Digital Drive

Marantz SA10; first, second, & third impressions.

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I've been hemming & hawing & obsessing about my 25 year old front end ever since I took my equipment out of moth balls in November of 2017. Last Monday I finally went with a marked down "factory refurbished" SA10 from MD; It arrived Wednesday in the AM but I was working on one of my amps during the day, so I didn't open it up until later in the evening.

Wednesday night, first impression: "Wow, this bastard sure is big." Also: no power cord. Also: I wanted to read the owners manual tonight & that's not there either.

Thursday evening after moving one amp in & one amp out, second impression: "Wow, this bastard sure is big." (Also, no remote.) Wouldn't fit where I wanted it to fit. I felt like someone who went out & bought the monster truck he had been perseverating about for a year & then found out that not only wouldn't it fit in his garage, the driveway was too small as well. Oh well. Make it fit. It looks ugly, but everything is hooked up. Put in one of my Sheffield Labs Test CDs & listened to Rodger Skoff & Doug Sax do a walk around. Things are louder than before. But I also hear footsteps clearly that I never noticed before, & I can hear that shaker thing rattling a tiny bit as he walks to the rear of the room, & I never noticed that before either. I started listening to the DCC redbook L. Ronstadt Vol. 2 & really didn't feel like listening to an awful lot of it. I put in SACD "Cafe Blue Unmastered" & wow, it sure is loud. & there's some grain & edge that I had been hearing before my amp went down a couple of weeks ago & I got it back up, but now it sounds like it has teeth & it wants jump at me & bite me. Buyers remorse? Possibly. Probably should have been drinking wine instead of whiskey.

Saturday evening after rearranging and redoing the garage and the driveway so everything (SA10, the amp, the pre, the wires, the cables) fits nice & (by my standards) sanitary AND after replacing a pair of I don't know how old EL34s that are power source for the input tubes with some brand new reissued Mullard EL84s that I was keeping for spares. Did the walk around again with Doug & Rodger & the contrast of depth of the room vs closeness to the microphone is more apparent than before. Listened to some more redbook test CDs with reference musical tracks. Quite dynamic & snappy & detailed, but since I don't listen to them often, nothing to compare with (but they sounded great). Redbook DCC L. Ronstadt Gr Hits Vol 2 sounds much sweeter & cleaner than last night even when I put the pedal down a little bit. Listened to the whole CD & the bass at the beginning of her cover of "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" comes on strong & tight again so I turn it up even more & everything holds together. MFSL SACD Cafe Blue: (on redbook play back this always used to sound real nice until the sound started degrading a while back ago, but) tonight it is an extraordinary thrill. Detail was there before, but tonight even sharper & I feel as if I am hearing more air in the room. Nothing is what I would personally define as warm, it does play significantly louder than what it replaced, but it is not aggressive as I perceived it to be yesterday. Buyer's remorse starting to fade.

Ramble on.

Follow Ups:

RE: Marantz SA10; first, second, & third impressions. - johntoste 14:50:08 08/16/20 (0)
Using Fixed Output? nt - oldmkvi 09:14:33 08/16/20 (1)
- RE: Using Fixed Output? nt - immatthewj 09:38:32 08/16/20 (0)
A great player-enjoy! (Nt) - hawkmoon 06:20:13 08/16/20 (0)