plenty of power, decent sound, price paid

cumbersom navigation, no binding posts on rear and center channels, not enough digital inputs for todays use sources, digital inputs are assigned to pre-determined sources (not assignable)

Well, I feel like it was Christmas all over again. I recently decided that I was going to peice together another surroundsound system after selling off my last one over three years ago. I wasn't really expecting to be able to get anything even worth really listening to, but I was wrong. The first part was the speakers. I've heard speakers that range from garbage like Bose to pure gold like Wilson Audio. My first and most important goal was to find a speaker that let the music come through as clean as possible and kept the musical dynamics in tact. The one I ended up on was the Wharfedale 9.1 monitors. Excellent speakers for $250/pr. The little speakers won the product of the year in 'what hi-fi!' magazine out of the UK last year. After those speakers I only had $50 to get me some pile of junk reciever to get me by for a month or two, so.....off to the pawn shop! I had never seriously looked at a Yamaha receiver before. I had always owned and sold Marantz, Adcom, B&K, Denon, etc... but I only was looking for a temporary solution. The pawn shop had this reviever marked at $80, wich was the cheapest they had, and I was just trying to find faults with it to get a discount. It had no remote and the balance knob was missing, so I asked them what kind of a discount they could give me. The guy said, "how does $40 sound" and I replied, "$40 out the door, and I'll buy it". Needless to say I had a new reciever in my peanut price range in less than 10 seconds. Mind you, I was assuming that this was a prologic reciever with maybe 75 watts to the mains and 35-40 watts for center and surrounds. It wasn't till I was walking out the door that I realized that it had coax and optical digital inputs on the back, and I though, "I thought only Dolby Digital revievers had those". When I got home I looked up the model number on Yamaha's website and saw that it was 100x5, dolby digital, and had all the other list of goodies along with it. I then new that it had to have retailed for around $700-$800. To make a long story short, it is THE BEST $40 I've ever spent. The sound is very respecable and it has plenty of power for my Wharfedale 9.1's. I just wish I had the remote now. I think I'm going to turn my IPAQ into a pronto remote for it.

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none, only higher-end equipment

easy to use, lots of features

none so far

very easy to use, sounds real clean with dd. i also like the sound effects.
I like watching a sports game with the stadium sound on. great receiver.

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none

Clean power. Excellent DSP modes.

Lack of DTS decoding. Could use more digital inputs.

I recently purchased the unit for $499 Cdn. Even though it has no DTS decoding, this receiver is a great value. I had been using a Yamaha Pro Logic decoder together with a NAD receiver for my home theater system. Watching DVDs with dolby digital sound is so much better, I can't go back to watching VHS tapes with Pro Logic analog sound!!! I highly recommend this receiver (if you can find it) for those who want superior sound and aren't concerned about DTS.

Remote, s video outs,and no DTS

The 1103 is great receiver for the money. The dsp modes are ok if you like that stuff, but the real strength lies in the high current amplification--100w feels like 100w! The ac3 decoder does a fantastic job.

Cons: No DTS, Not enough S-Video outs, and the remote is awful

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HK,Marantz, Sony

clean cool sound

no dts

so far this is a nice receiver, ive waited along time to buy a receiver. I was in the army in korea back in 1985-1990 and alot of my friend were buying receivers and speakers on sale at the px im glad I waited becouse none of those had the dd for 5.1. im happy :)

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cd 502

very nice learing remote

none

ive had this receiver for almost one year and have not found any problems yet.this receiver could probably power just about any speakers you got,the sound is amazingly clean.it just overall sounds great.driving two cerwin-vega e-712's with mine.go get it!

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none

My original system started out with the Yamaha 2000 Series Rack system whichincluded the R-V703 Receiver, CDC-502 Cd Player,, K-903 Tape Deck and so on.
The Sub is an YST-SW80, Stock Yamaha Dual 8" Tower Speakers and the Yamaha
surround sound speakers.

This system was okay but lacked the good punchy bass. I purchased some
Cerwin Vega VS-150's to add to the mains. Now she kicked good. Max volume
without distortion was about 11 oclock on the knob. Well, the R-V703 Fried
due to overloading.

The repair center will have my 703 for about 3 weeks so I went out and purchased the R-V1103 @ 100 watts per channel min. RMS x 5 Channels.
Hey this will have to sound better than the 80 watts per channel from
the 703.

The 1103 does not reproduce the bass as well as the 703 did. Its highs are
very high and tough to kill. Even the the Bass Boost turned on the bass did
not seem very good. I have to carnk up to the 9 to 11 oclock position to
get any decent bass at all. At low levels, I can even hear some distortion
in the tweeters. I bought this unit as a display model and paid 499 for it,
but I think it has some problems, hopefully stepping up to the 1103 did not
degrade my performance.

The Yamaha repair center told me that their R series recievers were NOT
designed to drive loads like the 400 watt Cerwin Vegas and they will overload
the internal amp. The CV's are rated from 5 watts to 400 watts @ 8 ohms.
How will this overload this Yamaha 1103?

I'm looking forward to more reviews to see if I'm the only person complaining.

Very strong amplifier

No DTS decoding, only one digital optical input

Great product. I play music and movies very loud and have never had any problems with the amp (I have blown several Sony amps in college dorm rooms). Very strong and more features than comparable Sony and Technics models (at the time of purchase). This model also works well with a variety of speakers (have used large DCM's and small paradigm speakers as fronts). I am looking for a new yamaha amp simply because I would like to be able to play DTS DVD's. It's a good buy if you can find one.

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Similar amplifiers from Sony and Technics

Powerful and clean Dolby Digital sound; Reliability

Remote programming takes some patience

This is my first Dolby Digital receiver. I'm hoping it will last forever! I listened to several comparable units, but none of them performed as well as the 1103 on Dolby Digital soundtracks. My main speakers are power hungry Polk RTA 12c's. The Yamaha drives these and the rest of the system with no strain. A good test is Fleetwood Mac's DVD "The Dance". The Yamaha has no trouble maintaining concert level volumes and Stevie's voice comes through as if I were 5th row center. It's truly a chilling experience!

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Hafler 500, Denon

I purchased the unit from Sears before Christmas for only 480.00 as it was their last one and the display model at that, so these units may be difficult to come by. All DSP, Dolby Pro-Logic, and the stereo mode have performed flawlessly and with musical rendition (the 8 ohm speaker mode seems warmer, with almost too much bass, but is more detailed) hooked up to a pair of Polk SRS 2.3's (definite current suckers) with the music sourced from a Sony MDP-210 LD/CD player (18bit Burr-Brown dual D/A converters), a Sony SLHF 400 VCR (SuperBeta), and a JVC LE-33 turntable with a Shure VSTIII-P cartridge tracing the grooves. The sound (stereo only, tone bypass engaged, effects off) is a bit forward in the mids but smooth, bass is solid and tonal, with the highs sounding somewhat bright but detailed. Also, I've yet to hear the amp strain at high volume level (volume control at about 10:30-11:00) giving good dynamics without the unit getting hot enough to be concerned about. I'm very pleased with this purchase and am enjoying the added benefits that all the very listenable DSP modes (except Church - but hey - the wife likes it so...) and Dolby Pro-Logic are providing me now, with built-in Dolby Digital AC-3 decoding available (oh, I've presently Polk 4's in the rear) when I can add a DVD unit either to the computer or audio/video system in the future (I can't wait to hear what 96Khz/24bit audio sounds like - should be very smooth).