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Marantz SA-7S1 Review

THE PHILLY B REPORT

MARANTZ SA-7S1
CUTTING EDGE PERFORMANCE AT A RESONABLE PRICE

The Marantz Sa-7S1 is one of the most musically satisfying red-book cd players that I have owned, wait you say it is a SACD player also, we will get to that in a moment.

I bring up Red-Book playback first because we all have more 16-24 bit CD’s than Super Audio CD’s and I have heard really good SACD playback on my Cary 306 SACD and the classic Sony SCD1, but neither satisfied me playing back red-book compact discs.

Red-Book playback on the Marantz makes well recorded red-book CD’s sound almost as good as a SACD, I said almost as good, but it will be a jaw dropping experience when you first put on one of your favorite cd’s and hear the resolution, micro to micro dynamics, perfect balance in color and tone from the high’s down to the lowest lows and to me this is more impressive than SACD which by design has a higher resolution, bandwidth and dynamics, though today’s 24 bit recordings are very close to offering what SACD cd’s could do several years ago.

I started with some Opus recording the 15 Anniversary CD that has everything from jazz to classical. I never was that impressed with this CD so I wanted to hear what an average CD would sound like as starting point.

On Here’s that rainy day, Teach me tonight, Georgia Cabin and House of the rising sun were the first cuts I played after the unit was warmed up and playing on repeat for 24 hours. Every cut I played sounded like a re-mastered recording, the stand up bass, piano, horns, the pace, swing and over tones were breath taken, things sounded “right” transparency with air and space around each instrument, but and this is a big but, the music retained it’s body and weight, not like a lot of so called players that are all detail but lacking any feel of weight to the presentation, no soul!

The stand up bass on Here’s that rainy day was full clean and articulate, the snare drum is quick and snaps, soft brush strokes are easy to hear and the sax is full warm and very clean sounding, like you are right in the studio, the piano is full, individual keys and fingering is so coherent it through me, and each instrument had it all spot not over hang or having “to try to listen to follow each instrument”.

But here is the kickers to get this type of reproduction you have to push in the phase inversion switch on the front of the unit; this recording was mastered out of absolute phase, everything comes together, switch it back, a thinness, lack of imaging and a less engaging sound. The is done in the digital domain by the way. My old Mark Levinson preamp had this switch also and I always missed it, now that I have it back and I can check out a recording and make sure I am hearing it in the right phase.

By the way Jazz at the Pawnshop suffers this big time, in fact the first 3 tracks need the phase flip and the next 4 tracks switched back to normal phase polarity! As does Ry Cooder great sound track Crossroads, when you flip the phase the bass comes out of now where and the dynamics are scary.

I played some mono tracks from Billie Holiday (10 CD Sony Box Set) and Frank Sinatra (Concepts). They all had a life to them that I never heard before, my wife came into the living room and said I never heard Billie’s band like that before, and you can hear her vocal changes so easy now, she sounds real sassy like she should.

Frank sounded full with such diction, the horns and the small jazz combo’s took you to the dance hall or the nightclub, happiness, and sadness of his emotion came through clearly. “One for my baby and one for the road” is so simple. Just a piano way in the back of Frank and a bass, and some light strings, again this recording is out of phase polarity, switch it and Frank and the whole recording because simply real, Franks voice now resonates, you can hear the edge to it his articulation and phrasing is much improved, jaw dropping to say the least.

In fact when you get used to hearing phasing right you can pick up a recordings that is not recorded in the right absolute phase, there are a lot of them two, I used to mark my LP’s in the old days, I have to start doing that again.

The unit has 3 filters and noise shaping, Filter one is default I guess, because based on your listening preferences any one of that would be enjoyable, Filter one is the most detailed, the one I used a lot, but I like two also, gave me a rounder sound with just a it of detail lost, there also is a noise shaping switch you can use, that adds a touch of digital feedback, so if I want a bit of Filter 2 but with all the detail and dynamics if filter one just turn on the noise shaper!

Can you see the value in having these tools and your fingertips? The hobby is about the music, and this unit will open up a whole new world to you and reproduce your CD collection, as you may never heard it before.

One note, I use all balanced connections in my system, the SA-7S1 uses pin 2 is cold and pin 3 is hot, my McIntosh gear XLR are configured the opposite, so the phase switch makes it easy to match my pin configuration on my McIntosh.
Listening to SACD CD’s was breath taking, all of the above improved by a factor of 3, this was a surprise to me, it made my old Cary 306 SACD sound, coarse, grainy, and digital and the Cary sounded good, just not very reliable during the 5 units I tried over a years time ending in November.

SACD was the best I have ever heard it, much better then the separates DCS which to my taste sound sterile, in fact HP commented on some of the RCA Living Stereo classical recording having a digital coldness to them, and he felt also the DCS gear used for mastering was at fault and I would agree.

The imaging and depth of field is the best of any of the units I have owned or taken home for a long work out. Listening to classical recordings you sense the size of the hall and room, this unit brings out the little things that make you think your hearing a real musical experience.

The last thing I want to comment on is the built quality, like my Sony SCD1, this is the best built unit on the market at a sane price, again the Japanese give you outstanding value along with built quality and design features that would cost 3-4 times as much for smaller companies to produce a unit of this caliber and a big thing for me reliability.

Any down side? none, and I never said this before, I can’t find one, if you want to nit pick you could say the remote because it plastic, but what does a remote do? If what it does it is all you need. By the way the unit looks better in person then any picture you can find of it, it look like a million bucks and it does not cost you $45,000, $30,000, $20,000 or even $8,000.

So to end. You will have a sonic feast, a visual feast, real world filters and phase inversion switches to bring out the best of your recordings be it CD or SACD, this does CD so well that if SACD fades away, I really won’t care because it bring so much out of my normal CD collection that I will not miss it… as much.

Can you call spending $6,900 for a CD player a bargain, I think so, they I not saying most people can afford this unit, but in my experience of ownership of the Sony SCD1, Accuphase DP77, Esoteric X-03, Cary 306 SACD (I hear a big price increase is coming) and the McIntosh MCD201 (it sounded much better then two of the units above) and it not the Sony or Cary.

And having heard at home for a week once the Linn CD12 (the best red-book I ever heard until the Marantz) and that unit back then was $20,000, I guess if you got the cash and you have some gear to sell, then I would say the Marantz SA-7S1 would be worth your investment in it.

This unit does Red-Book and SACD equally well, and I know from some reviewers they have said many times to have a unit of each or add a DAC so you have the best of both worlds, well now you can have one unit that not only does both well, but does them at the current state of the art.

YOU will not regret it!

My Current and for the foreseeable future: McIntosh C200 & MC401 preamp and amp. Dynaudio Confidence 5 speakers and of course the Marantz SA-7S1.

Cables: MIT Magnum 3 speaker wire and interconnects (XLR). Power cables, 2 Oracle Z-3 and Shunyata research Taipan VX for the CD player and two PS audio Ultimate Outlets for the front end gear.

I hope you have a chance to hear this unit, it will be worth your time to do so.

Give peace a chance!





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Topic - Marantz SA-7S1 Review - PhillyB 10:22:43 02/05/07 (26)


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