Excellent price, 6 channel input

no bass management

Purchased this for $99 in Miami. What a steal. Turns any amp into a A/V system. Great Yamaha home theater sound. I have it hooked up to my NAD c340 through the tape two loop (wouldn't want to connect using pre-outs as I bought the NAD for its clean circuit paths - I would not think of running all of my music through the Yammy first). Heavy unit, remote included, can control other Yamaha products, highly recommended at this price point.

Good enough power for reasonably efficient center and rear speakers. It has dual center speaker outputs; and also of great note dual line-level subwoofer outputs. This lets you run dual subs, and have one in each corner for a cross-fire arrangement. Killer! The price is reasonable, and there are additional 5.1 inputs on the back for when I finally get a new 5.1 satellite dish; which will wait until more standard broadcasts are available. If you are a person who has a nice older stereo receiver that they don't want to throw away, say older/larger Denon or Yamaha or Onkyo or even separates, this amp/processor is worth considering. You will need either a DVD player with built-in Dolby Digital processor like a Panasonic, or a Technics or Marantz outboard decoder.

As a previous post noted, Yamaha chose for some inexplicable reason to not put the lighted LED indicator on the volume knob. What a foolish way to cut corners/expenses. Very hard to tell the relative setting from across the room, as the display merely says up or down, and doesn't give you a corresponding indication.

Pretty good for the money, and quite a bit less than the similar yet more pricey Adcom unit, which is closer to the $700 range.

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Earlier DSP-200E, which I still have and use for Pro Logic.

I had the dsp-e492 and an adcom 5300 80x2 amp for a few months last summer (before a series of crazy upgrades). Anyway, the Yamaha is a good unit for the price (I paid $300, when the Adcom gsa700 was $680); however, the Adcom can now be had on ubid or ebay for under $200 and is the better sounding piece (analog bypass, 5 channel stereo, more powerful amps). One guy replaced the yamaha with the adcom in his system (see his adcom review).

Remote volume control,flexibility

No LED on volume control, display

Was itching to get Pro Logic but was quite happy with current stereo rig , so found this on Audiogon for $150.I checked out similar units from Adcom,Onkyo etc.The 492 had the ability to upgrade to AC3 and bypass internal amps so this was the one for me.In use the DSP modes are fun for about a day then get on your nerves.Vocals are terrible.I use an AR 70 watt integrated amp as my source and have this unit hooked into the tape monitor outputs.The Yamaha doesn"t have the low end of the AR and adds some grain to the sound but for movies who cares.Nice feature is sub control from the remote.You can hook this into your system through the Pre out terminals but then it would always be in line.But if you are happy with your current amp and don't want to jump into a receiver this fits the bill at a joke price. I supose 5.1 audio might reveal some weakness in the rear channel amps but in Pro logic it's fine. I don't use a center channel but you can also control it from the remote.This unit replaces a passive Dynaco QD-1 matrix decorder which did a nice job but doesn't quite cut it like prologic.One note about Yamaha service , i was missing the battery cover for the remote, emailed Yamaha and for $7.00 the had one sent by courrier to me in a couple of days. Not bad.
Go Habs.

Low cost home cinema upgrade for stereo hi-fi, not many competing products

Hiss from centre and rear sepeakers, hum from mains transformer, speaker terminals won't take banana plugs, centre speaker mode can't be changed from remote

In general I have found this to be a good pro logic upgrade to my Arcam Alpha 6+ stereo amp (E492 connected in tape loop). However, the hiss from the centre and rear speakers is slowly driving me towards replacing the E492 with something else. The hiss is dependent on volume; in pro-logic mode the volume control is generally low enough (8 o'clock) it isn't really a problem except in the quietest of passages but when using the 6 channel input fed from the inbuilt decoder of my Panasonic DVD-A360 the volume control needs to be between 9 and 10 o'clock and that introduces noticable hiss. Also the mains transformer is not toroidal so that gives off a quiet but audible hum, contributing to overall noise levels. Not recommended if you intend to use the 6 channel input. DSP modes are probably OK if you like that sort of thing, but personally I have never used them after the one occasion I tried them all out. Speaker connections are all on binding posts which is better than spring clips, but the posts won't take 4mm banana plus or BFA connectors. (BFA plugs used on newer Arcam amps ie. Alpha 8 onwards instead of 4mm banaca plugs.) Like most home cinema equipment the E492 is very deep, I had trouble fitting it into my wall mounted rack and there is very little space behind it. Centre channel mode (Normal, Wide or Phantom) can't be changed from the remote control which can be a pain as pro logic music often sounds best with the centre set to Phantom.

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