Yamaha RX-V659 Receiver

In the pursuit of life, liberty and the best damn sound system around, Audioholics gets intimate with Yamaha's RX-V659 receiver. You aren't going have to break your little sister's piggy bank to get great performance at a decent price(549 dollars to be exact). Its clearly made for music enthusiasts with iPod and XM support. Shoring up support for its price tag, the V659 impresses the judges by exceeding its advertised 100 watt power rating. Other notables include component upconversion, onscreen display and 3 zone configurability.

From the article: 

The Yamaha RX-V659 is a receiver cut from a
different cloth from what we are accustomed to in this price class.  It
shared many of the virtues of its bigger brother – the RX-V2600 such as
a large E-core transformer, large capacitor bank (71V 12,000uF Caps x
2).  50V caps would have been plenty to achieve 100wpc, though using
71V caps gives Yamaha plenty of design margin and added headroom since
the rails can safely been swung much higher.  There is nothing wimpy
about the amp section of this receiver and as you will find in the
Measurements & Analysis section of my review, this receiver is an
overachiever and delivered MORE than its rated power. 

The
RX-V659 employees all burr brown 192kHz/24bit DACs and Yamaha’s Top Art
construction found on their more expensive receivers.  All in all, I
liked what I was seeing under the hood of this new budget Yamaha
receiver and looked forward to determining if the sum of the parts
equated to good performance and sound quality – a signature hallmark of
Yamaha’s high end receivers.