The ninth wave
Yamaha’s ninth series of premium Aventage receivers has now arrived. And they’ve arrived with some interesting changes, including one that might alter the way you interact with your home entertainment equipment. The first one we’ve been able to examine is the Yamaha Aventage RX-A1080, which is right in the middle of the range.
Equipment
Before getting to those changes, let’s refresh our memories about the capabilities of this receiver. It is a seven-channel unit, providing a solid 120W per channel (into 8 ohms, full bandwidth, 0.06% THD, two channels driven). As is Yamaha’s long-standing practice, only the front two channels can be used with four-ohm loudspeakers. The rest — at least if you want to comply with the manual’s stated requirements — need at least six-ohm speakers.
The receiver supports the latest surround formats: Dolby Atmos, Dolby Surround and DTS:X. It is limited to seven channels plus a subwoofer. There are two subwoofer sockets, but the signal is the same to both. Nine sets of speaker binding posts allow
