Satelliteguys Exclusive- Yambeka 5 Speaker HT

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Cheech, always glad when I can help.

I really don't see a white bus here....

I believe that you will as happy as I have been with mine. Hope you enjoy your speakers and if you can, post a review of what you think when you get a chance.

Steve
 
Cheech,

Is your handle for Cheech & Chong or Jonathan Cheechoo?

I have been accused of riding the short bus but not a white one!
 
I thought I would post a quick initial review. Matrix sounded great, after a while the right front floorstanding speaker developed a very noticeable rattle at lower frequencies. I have an email in to Brian to replace this speaker. I can reproduce it at will with Top Gun during the flight scenes. I haven't done a whole lot of tweaking yet, so we'll see how the replacement goes. I have a feeling I have my surrounds turned down too much, I'm not getting much sound but I don't think that's the speakers fault.

I agree with the earlier poster about dodgy cabinet quality, not only for the rattle, but for cosmetic stuff too. The crookedness of the badges irritated me so much that I took them off. However, I remind myself that I did buy a $200 7 speaker set, and not a $1000 Paradigm set. :)

More when I have the replacement.

/EDIT - I think I was nitpicking a little too much on the "scratches", since I like to keep the black covers on you can't see anything at all. Wood on the cabinets was all perfectly fine, no marks, dings, chips, or anything. For anyone not living in the Columbus area, they are well packed for shipping. Prior to the rattle, they blew my old Onkyo HTIB's away as far as sound quality goes. I was seeing equal results to sa91899's review. I have already spoken to Brian (that's less than a hour turnaround time for customer service at 9PM on a weekend, for anyone that's keeping score :)) and I will be getting a replacement tomorrow.
 
Last edited:
Cheech,

You said earlier that you placed the Paypal order around noon today, and you already have your speakers tonight???

Wow! How did that happen?

I have to say I have none of the scratches or rattles others have mentioned. If I were going to keep the covers on, the crooked emblems would probably be a bigger thing but for me, it's not a biggy.
 
I live in the Columbus area, and picked them up.

sa91899 said:
Cheech,

You said earlier that you placed the Paypal order around noon today, and you already have your speakers tonight???

Wow! How did that happen?

I have to say I have none of the scratches or rattles others have mentioned. If I were going to keep the covers on, the crooked emblems would probably be a bigger thing but for me, it's not a biggy.
Click to expand...
 
Nice addition Cheech...

an hour turnaround this late on a weekend is phenomenal...

Can't wait to hear your full review after you get the replacement and we are also waiting to hear back from scott also.
 
Cheech said:
I think I was nitpicking a little too much on the "scratches", since I like to keep the black covers on you can't see anything at all. Wood on the cabinets was all perfectly fine, no marks, dings, chips, or anything. For anyone not living in the Columbus area, they are well packed for shipping. Prior to the rattle, they blew my old Onkyo HTIB's away as far as sound quality goes. I was seeing equal results to sa91899's review. I have already spoken to Brian (that's less than a hour turnaround time for customer service at 9PM on a weekend, for anyone that's keeping score :)) and I will be getting a replacement tomorrow.
Click to expand...

Aside from the one center speaker with the glue gobs (which is hidden in my setup, anyway) I'm totally nitpicking on the little dings and stuff. I've noticed a few dings in the exterior of the cabinets, but you can only see them when the light hits it a certain way and you're wicked anal retentive (like me). They don't affect the sound at all, so I'm happy.

Which Onkyo HTIB speakers do you have? The larger wood-cased ones or the smaller, plastic casings? My Yambekas are replacing my older set of larger, wood-cased ones. Although I wouldn't say the Yambekas blow them away, I am very impressed with they Yambekas (even the Yambeka center and surrounds, which meet the same specs, seem more clear).
 
bbrazil said:
Aside from the one center speaker with the glue gobs (which is hidden in my setup, anyway) I'm totally nitpicking on the little dings and stuff. I've noticed a few dings in the exterior of the cabinets, but you can only see them when the light hits it a certain way and you're wicked anal retentive (like me). They don't affect the sound at all, so I'm happy.

Which Onkyo HTIB speakers do you have? The larger wood-cased ones or the smaller, plastic casings? My Yambekas are replacing my older set of larger, wood-cased ones. Although I wouldn't say the Yambekas blow them away, I am very impressed with they Yambekas (even the Yambeka center and surrounds, which meet the same specs, seem more clear).
Click to expand...

I have the wood-cased ones. My initial thoughts were that the Yambeka's have clearer sound and are better at higher volumes. I should have the replacement tomorrow.
 
Initial Thoughts

Hello everyone,

Although I'm on a few other home theater forums, I'm fairly new to this site (at least from a posting perspective). However, I wanted to give my initial thoughts on the Yambeka speakers.

First of all, I wouldn't say I'm an audiophile, but I do have a 65" Mits RPTV and a new Pioneer 7.1 receiver (816). I'm somewhat picky in my video/audio equipment, but I also have other hobbies (such as my PC), so I have a somewhat limited budget.

Having said all that, I'm replacing some fairly old 3-way Pioneer speakers with some huge woofers that in retrospect probably were a little overpowering on the low end.

I will say that Yambeka customer service has been top notch so far. I got my order within a week, and my questions have usually been answered within minutes/hours. I did get 1 surround sound speaker that appears to be rattling and Brian was nice enough to let me do a little testing on the rest of my system before sending out a replacement. Customer Service = "A+" so far

I haven't had a lot of time to do testing, but I've gone through a few Star Wars DVD's and a HDTV broadcast. I've also listened to a few XM channels through DirecTV.....

.....So far, I would probably give the speakers a grade of a "B". I'm biased in the sense that I originally had speakers with huge woofers, so the new towers seem to be a bit lacking on the low end, but I think it's also important to point out I was biased and perhaps my old setup pushed out a little too much bass ;-) from the front speakers. I felt that the mid to upper range has been pretty good. The center channel may be a bit bright, but that is probably due to my setup.

At this point, I want to test out a few cd's and maybe some audio dvd's; I feel I will be better able to give a review when I due a little more significant testing. I definitely feel I need a subwoofer, so if someone has a sub recommendation for this system, please pass it along.

I'm not sure how this initial review comes across since I have a tendency to point out things i'm concerned about rather than praise, but I wanted to make it clear I'm pretty happy with my system and am interested in tweaking it some more (and adding a subwoofer). Not only am I considering recommending this system to friends, I'm also considering picking up another system from my PC. Time will tell, but it seems like a fairly promising start...
 
I got my Yambeka speakers hooked up yesterday and all I can say is WOW. I couldn't believe how "clean" they sounded.

I was also surprised by thh bass these things put out. When I hooked these speakers up I unplugged my subwoofer to see how much bass these this put out. And was very impressed with it. It wasn't the ground shaking bass I get with my subwoofer, but it was good bass!

My wife even commented that the sound was much more "natural" then my old speakers.

We watched a few movies and I was very impressed with the quality, the only thing I dont like about these speakers is the center speaker is a lot larger them my old Optimus Center speaker I had, and because its so big it does not sit well on the top of my Sony SXRD TV as the other speaker did.

I will need to move some stuff around and place the speaker under the TV so I dont need to worry about the speaker falling on the head of my 4 year old.

Other then that, is a BIG two thumbs up from me! This is an amazing speaker set at a crazy price! These speakers would still get my rave review at double the price!
 
tsrebel,

I agree with you about the bass. If I hadn't already had a sub I was perfectly happy with, this set would have caused me to go out and spend somemore money to get the bass that I want. (I tend to be heavy on the bass also) but I didn't so this set fits perfectly in with what I already had.

Scott, I'm with you on the size of the center speaker... It's massive. I have the room so it's not a big deal for me but I hope this thing never rattles off the shelf cause if there is anyone under it at the time they get a concussion! It would most likely be my luck that it would be me anyway... The speaker that this center replaced was somewhere around 4" wide by 3" tall by 3.5" deep.... A big difference but I'm still grins all over!
 
The center channel speaker was the same size as the Sony center channel it replaced, so it fits nicely in our TV stand.

I'll take pics this weekend once I get my Wii set up. :)
 
I received the replacement speakers last night. After some initial scheduling issues, Brian came out to my house to personally replace the right floorstanding unit. I haven't run it through the same paces I did before yet, but I can tell you that the after-sale service was very good. Admittedly, it did take 2 speakers to finally get it right due to the fact that the negative screw post kept sticking and would not unscrew all the way so I could insert my 16 gauge wire in there, then when I tried to put some pressure on it to jar it loose, the entire terminal (not just the black plastic part) started to spin on its screw. It was basically useless unless I had some banana ends on my cables, which I do not.

The silver lining to an issue like this is that if you do come across it, the issue manifests itself immediately so you can get an easy replacement. This isn't as hard to track down as a random rattle or anything like that. Yambeka is not afraid to uphold their warranty, which is gratifying to see.
 
sa91899 said:
Scott, I'm with you on the size of the center speaker... It's massive.
Click to expand...

It's not tiny be any means, but I'd hardly call in "massive". :) It's half the size of my Paradigm center.

I bought the following to put on top of my Sony, and it has worked great (even better than I expected based on the pic):

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Omni...sem/rpsm/oid/108951/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

EC.OMS.CCH1B.jpg
 

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