Digital Trends

Yamaha made mostly good choices when deciding which features to include and which to leave behind in order to bring this 7.2-channel A/V receiver down to a $550 suggested retail price point. The manufacturer included four HDMI inputs, video scaling, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding and support for a second zone, for instance, while axing S-video input and outputs.

You won’t miss the S-Video connections unless you’re still hanging onto an S-VHS VCR or Hi8 camcorder, but for most people, the RX-V665’s bounty of other features will be far more useful. One spec that does leave us a bit concerned, however, is weight: The fact that this receiver is rated to produce 90 watts per channel into seven channels (with total harmonic distortion of 0.9 percent with either six- or eight-ohm loads) while weighing in at just 18.7 pounds leads us to wonder about the robustness of its power supply (the model this unit replaces, Yamaha’s RX-V663, weighed 26.2 pounds).

But we certainly can’t complain about sound quality, as the RX-V665 sounded fabulous no matter what the source. We used the Dolby TrueHD-encoded Spider-Man 3 and the DTS-HD Master Audio-encoded Quantum of Solace for Blu-ray testing. We connected the coaxial digital output of a Sonos multi-room music system and played stereo music files ripped from CD and encoded using the FLAC lossless codec. We also played a couple of high-definition, multi-channel audio CDs encoded in DTS 96/24. Click onward to find out more in-depth feedback on the results.