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

By Ryan Waniata Published October 2, 2015

yamaha musiccast rx s601 network av receiver lifestyle manual — Image used with permission by copyright holder

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.

Recommended Videos

Related: With Dolby Atmos and MusicCast, Yamaha’s YSP-5600 is the Rolls Royce of sound bars

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…

Culture

The best sci-fi shows streaming right now

From Lost to The Twilight Zone, these are the best sci-fi shows ever made

The cast of Lost.

Sci-fi television has been around since the earliest days of the medium, and it's evolved along with the rest of television. In every era, though, there have been great sci-fi shows that remind us of how well the genre can fit on television.

Great science fiction can reflect on the world we know, even as it expands our understanding of what's possible. Regardless of exactly what these shows are about, though, each of them tells their story in gripping fashion, taking full advantage of what TV is capable of.

Culture

‘The Brutalist’ director Brady Corbet says he’s made no money promoting the film

The director said that he makes more directing commercials than he does making movies.

Adrien Brody in The Brutalist

It can be wonderful to get nominated for a bunch of awards, but The Brutalist director Brady Corbet said that it's not exactly a profitable one. In an interview on WTF with Marc Maron, Corbet said that he hadn't actually made any money promoting the movie.

“This is the first time I’ve made any money in years,” Corbet said, saying that his first real paycheck in a long time came from directing three advertisements in Portugal. “Both my partner and I made zero dollars on the last two films we made. Yes, actually zero. So we had to just live off of a paycheck from three years ago and obviously, the timing during an awards campaign and travel every two or three days was less than ideal, but it was an opportunity that landed in my lap, and I jumped at it.”

Culture

John Malkovich said that he rejected Marvel movies prior to ‘Fantastic Four’ over low pay

He explained that Marvel movies took a lot of time, and he wanted to be paid accordingly.

John Malkovich in Fantastic Four

Over the course of its 15 years of existence, Marvel has lured a number of surprising actors into its orbit. We live in a world where Angelina Jolie and Harry Styles have both appeared in Marvel projects (actually the same one).

John Malkovich was one of the last Marvel holdouts, but that's changing with The Fantastic Four: First Steps. In an interview with GQ, Malkovich explained that he had been approached to do Marvel projects in the past, but had always turned them down.
“The reason I didn’t do them had nothing to do with any artistic considerations whatsoever,” Malkovich explained. “I didn’t like the deals they made, at all.”
He explained that he simply wanted more money to work through the conditions required to make a movie on this scale.
“These films are quite grueling to make…. If you’re going to hang from a crane in front of a green screen for six months, pay me. You don’t want to pay me, it’s cool, but then I don’t want to do it, because I’d rather be onstage, or be directing a play, or doing something else," he continued.
Malkovich is, perhaps unsurprisingly, playing villain Ivan Kragoff, also known as Red Ghost in the film. He explained that working on the movie was actually like stage work in some respects. "It’s not that dissimilar to doing theater,” he said, “You imagine a bunch of stuff that isn’t there and do your little play.”