Home > Consumer Reviews > Yamaha HTR-5560 Dolby Digital Audio/Video Receiver

I purchased this receiver after not being satisfied with my ...Marantz digital receiver. A friend of mine bought a Yamaha receiver shortly after I purchased my Marantz receiver, and his Yamaha blew me away. My Marantz had a thudy sound when listening to CD's. I thought it might be my speakers so I bought a very good pair of speakers, but it sounded no better. So now four years later I decided to shop around for a new receiver. I checked out many top of the line receivers, but when it came down to sound for the $$$ the Yamaha receivers could not be beat. This receiver sounds fabulous listening to cd's as well as watching movies. The power put out is simply awesome, as well as you have all the inputs and outputs you could possibly need, plus you have the ability to hook up two sets of main speakers. You will also find this receiver simple to operate, and a great veriety of sound fields to choose from, (jazz club, rock concert, pro logic 1&2, spectale, sci fi, tv sports, just to name a few). The only downside to the HTR-5560 is that there is no phono input, you need to buy the [more expensive] model to get it, or you can do what I did and buy a ...stereo pre amp for your turntable. All in all this is a great receiver, if you buy it you will get plenty of bang for your buck, and you won't be disappointed.

As a long time user of Yamaha and Sony products, the choice between the Yamaha HTR-5560 and the Sony STR-DE985 was not easy.
Both have similar base functions, specs and price.
The Sony has the "bells and whistles", where the Yamaha is known for their high quality of sound.
I decided to go with the Yamaha and I'm glad I did.
After going through the instructions, I found many more options then are listed for this unit.
I also found I could live without some of the Sony extras, like multi-room output, phono audio in and the remote unit macros.
The Yamaha sound is excellent and this unit has plenty of high quality power. It also has more digital ins and outs.
The reason I rated this receiver a 4 star is I would like to have a 3 or 5 band equalizer built in,
a remote that has at least the main buttons illuminated for ease of use in darkened rooms and sub woofer out that has adjustable cross-over settings.
So, the choice is quality vs. options.
I chose quality.

I purchased this receiver after I decided to replace my Sony. The Sony had lots of features and was 100W x 5, but it had horrible background noise that literally made my ears ring. I researched several different receivers in the $$$ to $$$ range, including the H-K, Onkyo and Denon (within that price range). When I listened to the Yamaha, I was hooked. Yes, the Denon has great sound, but the Yamaha has similar qualities and packs in more features for the dollar. Most importantly, it has crystal clear sound and no further hiss (or ringing in my ears). I love this machine. I have it hooked up to a Cerwin-Vega! surround sound speaker package, and the sound is awesome. This unit is definitely worth the money.

I was absolutely amazed at the difference a receiver can make in the quality of your sound. I had a Sony, Dolby Digital, receiver for about 3 years. Some friends had bought Onkyo receivers that put mine to shame (TX-SR600 & TX-SR800). I thought it was the DTS decoding, which my receiver didn't have, or the larger speakers. I only have bookshelf speakers, Bose 201s and VCS-10 in the front and 161s and VCS-10 in the back. Now movies at my house put theirs to shame. This receiver has all the bells, whistles and sound you could possibly want for $$$$$$$$ dollars less than its closest competitor and the Owners Manual isn't that bad.

Ps. my receiver was defective when I received it. Amazon.com had a new receiver to me in 3 working day of the notice, not when they received the item. Kudos to Amazon.com for outstanding customer service.

First the Pros:
The Yamaha receiver HTR5560 is truly one of the best looking units. Simple lines, a minimum amount of buttons, timeless, as these units have been for years (I did upgrade from a none digital RXV1070 unit)
To my surprise, Yamaha has kept its sturdy aluminum front plate and the uncompromising good solid feel of every button on the front panel.

The sound is truly remarkable. A huge improvement over the old none digital $900.00 unit. Dolby digital is absolutely incredible compared to the old Pro Logic and the DSP is still as much fun to play with as it used to be, however, Yamaha left one of my favorite settings out, the Church environment.

Very good designed speaker cable terminations, which make it virtually impossible to install a wire that would touch the next terminal and short it out.

Room for Improvements:
The user MANUAL is still bad, actually it got worse. The print is not as sharp and smaller, making it harder to read the almost invisible identifications of connectors in dimmed light (hey, who has the time to set it up during the day?)
The manual does not have diagrams with all the connections for the different possible set-ups. The diagrams do not show if you can hook up a DVD player with S-Video and continue with RCA to your old TV monitor. Also, you might find in your DVD manual the answer to why your unit never switches to Dolby Digital. Yes, you need to hook it up over an optical cable. The manual does not explain enough what all these different decoders do how they work and what the hardware andconnection requirements are.
Don't get me wrong, all the info is in there, but you will find a lot of important information just by chance. And, if this is the only place where Yamaha did the cost cutting, thumbs up.

The plane front panel requires that a bunch of operations have to be done by pushing buttons several times until you get to the setting desired. As a result, you do more with the REMOTE CONTROL. Unfortunately this unit is truly the weakest point on this receiver. Small buttons, no illuminated buttons, no LCD and not enough buttons for all the functions. As a result you are still going down the menu hierarchy for settings you might change for every CD or DVD. This is a pain in the neck and cuts down on the fun. Any of the aftermarket remote controls for $15.oo-20.00 can do a much better job, except for the DSP functions. I will try to get one from a RXV730 Yamaha receiver, the next step up from this one.

If you still use a record player, you are out of luck, or need to buy a pre-amp. There is no PHONO INPUT.

Also, no ON SCREEN audio information.

A word of caution when shopping: The features listed buy most sellers have tons of mistakes; the worst of all is the Tweeter web site (North East Region). According to Tweeter, this unit is almost identical to the RXV730, a $599.00 unit. Crutchfield seamed to have a much more accurate list of features and has top-notch photos of all angles and the remote.

Still, I think it is still a very good unit, sounds wonderful, very good price and it will still look good in ten years, just as my 12 year old RXV1070 does today.