Hi-Fi Corner: Spread the sound around with Yamaha’s RX-S601 receiver

By Ryan Waniata Published October 2, 2015

After quietly unveiling a revolutionary new take on multiroom sound with the new MusicCast system this summer, Yamaha today revealed a sleek and slim receiver packing MusicCast along with high resolution audio support, 4K passthrough, and a whole lot more. Introducing the new RX-S601 5.1 channel network AV receiver.

At just over 4-inches tall, the RX-S601 casts a diminutive profile, but that shouldn’t cast any doubts on the bounty of features locked within. With MusicCast, the receiver is capable of streaming audio from virtually any source — be it a Blu-ray player, live TV, a turntable, or your smartphone — throughout the home to any of Yamaha’s 20 new MusicCast components. Those include receivers, speakers, speaker bars, and even professional grade monitors.

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Yamaha-RX-S601 front manual — Image used with permission by copyright holder

In addition, the receiver offers Airplay, DLNA, and Bluetooth support, the latter of which with an added twist. Not only can users stream audio to the receiver via Bluetooth, the receiver can also send the signal back out to other Bluetooth enabled speakers — Yamaha, or otherwise.

Of course, the RX-S601 also comes loaded with the same feature set we’ve come to expect from top receivers in the ever-evolving home theater landscape, including support for streaming multiple hi-res audio file formats at 24bit/192kHz resolution, decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, as well as Yamaha’s Cinema DSP 3D and 17 DSP effects. Digital-to-audio conversion is covered by a 24bit Burr-Brown converter. On the video side, the system is equipped with the latest HDCP 2.2 copyright protection for 4K UHD passthrough at 60Hz.

Other features include Yamaha’s YPAO speaker calibration technology, and Compressed Music Enhancer designed to improve the sound quality of streaming music and MP3s. Pandora and Spotify are also built right in. Power is rated at 60 watts per channel.

Yamaha’s sleek and slim new RX-S601 AV receiver will be available this month at a suggested retail price of $650.

A version of this post first appeared on our “brother site” Digital Trends.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Ryan Waniata is an audio engineer, musician, composer, and all-around lover of all things tech, audio, and cinema. Hailing…

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