Yamaha YHT-4930UBL 5.1-Channel Home Theater in a Box System with Bluetooth

Update after about three months.Still very impressed. Really like listening to music with this through Bluetooth. Just watched despicable me 3 and the experience is so much better with this. Dynamic is the best way to describe. Explosions can rock the house. Music is so clear and beautiful. The bass is powerful and clear and can independently be adjusted with a knob on the back. There are different sound modes you can switch through with the push of a button that improve the experience even more. The front display automatically tells you the sound input/output like stereo vs surround and which speakers are getting input. Playing battlefield 1 is fun because you can hear where things are to your right or left behind or in front like the sound of footsteps gunshots or a tank is driving by.I'm no expert. This is my first surround sound setup. I'll just point out some things I like about the system and a few things I don't like. I recently finished my basement and pre-wired it for surround sound. Bought this based on all the good reviews for other Yamaha systems and the price. Yes you can get a cheaper system, but yamaha seems to make the highest rated and most reliable system for the price. This works well with my samsung 4k smart tv and xbox one. The remote on my samsung tv was able to program to work with this yamaha receiver, so I don't even have to use the yamaha remote most of the time. Press the power button on my tv remote and it turns on or off both the tv and the receiver. Also controls volume. I would call it a "smart" receiver. It recognizes that an xbox one is connected. It automatically switches between tv to xbox one when I turn on the xbox one. Bluetooth connection does not require a password it is fast and easy to connect. Simply change the receiver source on bluetooth and then connect. The sound is amazing. My wife was skeptical of spending over 400 dollars on surround sound, until I had it setup and we watched about 30 seconds of a blu-ray movie with "hd audio". Rush hour. She was convinced. It sounds beautiful. I'm not some audio expert but I do appreciate good sound and don't know how this could be better. Beats going to the movie theater by a long ways.CONS: Setup takes a lot longer than I expected. There are simply a lot of wires to connect and run. Not really a specific fault of this system but something that surprised me. It took me a couple hours to get everything setup, plugged in, and situated. The receiver is very large and surprisingly heavy. I would say this speaks to the quality of the system, but it was larger than expected. With the hdmi cables in the back it would not fit inside my entertainment center. I was able to cut a hole in the back of my entertainment center and make it fit just barely. The wires that come with it sure seem like low quality. I used my own heavy gauge wire in the wall and the supplied wire only for the front center speaker. It seems to work fine, but I was surprised by how light the wire supplied with it is.It only sounds as good as the input. Not really a con for this system either but something that disappointed me about having a surround sound system at all. I didn't realize before the differences in audio output. Hulu does not have surround sound, older movies don't have surround sound, some amazon movies don't have it either. So really having a surround sound system does not change the experience for most of what I watch. May be different if you have cable.

Very good mid-low price range system. I mix music on a Yamaha HS8 studio monitor system and have always been impressed with the quality. So, when it came time to replace my 5.1 system I trusted Yamaha to deliver excellent sound and bang for my buck...They did!While the sound is not as smooth and balanced as a higher end system, it more than gets the job done. The midrange frequency can be a bit harsh and distorted coming out of the center speaker. Highs are crisp with very little distortion and ear fatigue. The sub is more than capable of shaking a room and since it has its own amp its easily adjustable. Adjusting the cutoff frequency was key to getting a good balance. It was preset at 60hz which left out a lot of low end, 60hz and under will be more felt than heard. Cutoff goes up to 200hz. I settled on 160hz which creates a great balance. The power is plenty for my medium sized den.The options for adjusting the sound are great. The level and EQ of each individual speaker is adjustable. The EQ is 6 or 7 (can’t remember), non adjustable bands with a reasonable gain range. It took several hours of tweaking to get just what I wanted and if you’re not familiar with audio the options could be a bit confusing but not terribly so.I’m running all devices through my tv and then the audio to the reciever via optical cable. I may change this and run through the reciever first as I think there’s a very, very, very, slight “lip sync” issue.Some the DSP “programs” on the amp are very good as they push more or less audio through this channel or that and can create a good mix of listening options. But, most of the “programs” are not very useful.I’m still amazed at all adjustments on this low price-point reciever. It makes it very easy to get a sound YOU like and adjust for the room. The speakers are decent and all around I feel like this system is a great sounding value. No regrets at all. 5 stars for what Yamaha’s was able to do at this price. Hopefully this system will lasts a long time.