Yamaha YSP-1: Fantastic Forty

By Guy Cocker on 14 July 2005, 12:08pm

When the rather heavy Yamaha YSP-1 landed in our lap, after recovering our breath we were heathily sceptical about its surround-sound potential. We've listened to enough godawful 'Dolby Virtual Surround' TVs to know that 'Virtual Surround' usually means too much bass and a weird echo effect.

We previously encountered the YSP-1 down Tottenham Court Road and were impressed with its movie potential. Its true skill seemed to be in one particular farm-based demo, where if you closed your eyes you might think you'd encountered a herd of cows at milking time. As there's a definite gap in the ambient bovine recreation market, we set the speaker up in our sound-proofed studio, turned up the volume, and 'cow'-ered in the corner.

The results were mixed -- the system's 'quick setup' didn't have an option for our long and narrow test room. We moved the speaker round to the centre of the room so that the rear and side walls were equidistant, and the results were impressive, particularly for movie playback. The Crystal Method's Legion of Boom album sounded okay in DTS 6.1 but the car chases of Ronin in Dolby Digital 5.1 sounded much better. It seems like the technology might have its limitations, but if you want to avoid the clutter of a true 5.1 system and you have a square living room, this new technology from Yamaha has a lot of potential.

You can find out if it really is the future of home cinema in our full review soon. -GC