Denon-2310 vs Marantz PM-6003 ?

[purwoadi]

My Musical Fidelity Tempest amp need to be replaced after 15 years of service.

In this time of home theatre and of financial difficulty, I can only spend about 800 pounds

for its replacement. I just bought a CD player Marantz 6003 that sounds good but not more as replacement of my

old CEC 971. During past years, I acquired Onkyo DV-S535 DVD player to starts

seeing movies in home with my wife and kids (also some concerts as Groban or

David Foster or Mick Bubble or Mamma Mia ). It is connected to my old stereo

-needed-to-replaced MF amplifier. So I wonder now, if it is better to buy

an AV amp (like Denon-2310 or -1910) that keep the desire of completing an home

theatre in the future or just stay in stereo world by acquiring an amplifier as PM-6003

or at most Kandy K2 amp. I have a lot of classical CD audio that I keep hearing time-by-time.

The question is can we have a good sounding amp with AV amp ? Any suggestion

is welcome. Regards.

 

[richardw42]

I think AV amps can offer quite a bit for music. Ok they might not quite match a dedicated stereo amp but can do quite a good job.
I'm guessing from your post that you currently use just two speakers. If you want an AV amp you should consider adding to this. Adding a Centre speaker should be the very least. If you have no intention to add to your speaker count then a stereo amp would appear the better bet.
What HiFi rate the Marantz CD6003 & PM6003 as being a good pairing.

 

[purwoadi]

Thanks Richard. When the option to go to home theatre is taken, of course, the money will be distributed to buy a AV amp and at least center speaker. I use JMR XO-1 2-way french speaker that I find excellent. It has 20 cm diameter boomer and a 2 cm soft-dome tweeter. It goes deep in low frequency, that I like, to sound the cello and orgue. But, if the stereo world option is taken, I can fire all the money to buy a decent amp like Kandy or Naim or Atoll. As you said, it will give a completely different sound. In fact, I never hear a multichannel that really satisfy me.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

purwoadi:Thanks Richard. When the option to go to home theatre is taken, of course, the money will be distributed to buy a AV amp and at least center speaker. I use JMR XO-1 2-way french speaker that I find excellent. It has 20 cm diameter boomer and a 2 cm soft-dome tweeter. It goes deep in low frequency, that I like, to sound the cello and orgue. But, if the stereo world option is taken, I can fire all the money to buy a decent amp like Kandy or Naim or Atoll. As you said, it will give a completely different sound. In fact, I never hear a multichannel that really satisfy me.

Stick with a stereo amp. A K2 or even a PM6003 will trounce the Denon 2310 for music.

 

[Anonymous]

a roksan kandy is around £800, they are said to be very good, but thats alot of money, you could buy an avr with pre-outs like my yamaha rxv-765 for around £250-£300 2nd hand, maybe even new, a pm 6003 for around £250 and a centre speaker from the change..

then you only need a sub and rears, ok the marantz wont be as good as the kandy, but if you go the 2nd hand road then i reckon £250 will get you an amp thats very close, my current amp is 9 years old, marantz pm7000, i only paid e100 for it, and its better than the pm6003 i had...

 

[Oldboy]

Well i have recently bought the Denon 2310 receiver and can confirm that it's as musical as you will get for an AV receiver at this price point. I have rediscovered my music collection since owning this receiver and have now borrowed my friends Marantz cd 6002 cd player for a few days...if you buy the 2310 or any receiver then i would say a good quality cd player to go with it is a must (i'm currently shopping for a Marantz cd 6003 for my system!) after hearing the difference in sound i would not go back.

I agree with everyone else that you won't beat a dedicated amp for stereo music but you can get close with a good system but as ever it's a case of what your priorities are, do you want good quality music or a full home cinema setup? You will have to compromise somewhere unless you triple your budget or buy both a hifi system and a home cinema so you need to decide what is most important to you and build from there

 

[WishTree]

I have expressed my views on a different thread..

I have Denon 2310 and used the pre-outs to drive Marantz Pm 7003. My personal opinion was that the difference was very marginal. Even in pure Integrated Amp mode, I did not find much difference between the two in stereo sound. My feeling is that from 8003 onwards there could be more perceivable difference as I feel that Denon 2310 is already doing very good in Stereo. Ofcourse there is fatigue with Denon 2310 over continuous listening times which I did not check with PM7003

If classical music is major part of your listening experience (in CD format) along with add on of watching movies, I would still suggest to go for a dedicated integrated amp. Reason is very simple - Movies are in general involving with Video and Audio and even with Stereo Sound you are not really loosing anything (An AVR would help in boosting the center which is the prime advantage of home cinema and surround sound, at least for me, is over rated) but when it comes to enjoying your music you only have Audio and if your AVR sound is the weak link then your listening experience gets impacted alot.

Honestly, I am surprised by the selection of your options. I do not know much about Musical Fidelity older amp that you had but I am very keen to try M6i and I am very impressed by Musical Fidelity range. Similarly K2 seems to be in a similar league atleast price wise where as PM 6003 is very much at the bottom rung of Integrated Amps (again price wise). I am sure PM6003 is right fit in its budget range but if you can spare cash for K2 then why not.

K2 sounds like a great option for right now and in future you can always integrate an entry level AVR with pre-outs at any time in and these kind of AVRs will become more of a commodity as time progresses.

 

[purwoadi]

Thank you every one for your advices. I think I rather take the stereo option, but WishTree and others idea to use pre-out of AVR to drive a dedicated stereo amp is also interesting. I will explore that option too for the future. More I think, I'm persuaded that the movies I see at most are also musical, i.e. concerts or musical film like Mamma Mia or Sound of Music. So definitively, I want the best sound out from my speakers. However, multichannel audio is not only for movie, is it ? How long time from now those multichannel format like SACD, DVD audio or others will arrive to the public ? It will need multichannel amp like AVR ? Regards.