Marantz SR5003/6003 concerns!!

[Pistol Pete1]

I've been doing a lot of research on the amps mentioned above. All sounds good, except for a few potential pitfuls:

1) Only one crossover can be used for all speakers!! In other words, if you use a 80Hz crossover for your fronts, it applies for rears and centre automatically.

2) If sending an HD sound format to the machine to decode, audessey settings will not be operational whilst listening to that sound. Whereas, if you use the blu ray to decode them, and send PCM, audessey settings are available to use.

Why has Marantz done this? It's ok if you have a Sony BDP S550, and you can decode at the player side, but I have a Sony BDP S350, so can't.

It seems daft that they set the machine up to not use what is seen as a main feature on these amps these days, when playing a blu ray disc, but making the feature operational for any other format?

If any of you out there has either amp, can you confirm that these issues actually do nothing to hinder the sound quality?

To be honest, if I'm spending this kind of money, having limitations like this (no other company set their machines up like this, that I'm aware of) really 'puts me off'!!!!!

Anyone help?

 

[kinda]

Hello,

I've got ther SR6001. It does not decode the HD formats, only accepts the 7.1 PCM over HDMI, so I can't really offer much on your 2nd question. It does seem a bit odd though, and when decoding DD/DTS onboard my amp the Audyssey EQ is used.

For the first, I have my speakers all set to small, and there does seem to be only one crossover. I'm not sure if you get more options setting the speakers to large, but I'll check it out if I get the chance.

With a set of satellite speakers and sub it's generally not a problem, as the sats tend to have a similar low end limit. However, if I mixed and matched speakers, added a pair of floorstanders at the front or whatever, this would become a big problem, and I can't imagine that Marantz would sell receivers with that limitation. Plus surely it would have been picked up in reviews.

I feel that there must be a way to set separate low end cutoffs for the speakers, but I don't have any evidence or knowledge of how to do it.

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Hi Kinda,

Not many reviews on this amp in this country, so I've had to resorted to reviews and forums over the pond...

EDITED BY MODS for house rules violation.

Take a look at the above to see what this US reviewer thought of the set up on this amp!!

Tried to contact Marantz about these issues, but still awaiting a reply.....no reply, no purchase!!
EDI

 

[kaledi]

I have the SR6003 (watching Stephen King's Thinner on Sky MOvies HD right now) and absolutely love it. Works like a dream and sounds fantastic.

Anyhow, some responses to your questions.

1. My understanding is the although for manual set up you can only set a single corss over for all the speakers, if you run the Audessey setup, the automatic settings actually apply different crossovers to each speaker. I've read this in a couple of places, and I even quizzed a Marantz technical guy, who confirmed this behaviour; that said it doesn't say this in the manual.

2. I don't yet have a bluray player so can't confirm the HD audio limitations - but again the behaviour you describe has been confirmed elsewhere.

In terms of the Audessey set up, I guess the one area that could potentially have the biggest impact to sound quality is the tonal calibration it applies to the speakers, depending on their characteristics and room acoustics/environment. I have Quad Lite for the front 3 and sub, with Wharfedale DFS speakers for surround and surround back, and evidently (at least my interpretation) these are very well matched tonally, and the room is reasonably acoustically 'flat' because Audessey doesn't alter the frequency characteristics of any of the speakers more than 1 to 2db across the frequency range. Presumably (although I haven't verified it) the other key settings Audessey derives during set up (Speaker distance, levels, cross over) are applied to the HD audio?

Therefore to answer your question around not having Audessey processing available for HD audio - I would say that it will less of an issue if you have well matched speakers, and don't have an acoustically 'challenging' room.

Hope this is helpful to you

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Hi Kaledi,

Thanks for your response.

To answer one of your questions: The speaker distance etc are still applied when using HD, just not the audessey settings, which in a 'sonically challenged' room could be a problem.

I think my main thought going through my mind is whether I want to spend that kind of money on an amp, that basically has limitations compared to it's peers at the same price point. Marantz would have done better to given the operator of the unit a choice to switch it off, or leave it on.

As for x overs, if audessey does set all speakers up with different x overs, I assume they will be disenabled with HD sound, as audessey is switched off then? So again another wasted function on this amp when a owner wants to decode HD formats in the amp itself............

Poor Marantz, very poor..................