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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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I took delivery of the Marantz 50n almost two weeks ago, figured I would give the improved Heos another try, see if it's dac is worth using, and save shelf space with its built-in CD player.Well, on the plus side, the Heos app has improved a bit but it still has bugs and limited in features, but I could live with it if I had to.
The build quality of the unit is huge and solid as usual, I think Marantz is the best where that is concerned.
Using my Wiim Ultra as a streamer, with its dac analog out to my preamp, versus Wiim digital out to the Marantz dac to my preamp, they are sound almost identical except that the Marantz dac is a bit more forward, it jumps out at you more.
The biggest plus for the Marantz 50n however, is the CD section. The mechanism is so smooth, silent and sounds wonderful. Totally natural sounding and easy to listen to. It's a pity CDs are not my primary way of listening anymore, but I still have lots that needs revisiting.On the cons side, as pretty as the silver gold faceplate is, I find it a bit too bright and draws too much attention to itself.
As big as the display seems, it doesn't tell you much. A third of it is the CD draw, and the rest only scrolls the artist name when streaming and track number when playing CDs. No dac information like sampling rates .
It shows the input when you make a change but that goes away.
You can dim or turn off the display and turn off a bunch of other unused features, but there is not even a little pure direct light to tell you the player is on like other Marantz units have.
The USB input seems to only work with PCs, as you have to download a driver. I tried to use it with the Wiim usb output, the way I did with my Topping dac, but it didn't work.
I put my Jazzgrove.org flac URLs in the Heos app but I got a error message saying the Marantz didn't support it. The other formats played fine.
And finally the remote buttons are so small, and the writing on them so dim and hard to read, I am always pressing the wrong button.So if you're considering getting it for the CD section, you may as well just get the CD only CD60.
As for streaming with a improvement in dac, app and display, I have a Cambridge EXN100 coming to try.
Edits: 12/10/24
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Topic - Marantz 50n pros and cons. - ABliss 07:48:20 12/10/24 (0)
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