How Old Ids the Yamaha Rx-596 Natural Sound Stereo Receiver-review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the vintage (?) Yamaha RX-596 Receiver (stereo amplifier with tuner and video switcher). It was purchased by a member from local clemency (Goodwill) for US $x plus $18 shipping. No, that is not a typo. He did buy it for just $x. It was sold "AS-IS." Aircraft was likely less since the branch of the charity is local to us. If the amp in it performs, it volition be the bargain of the yr.

RX-596 is non that heavy relative to its size and looks as modern as today'southward gear:

Please excused the bowed sides. I have not screwed the lid in as I program to make clean it more than before giving it back to its owner. Equally shipped, at that place was an inch of dust everywhere. OK, it was just ane/8 of an inch but information technology is more dramatic to say an inch! More on this later. Here is the back panel:

Before testing, I exercised all the controls to become rid of some of the surface grit in them. That brought most of the to life but one channel was dead. I traced that to a dirty input switcher which to my pleasant surprise, it motorized! When you modify inputs, a little motor turns the input selector for yous allowing for very depression loss input switching (as opposed to electronic ones used in AVRs today). The motorized aspect made it very hard to go into it but I managed to clean information technology plenty for the other aqueduct to work. Here is a shot of the inside:

So many surface wires to avoid using double-sided PC Lath. It besides has a modular configuration to permit for unlike inputs using vertical cards (e.1000. tuner, video, etc.).

Back to its operation, even though I got the other channel working, information technology was noisy and then I put the unit of measurement in Pure Direct and that got rid of well-nigh of the flakiness. Some remained though as you lot see in the review.

The possessor tells me this architecture/design is used in a number of Yahama units so if measurements are good, it should apply to them as well. speaking of that, I was then pleased to see such a simple blueprint with simply two output transistors and handful of components. No fancy difficult to get ICs then 'should' exist piece of cake to service if cleaved.

The controls experience super nice, something we sorely miss in new AVRs.

Amplifier Audio Measurements
As usual, we showtime with our dashboard of 1 kHz tone into iv ohms at 5 watts:

Every bit you lot run across, I prepare the volume then that I achieved a gain of 29 dB. At lower gains, the distortion was much lower. Just for fairness I went with 29 dB. Functioning is slightly above average:

And way ahead of a number of modern AVRs:

Crosstalk performance was poor, just besting our $27 amplifier:

Some of this may be due to dust. In use should not be a big issue though.

Frequency response was overnice and flat in aural band, reaching to 80 kHz at -3 dB signal:

Indicate to dissonance ratio was just decent, reaching xvi scrap operation at full power:

Let's go into the meat of the measurements which is power versus racket and distortion into iv ohms:

What exercise y'all know? Information technology hands beats the NAD T758! So much lower noise and distortion prior to clipping.

As you see, one channel in night blue was complaining a bit. Information technology complained more when I tested into eight ohms with the first run being very bad, but this second ane non and then much:

I don't know why I cater to some of you asking me to practise more piece of work than I desire to. But here is the 10 kHz foursquare wave:

I have also overlaid the Audio Precision in loopback in blue and then you can encounter the best case scenario in the measurement. The AP's bandwidth is set to 1 Mhz. So naturally the 80 kHz bandwidth of the RX-596 rolls off the edges. At present what? What do you learn?

Conclusions
The used Yamaha RX-596 is a surprising bargain. It clearly shows how much we have gone backward in today's race to add channels to AVRs while reducing their functioning. This $x amplifier produces the same power as them and despite its age, performed well.

If you lot can find a working one of this series, and can have someone make clean information technology up for you lot, y'all volition have a neat performing amplifier for nigh cypher. Happy to recommend the used Yamaha RX-596.

--------
As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are welcome.

When I asked the pinkish panther to pose with this amp he initially refused. He said the matter is too muddied constituting creature corruption! So I gave him a steak to bribe him and he then happily posed. I worry that so spoiled, he volition ask for steaks in the future. And then need to program ahead and buy a bunch. Please assist fund that by donating using: https://world wide web.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-sound-scientific discipline-review.8150/

brownrojectime.blogspot.com

Source: https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads%2Fyamaha-rx-596-receiver-review.10344%2F

Share this post