YBA’s First A/V Receiver

The French firm YBA Design debuted its first A/V receiver, the YA701, at CES 2007. The receiver will put out 7 x 100 Wpc, offers carefully thought-out multizone capabilities, and is the first audio product to incorporate Cirrus Logic’s newest generation dual-core, 32-bit DSP processor.

While the YA701 will not, upon initial release, support Dolby True HD or DTS Master Audio HD decoding, a YBA Design spokesman indicated that the YA201’s Cirrus DSP device offers sufficient processing power to decode either format. Therefore, support for the advance Dolby and DTS formats will likely be added as a future firmware upgrade for the receiver. The YA201 includes and RS-232 port that makes future firmware upgrades easy to accommodate.

One of the most interesting aspects of the YA201 design is that, in order to optimize sound quality and reduce noise within the main chassis, all video functions are handled via an outboard video-signal switch box provided with the receiver. The YA201 also features HDMI level 1.2 support.

The YA201 (here shown on the top shelf of an equipment rack) will sell for approximately $2500, and will arrive in dealter’s showrooms in the June, 2007 timeframe. Around that time, or perhap a bit later, YBA Design will also release the YM501 DVD player ($1000, shown on the shelf below the YA701) and YS201 Music Center music server (approximately $2500, not shown).

With the arrival of the YA701, sophisticated YBA Design sound quality (as described in The Absolute Sound review of the firm’s YA201 integrated amplifier) will for the first time become available in a reciever.

Return to CES 2007 Report