LCD projector, and decided that going fully digital was in order. I spent weeks reading reviews, downloading both user and service manuals for about a dozen brands and models. When all was said and done the decision really was quite easy. This thing has virtually everything a person could want.
I have a large dedicated theater that is designed for both reclining and listening to music, or for viewing movies on a 120" screen. I have carefully assembled a system that does both flawlessly, and I didn't want to mess it up when it came to this purchase. This came as close as I could have hoped for. Mind you, it isn't as good as my old system when it comes to sound. But then my power amp alone was $4500, and could power a normal full-sized movie theater's speaker system.
This does have plenty of power for my nine-speaker setup. It just has a hair less detail in the sound. Before I could hear if a pianist hadn't fully trimmed his or her fingernails, because you could hear the ends click when they hit the ivory on the piano keys. This doesn't quite get there.
That being said, my wife likes this much better because she hated hearing every tiny detail, especially the bad mixing and mic placement on so many recordings. She especially hated listening to Midori play the Paganini caprices - hearing Midori slide her fingers into position when my wife had spent years believing that to be one of the best performances ever. She is back to loving the performance, and I have to say I like it better too. Detail can get a bit overrated, because you get the bad with the good.
As to video, this thing leaves nothing to be desired. One of my DVD players is an Oppo 981, which always gets great reviews, and is an excellent player, especially for upconversion of older DVDs to 1080p. At first I was just going to have this pass the signal straight through without any alteration. After going back and forth a bunch of times I actually chose to have this receiver do the conversion on everything, from the analog sources as well as the digital ones. It does a top-notch job and I have no complaints.
That being said, there are so many choices and possibilities it almost gets to the point of being frustrating. As you pop through the possibilities of hearing the music in a cathedral in Munich or a church in Freiburg it is pretty easy to lose focus on finding what sound you really like. My suggestion is to relax in an easy chair, close your eyes, and have someone else do the changing of settings so that you really do select the best setting.
For those building their system up from something of lesser quality (meaning most of the units out there), or for those who have been like me and have gotten tired of lugging around massive components that take up lots of room and generate lots of heat, this has something for most everyone to like.
The possible negatives of the unit are: needs at least a couple of inches of ventilation on the top for air circulation (could just hook-up a 90 or 120mm computer case fan if things are tight); like most of these receivers the remote (there actually are two remotes that come with (one full function and the other a stripped down model)) could be better and might take a little trial and error; for those like me who are used to having more than one subwoofer this is designed for just one (although my Supernova Earthquake 15" nearly knocked marble off the wall in the master bath when I was watching the newer version of War of the Worlds).
1/29/2010 Just wanted to say that I have installed the firmware updates and have yet to have a single negative thing occur concerning this receiver. Originally I screwed a few things up and Yamaha support always got back within a day. Turns out I was at fault, but one interesting item is that I had an audio CD in the player and thought it was a DVD. The output gave me a green screen, and that really had me scratching my head, and that of the Yamaha engineer, until I checked what was in there. Otherwise, I have been using the PS3 for the Blu-ray movies, Oppo for standard, and absolutely everything has been superb. Odd to have not one complaint.
12/15/2010 Not really anything to add except it works flawlessly. I still wish there were fewer choices in terms of shaping the audio output. When I find a setting I really like with one kind of music it might be a month before I come back to it again. It might help if I kept a notebook by it and just made notes as to the combinations I like. I still mostly keep it on seven-channel stereo unless I really don't like how it sounds. Other than that I haven't even looked at my old equipment for months now. As stated before, there has not been a single issue with this receiver. I'm 100% satisfied.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Yamaha RX-Z7BL 7.1-Channel High-End Network Home Theater Receiver (Black)
Expanding on the highly acclaimed Z-Series, Yamaha introduces another benchmark: the RX-Z7, a 7.1-channel Network AV Receiver. This new receiver provides an enormous range of exciting multimedia features, extensive custom installation capabilities, video adjustment features and cutting edge technologies. The RX-Z7 performance provides great enjoyment for the home theater experience.
