NETWORKED AV RECEIVER YAMAHA AVENTAGE RX-A3050

The latest premium model in Yamaha’s premium Aventage range is the Aventage RX-A3050 AV receiver. In addition to the high-end features you’d expect, it adds new multiroom features, supporting Yamaha’s ‘MusicCast’ system.

EQUIPMENT

MusicCast is a large topic all of its own (see p40-41), so here we’ll merely note that the receiver is not just a passive receiver of MusicCast networked signals, but all its sources and audio inputs are available for sharing with other players in a multiroom MusicCast system.

In other ways little has changed from last year’s RX-A3040 model. Here there are the same generous eight HDMI inputs and two HDMI outputs. All the HDMI inputs support UHD and 4K up to 60p, and the unit has inbuilt scaling, too, all the way up to those same resolutions. The seven rear HDMI inputs and the two HDMI outputs support HDCP 2.2 (the front panel HDMI doesn’t), which is the new supposed anti-piracy signal encryption system for HDMI which ought to allow full use of the highest picture