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The original was posted on /r/hometheater by /u/Kingsley37 on 2023-09-27 04:54:56+00:00.
Hi Friends, I want to share my experience with the Yamaha A4A and the Sony STR- AN1000. I have owned the 4A4 for about 3 weeks now and I have been happy with his musical performance, however, one thing that bugs me is the volume is low for the claimed specs. I need to dial it to around 70/100 in order to get some decent volume ( 70-75 db) on my Martin Logan motion 60XTi. I am very famililar with AVRs and I have adjusted every possible settings on it in order to make it sounds better and louder including increasing the max volume to 16.5 db (If you own a A4A or A6A, you know what I mean). Besides, I am not happy with the surround effect on it whether I am watching Atmos or DTS contents. In short, 3 days ago I ordered a Sony STR-AN1000 to pair with my PS5 and the first day I was already very impressed with its performance. I then connected the AN1000 to my 4ohm Martin Logans and music sounded even better than on the A4A!!! Most importantly, it was already too loud for my liking when I dialed the volume to 1/3 only. And I had not even done the calibration yet. Not only vocal is very pronounced, but the bass on my RSL speedwoofer 10s MK ii became more responsive. If I used the 60XTi alone without the sub, the bass were much more noticeable than it was connected to the A4A. I then played a few Atmos movies on the AN1000 and I can tell you that it completely destroyed the A4A in every single way. Fortunately, I can still return the A4A and I 100% will return it. On the other hand, I am going to keep the AN1000 for gaming on my PS4 and PC only and I will get a AZ5000ES for movies and music, that's how much I love the new Sony receivers. I performed the firmware update the first day I got the AN1000 and it has been working perfectly fine. I forgot to mention that I also have an Arcam AVR20 in my vacation home and the AN1000 blows it out of the water when it comes to movie watching as well. For music, they are pretty close when listening to stereo music, but the AN1000 destroys the ARCAM when listening to spatial audio using my Apple TV 4k 3rd gen. If you are on a budget, get the AN1000. If you have a bunch of power hungry speakers, get the AZ5000es or the 7000, but I do think the AN1000 should have no problem to power most of the common speakers. The only problem I can find on the AN1000 is that it gets warm and that's the reason why I want to get a AZ5000ES for movies and music since I spend very little time on gaming.