Digital Trends

Yamaha YSP-4000 Digital Sound Projector

January 28th, 2008 | by Brandon King

Performance 

At last! By now you’re asking, “But how does it SOUND?!?!” In a word: excellent. An interesting side-effect of the sound reflection technique is that audio can actually, depending on the source material’s encoding, sound more immersive than a traditional 5.1 setup. There’s no worrying about matching speakers or placement, since you are literally bathed in a spread of directed sound. Consequently, transfer of motion across the sound field is downright seamless. The SRS TruBass technology, which uses harmonics of higher pitches (the fare of smaller speakers) to deepen the bass, gave surprisingly deep sound, though a subwoofer is definitely recommended to really feel visceral and booming bass.

On the downside, moving outside the sweet spot quickly flattens the sound stage against the projection and opposing walls. This was in part due to the less-than-optimal room setup, and even then the sweet spot was surprisingly large. Even at the proper height, the lack of a back wall meant no true rear-channel experience, no matter how much we tweaked. We experienced more of a forward-thrust 5.1 setup, where the rear channels were separate from the front, but dispersed to the sides rather than behind the listener. This is the same experience we have had in the past with systems in which the listening position was against the back wall. This was slightly disappointing, but not unexpected.

Sound quality was excellent overall, especially for movies. We tested several thrillers, including Ghost Rider and Spider-Man 2, and found the DSP “Spectacular” setting best suited to the fast action. For sporting events broadcast in surround, the sense of immersion proved on-par with our separate 5.1 setup, but gave the sense of watching from the back seats, due to the lack of crowd noises behind us. The Sports setting did an excellent job of filling up the room, but detracted from the commentator dialogue. We also tried several genres of music (2 channel analog from an iPod Classic) and overall the quality was very good, though slightly higher-energy and higher-pitched than we are used to. Tuning down the treble helped, and switching to the 2 Channel Stereo + 3 Beam setting was best for filling the room without losing the vocal qualities for acoustic music. The YSP-4000 shined when auditioning techno and speedier-paced music, due to the quick and punchy nature of the microspeakers. Keep in mind that this unit features built-in compressed audio enhancer technology for smoothing out MP3s and other compressed formats.

While the performance with music was good, the real strength of the unit is in cinematic audio. If you are looking for a great jack-of-all-trades, a dedicated surround setup is still probably the way to go. But, if you intend to use the YSP-4000 primarily for movies and occasionally music, you will be very pleased with the purchase. For such a small unit there is plenty of power and little distortion even at the highest comfortable settings. Walking through the room while listening to the sound projector can be somewhat strange. You could swear that there should be a speaker poking through the windows two feet from your face, but that’s just the YSP working its voodoo magic on you. One way to compensate for the less-than-stellar music performance is to watch live performances on DVD. We caught The Manhattan Transfer on an HD channel, and while we wanted strangely to claw our ears out and take a nap at the same time, the surround encoding of the performance translated into a much better experience compared to two channel audio. Perhaps if the RIAA had focused on pushing DVD-Audio and SACD instead of suing children, deaf-mutes, and family pets, there would be more quality surround source material.

The rating given to the YSP-4000 represents a happy medium between performance compared to a traditional 5.1 setup and the convenience and aesthetics of soundbar-style setup. Performance compared to well-matched, similarly-priced 5.1 setups would earn the sound bar an 8/10. The technology and conveniences are a solid 9/10. Finally, considering the features both included and that could have been integrated earned an 8/10 – very good, but a little more imagination from such an established player in the field would have been nice. Finally, overall quality and execution shines through with a 9/10.

Conclusion 

One thing we learned from reviewing Yamaha’s YSP-4000 Digital Sound Projector is that this isn’t a gimmick. It really works, and in the right rooms the setup works really well (prior to purchase, we also auditioned a properly-configured unit in an enclosed room). There’s plenty of power for the recommended room size (25’x25’), the audio quality is very good, and surround sound performance is on-par with similarly-priced 5.1 setups. One of the biggest benefits for the design-conscious consumer is the ability to have a surround system without running wires all over the room: Yes, you can actually have a sleek plasma or LCD mounted to a wall AND have impressive sound to go along with it. Approximately 75% of flatscreen owners use the built-in speakers, but with quality sound projectors like the YSP-4000 hitting the shelves, we expect that number to drop significantly as people start to discover the punch this little device packs. 


Pros: 

• Excellent sound quality
• Surprisingly powerful surround effect
• Compact
• Easy setup
• Auto calibration
• HDMI passthrough 


Cons: 

• Subwoofer strongly recommended
• Confusing remote