The
Audioholics store has lifted the lid on the new
Marantz SR4003 receiver. Right up front, you'll notice the design borrows from Marantz's Reference series of components, so now you can satisfy your champagne-like tastes without breaking your beer-like budget. Joe Six Pack won't feel robbed by the feature set either -- the SR4003 is a seven-channel, 80-Watt number with a triplet of HDMI 1.3a inputs and a single output. With some 16,000-microfarads in the amplifier section's capacitor banks, those are pretty generous 80-Watts, too. Of course, there's an array of video upconversion and autocalibration niceties for you, too. For Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA, you'll have to use LPCM, but something had to be cut out to fit the budget. In all, the generous package of specs behind the nice-looking face and a $550 price sound like a good formula to us.
posted Aug 26th 2008 10:07AM
This may be worth picking up while I remodel and save up for the basement home theather system where I plan on getting the marantz pre/pro.
Upscaling?? No mention - and yes I know the 'let your monitor do it' religion.
sorry I mean Upscaling stats? like 720p max?
This one looks like a winner. It's too bad Marantz is so late to the game with a low priced receiver with HDMI 1.3 and next-gen codecs. A few months ago I finally gave in and got the second generation Onkyo 606 since I just couldn't wait any longer. Not that I'm unhappy with the Onkyo, but I've always liked Marantz equipment.
Perhaps a little late to the game at this price point. Their top two receivers do the latest and have been out for a while now.
The Onkyo TXSR606 looks better value than this. More HDMI inputs, and audio decoding for $499 from the same site.
While I think Onkyo is a great company and will always recommend them for entry level. The place where marantz always seems to shine is their amps, the setups I have heard, I think marantz produces and better and richer sound.
I would gladly trade a few extra bells and whistles for amp quality. Besides, marantz has been about simple and clean design.
It looks like a nice low-cost receiver. Especially since a decent Denon is $1900.
Bi-amping front channels (by sacrificing back surround)? Analog -> HDMI conversion for one-cable-to-monitor capability?
The first is unspecified; the second it doesn't have. The Onkyo 606 mentioned has both of 'em; I think I'll stick with my plans to get that one.