Which is the best receiver Yamaha, Onkyo, Denon, Pioneer, other for Home Assistant?

I’m in the market to buy a new receiver and I’d like it to be compatible with Home Assistant. Looks like HA already has integrations for each one of the receivers I listed in the title (Yamaha, Oknyo, Denon, and Pioneer), is there an edge for one over the others? I’ve searched Google a bit and found a few threads that talk about each receiver but none are very detailed and they don’t contain much in the way of comparison data. Anyway…

  1. What receiver do you have?
  2. What do you like about how it works? Any big wins?
  3. What do you not like about how it works? Any gripes?
  4. Why did you choose this one?

– is there any other brand receiver that should be considered?

Can only comment on what I have: two of Yamaha RX-V685, these both have two zones. So with 4 zones in total I have audio everywhere I need it. 5.1+ presence speakers in the theatre and lounge, stereo in the dining room and on my deck.

The Yamaha integration works really well for media control and allows customising sources (renaming or hiding). It does miss a few controls though, like treble/bass/adaptive DSP or DRC/ Subwoofer level, etc…

The MusicCast integration has all the controls and works just as well controlling media but does not yet allow customising or hiding sources. Though I believe there is work being done to add this.

So at the moment I use a mix of both integrations in custom mini-media cards. In future hopefully all my needs will be met by the MusicCast integration.

I chose this receiver model as an upgrade to an older Yamaha amp that only had IR control (yuck).

One thing I do not like is that the Yamaha API does not allow Aircast directly to zone 2. If you want Aircast in zone 2 you have to Aircast to the main zone and follow that with zone 2.

Overall I am very happy with it though.

All Off

Screenshot 2022-09-10 at 12-07-43 Overview – Home Assistant

Main Zone On

Screenshot 2022-09-10 at 12-07-27 Overview – Home Assistant

Main Zone Extra controls expanded

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Denon AVR X3600H here.

Native HA integration works fine, controls all needed function.
2 zones support in HA works.
Denon HEOS multiroom also natively supported by HA.

Not much to say about it. It just does everything I need it to do :wink:

afbeelding

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