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Radio Road Which tuner to get and getting the most from it. Thank God, for the radio! |
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Radio Road Which tuner to get and getting the most from it. Thank God, for the radio! |
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This tuner is one of two tuners I found that combine a standard AM/FM tuner with a satellite tuner. At $399 it is much less expensive than the Rotel RT-1084 which adds HD (hybrid digital) and Sirius to the standard AM/FM bands. The Marantz unit requires the addition of an XM Mini Tuner and XM Antenna for XM reception. These are available at either xmradio.com or a number of on-line retailers for about $35.
The Marantz is 17 5/16 wide, 14 1/8 deep and about 2 1/2 inches high. The faceplate and case are both metal. The top is not that thick, causing a vibration induced hum which I cured by putting a VPI Magic Brick on top of it. The rear panel has connections for an AM antenna and ground, a FM antenna, the XM Mini Tuner, AC input and AC output. The Marantz must be unplugged when the XM Mini Tuner is connected.
The remote is made of black plastic and is not backlit.
The rest of my system is a Marantz SA-14 SACD player, a Toshiba SD-9200 DVD-A/CD/HDCD player and a Cambridge 840A integrated feeding B&W CDM-1SE speakers through Synergistic Research Alpha Sterling interconnects and Alpha Quad (bi0wired) speaker cables. The speakers sit on Target stands filled with aquarium sand and the components are housed in a Salamander cabinet and fed AC power through a Shunyata Hydra 6. The power cords are all Shunyata.
The only other tuner I have had in the system is an old Marantz 105 and I wanted to upgrade and add XM since I live in a very remote area where the only good FM station is NPR. The new tuner sounds much cleaner and has much better channel separation than the old 105. While tuned to FM, the display only shows the frequency. Call letters can be added by the user. While on the XM band, the display is either just the station number and name, that information and the signal strength or that information and specific information regarding what's playing.
The quality of the XM signal, compressed and down many bits, varies considerably from station to station. However, the best stations are not as good as NPR on FM. But, for low to moderate volume listening as background music, it can't be beat, especially if you live in the middle of nowhere.
At $399, the Marantz is a bargain since the Polk XM12 Tuner is $229. The Magnum Dynalab XM radios, which start at over $2,000 are out of my budget.
For the money, the Marantz is a steal.
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Topic - Review: Marantz ST7001 AM/FM/XM Tuner - Visitor 15:26:25 03/12/08 (0)
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