Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners My quandry: Marantz, HK or Yamaha for ~$1K

You might also consider NAD. NAD and H/K are comparable with regards to power output capabilities. I'm quite pleased with my H/K 7200. I use it for HT and Stereo. It drives the M80's effortlessly and louder than I, or my neighbors could ever tolerate. I'm not sure if you can still find the 7200 or not, but it was selling for less than $1000. The 7300 replaced it, but it is outside of your price range. If you can swing the price of the 7300, I doubt you would have any regrets.

Thanks for all the advice, my dealer(s) let me home demo the HK 630, Denon 3805, Marantz 7500 and the Yammy 1500 simultaneously. Two days of DVD-A, SACD, Redbook, and DVD-V and only the Denon remains. I know I started this thread with the "anti-Denon" attitude, but in my mind the Denon was the best all-around unit. After I told the dealer I was keeping the Denon, he "found" a Denon DVD-5900 in the back and offered it to me for $900(!!!). I almost tore my underwear getting out my wallet. The DLINK (Denon Digital Link) works great and will soon (any day now according to Denon) support SACD in addtion to the DVD-A, DTS, DD, and PCM it already streams to the receiver digitally. Blu-Ray is right around the corner, so I saw nothing wrong with picking up what many (myself included) consider to be the finest <$5000 "universal" player ever made. For $900.

The Denon auto-setup (using the $65 Denon mic) did a very nice job of setting up the room. I did have to go back in and adjust the SW, but other than that everything was spot-on when verified with the meter.

Oh, and I ran the Denon up to +5 dB with the m80's with no clipping or distortion. I guess my Denon power concerns were unfounded. One day I might even use the 3805 to bi-amp the fronts.

Well hot damn superstar556. You scored two fine pieces of equipment. The denon 5900 for 900 clams? I would've $hit my pants for that. hahaha.

Does he have any more? Please form an orderly line behind me!

I really don't understand the statement that any form of equalization changes the speaker designers intention adversely.As we all know every room and environment changes the sound that the designers intended.Most of us do not live in a audio paradise where our listening room is built to match speaker specifications.It would be impossible for me to listen to my m80's without equalization in my particular listening situation.

Hi asher, I'm not sure it's that ANY form of equalization is bad. I'm just repeating what Alan has expressed about the auto equalization found on newer recievers these days, and I'm probably not doing a very good job at that! . These recievers will equalize every frequency as opposed to a specific range ( as in a tone control ) and I think this is the difference. Also as I understand it good desingers factor in the effects of the expected listening environment so a global equalization is counter productive.

But I'm very much out of my league on these kind of technical details; hopefully, others can comment....

Cheers, Jag

I don't think people are trying to say "equalization is bad" as much as "automatic equalization is still pretty unreliable and is probably not the best thing to base your receiver decision on".

Superstar, I've been curious about the Marantz SR7500, and I'd be interested to hear what you did and didn't like about it. And what was it that set the Denon apart from the others?

In reply to:

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"automatic equalization is still pretty unreliable and is probably not the best thing to base your receiver decision on"

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As someone who has played with more then his fair share of receivers, I can tell you that you are right on the money. The only one I have seen out of Parasound, Denon, HK, Pioneer and a few others that even comes close to getting it right is Yamaha and even that left a lot to be desired.

Everybody I know asks me about auto EQing and I tell them all the same thing, stay away from it.

I don't know about onboard automated equalization.I use a outboard vintage DBX 10/20 computerised equalizer and it works wonders at taming a bass node in my room.It does an across the board straight line equalization.My M80's now sound fantastic.This equalization is completely automated and I would have had to get rid of my m80's if not for this equalizer.