The Ultimate Setup Guide for Your Yamaha AVR
Calibrate Yamaha YPAO and get remarkable results!
Transform Your Home Cinema into a THX-calibrated Theatre.
In this comprehensive manual, Roland, owner and editor of Simple Home Cinema shares his tips and tricks to getting exceptional Yamaha YPAO results.
YPAO Calibration Challenges
- I am here to tell you that you are leaving a LOT of performance on the table by calibrating your YPAO system using only the Yamaha manual! I know because that’s what I – and many others – did for years.
- The microphone patterns in this guide are guaranteed to deliver better surround panning and imaging for both music and movies than what is included in your Yamaha manual – or your money back!
- We conducted a survey in 2022, and 8 out of 10 people said that they had achieved at least a 1 point increase (on a 5 point scale) in their YPAO surround sound performance after reading The Lost Manual.
YPAO – The Lost Manual Benefits
- Improved sound quality and speech intelligibility
- Maximised subwoofer performance with smoother and tighter bass!
- The walls literally disappear and the sound comes from beyond the walls!
- Gorgeous natural reverberations like in a purpose-built multiplex!
What’s In the Book?
V4 OUT NOW on all platforms!!!
- 5 Pillars of Reference Playback: an overview chapter with discussion around the different elements that go into achieving Reference Playback set up your speakers and your room for optimum results
- The DOs and DON’Ts of running YPAO
- What to do after running YPAO and configure crossovers, equalisation, surround levels and other settings to get ideal sound
- 11 Mic Patterns!!!
- 8 NEW MIC PATTERNS just in Release 4.
- Wide Pattern A, Wide Pattern B, Restricted,
- Multi-seat patterns M1, M2, M3
- 2 patterns for MSO – time-limited exclusive for the YPAO guide
- Notes on designing your own mic pattern
- Advice for multiple rows of seating
- Advice on how to measure subwoofers with MSO
- 8 NEW MIC PATTERNS just in Release 4.
- Configuration changes within your receiver that will allow you to maximise YPAO
- How to choose the ideal subwoofer location in your room to maximise sub performance
- 2 procedures and 2 scoring sheets to help with your subwoofer placement – just use your ears
- Multi-Sub optimisation by integrating with Multi Sub Optimiser (MSO)
- Cinema DSP:
- 35 pages of new content on Cinema DSP
- Since Yamaha’s new guides don’t discuss these in detail, we have pulled information all the way back to the Z11 manuals, and tried to expand on them.
- Volume and Amplification:
- Impact of internal power modules and their voicing
- Impact of driving difficult to drive speakers to higher volumes on distortion and frequency response
- Troubleshooting YPAO – how to troubleshoot issues with YPAO including disjointed surround sound fields and subwoofer issues – step by step
- New Chapter: Loudness Compensation and YPAO Volume (new in v3.0)
- Including implementing house curves based on loudness compensation principles (new in v3.0)
- New Curve Editor Excel Tool (new in v3.0)
- New Loudness Memories Excel Tool (new in v3.0)
- New section on Extra bass including measurements (new in v3.0)
- New Chapter: Editing Manual PEQs (new in v3.0)
- How to integrate YPAO with Dirac Live
- Web Configuration section to do detailed configuration of the AVRs over the network – installers have this access, now you can too.
- 150+ pages of dense but easy to understand material based on 100s of hours of research and testing
- Lots of easy to understand explanations to guide you through each step of the process.
- Lots of new diagrams explaining the concepts in a visual manner (new in v3.0)
View Customer Reviews on Amazon
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[Amazon Germany Translation]
I took the “instructions” as part of buying a new RX A4A. Very helpful. An aha experience was to find out when the microphone had to be placed on which stand position. Which, in my opinion, is too short and poorly described by Yamaha. If you mean it seriously, you should buy the book as a measuring aid. In relation to the price of an AVR, this is actually a must read from a Yamaha AVR owner.
I bought this manual after several tries to configure my yamaha receiver and never being really happy about the results. It really helped me to understand what's going on and how to do the setup correctly, adding valuable information to the original yamaha manual, which is kind of lacking in this regard. Recommendet.
While living in an apartment I was content with the default YPAO result with a post-config level check & bass boost. After building a home theater in a new house I was more interested in maximizing output and came across this very useful guide and purchased additional guides (room treatment & REW). As speaker placement & room treatment will have the most significant impact, I’d recommend starting there. The YPAO guide will then walk you through mic placement, settings & loudness compensation for different sources & listening levels. Finally, you can fine-tune the YPAO result using REW to tighten up the frequency responses. The guides lay out this workflow in an approachable manner that can help novices attain excellent results. Highly recommended!
I've been an audiophile for over 30 years. Over this time while systems got better and better, they also become much more complex. When moving to our new home, I was lucky enough to be able to create a 7.1 theater room. As a part of that, I chose the Yamaha Avantage A4A. I thought I would run through a couple menus on the receiver and TV and be good to go, but it seemed somehow off.
I heard of this manual on a forum and decided to go for it. I was able to understand what the menus do as well as what to expect when making adjustments. It was fairly easy to get through and the difference was certainly noticeable by people other than me. It has also proven to be a good reference manual as all that work can easily be forgotten pretty quickly. Thankfully the information is very easy to find again.
I would recommend this to anyone that is looking for whatever is missing with their Yamaha home theater receiver!
Definitely worth the price. Lots of info for help with ypao. Sounds better after going through with it.
Guaranteed Results – Or Your Money Back!
We are so certain of the benefits our guides bring that we offer a full money back guarantee. Please contact us within 30 days of purchase to start the refund process. No questions asked.
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Hi
On side 44, you wrote: “Position 2: Same position as number 1 but on the seat to the
right of the centre seat”
But on the picture, Position 2 is directly before Position1. So I guess the picture does not correlate with your documented positions. Is that a fault, or did I not understand something?
BR Ralf
Hi Ralf,
I think you mean position 3: the wide pattern. (Corresponding to page 44 in v3.0)
If you look at the text above it says that only position 1 corresponds to Yamaha’s picture. (“However, this is where the similarities stop. To get an ideal measurement, the following is recommended:”)
But I understand this may be confusing so thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’ll try and get a 3D picture done for this mic pattern for the next version of the guide. Thx again. 🙂
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For everyone’s attention: please kindly use the issue reporting link on the first page of the guide or the contact form on the site to report issues if at all possible. It makes it easier to track them and allocate them for fixes and it also guarantees a more timely response in case I miss the comment on here. Much appreciate it. 🙂
Where’s my manual? Sent in my money been a a few weeks
Hi Tom, the link is send in email straight away. I have just resent it from the system. Please kindly check in your spam folder in case the link landed there. Thanks!
Love these guides Roland… They give you so much more detail than the standard manual gives you. Its helped me understand key aspects of YPAO and the associated settings! Just got the REW one as i am about to try and get my Monolith 15 and REL 212 playing together!
Thank you so much for that feedback, Dan. I’m really glad you’re finding them useful. 🙂
Both of those subs have excellent time-domain performance for their class. They should be relatively easy to integrate with careful placement.
Please let us know how you go! 🙂
Roland,
Does your manual cover setting up YPAO with two subs and the Yamaha configuration selections? My RX-A3030 can be configured 3 ways: two front subs, a front and rear sub and 2X mono – but Yamaha doesn’t spell out the differences and if YPAO will handle two subs. For example, I’m using front and rear subs but when using that mode, the rear sub receives little signal. The 2X Mono configuration seems to apply the same signal to both subs and can be configured in phase or 180 out.
Hey Chris,
Yes and no. My recommendation is to use 2x Mono because the other options will steer bass from main channels using the appropriate zone. We tested this approach on the new Denons / Marantz too and the approach is not ideal as you lose the benefit of proper bass coverage when doing this.
To be honest, if you want really great bass, you need to invest in a MiniDSP and use MSO (Multi-Sub Optimiser). You COULD use MSO with Yamaha’s in-built independent sub-EQ but it would be experimental and very fiddly.
The above is why The Lost Manual steers you down this road as opposed to messing with front/back or dual front configurations. If you had 4 subs, you COULD run them by grouping them into zones and then use a MiniDSP / MSO calibration per Zone. But again, this is experimental and would question how good this would be unless you have subs with perfect time-domain response, a very well treated room and a room large-enough that different seats would get wildly different timing from the front subs. Not even large cinemas do this btw… 😉
please help I have lost my Yamaha the Lost Manual
Hi Peter,
I have gotten the system to resend the download link to your outlook email. Please check your spam folder as well in case it landed there! Thx
Hi
I recently purchased “THE LOST MANUAL”. I appreciate the different patterns for better sound. Not had a chance to try as yet but will be attempting Pattern 1 – Tight. Please can I ask when doing positions 5-8 are we adjusting the mic stand to lower and raise the mic by 5cm and 10cm respectively or are we moving the stand only to give the illusion of height which wouldn’t make sense right?
Thank You for your time.
Hi,
Great question and thanks for picking up The Lost Manual! Yes, you are absolutely right: for positions 5-8, the mic does physically above and below position 1. You’ll want to raise or lower the mic by 5 cm and 10 cm as specified, not just shift the stand position. These vertical changes help capture more of the room’s 3D acoustic behavior and improve the accuracy of your calibration.
Best,
Tyler
Hi Roland,
Apologies if I missed it: Is this guide useful for the R-N800a, R-N1000a, and R-N2000a? All of my critical listening is two-channel music.
Thanks!
Hey John,
The guide is very much geared towards Home Cinema, so some of the information presented won’t be applicable. You can purchase it if you’re keen as you might learn some new tricks, but it isn’t geared towards Hi-Fi.