Tag: marantz

Marantz SR6011: initial thoughts

Following up my post about the new AppleTV, I finally got my new Marantz receiver hooked up and working. First thoughts below.

First: not only did I get this receiver at a relative bargain, I ended up getting this year’s model. That’s right; I ordered a new-in-box Marantz SR6010 but the seller sent me a new-in-box SR6011. For a few hundred dollars off list. Score!

Second: this is the first “modern” AV receiver I’ve had, and so many of my notes are just awe that the thing works. You run one HDMI cable from the receiver to your TV, then plug all the HDMI cables from your other devices into the back of the receiver, and hey-presto, easy peasy. All you have to do is to switch the receiver to the new input source–the TV settings can remain unchanged.

Third, as compared to the Onkyo, which seemed to go from quiet to loud awfully quickly, the Marantz has miles of quiet built into it, which is nice for more nuanced classical or jazz listening. I seem to regularly be setting the volume to between 30 and 40, which is comfortable without being distracting from other rooms.

Fourth, I love the onscreen menus and the manual speaker calibration. In older receivers, I used to be driven mad by the hoops required to tell the amp I had no center channel so that it would redirect the dialog to the stereo speakers. On this model, you pull up the settings menu, choose Speakers, and tell it you have no center channel. Easy.

It’s weird, but useful, to see the Marantz show up in my AirPlay menu on my iPhone too.

The only thing I don’t like is that it’s just a little too deep for me to be able to close my audio cabinet.

Apple TV 4th Generation – Impressions

I was eager, when Apple announced the fourth generation Apple TV, to get it and check it out. I was especially excited by the concept of a real app store for the TV and by the ability to game on the device.

Then reality hit. For years, I had been using an Apple TV in our family room, and it’s been invaluable for entertainment. Mostly kids’ entertainment—movie rentals through the iTunes Store, complete seasons of “Scooby-Doo”—but I’ve used it to play music and watch movies too. But the hookup I was using to connect it to the rest of my gear was no longer supported. In particular, Apple used to have an optical out on the back of the older generation Apple TV devices in addition to HDMI. That allowed me to connect the device to my faithful Onkyo TX-DS494 so that I could put the sound out through my Bowers & Wilkins DM 602s.

But the new generation has no optical out! And the Onkyo, alas, has no HDMI inputs. So I had a choice. I could get the Apple TV and run the sound through the comparatively unsatisfactory speakers on our television. Or I could wait until I could afford to replace the Onkyo.

That time has come. I have a Marantz SR6010 (last year’s model new in box at a substantial discount from list!) on its way, and I hooked up the Apple TV last weekend so we could get used to the new interface.

First impressions: the new UI is considerably easier to navigate. And I really love the App Store. I was able to find something like 29 applications—a mix of video apps like the PBS Kids app, YouTube, and others, plus some games—that I had already purchased for the family phones that were available to download to the TV. Score! There were even a few fun games for free, like the Lego Batman game. I’d love to see more games in the store, though, especially games that support the controllers. And more retro games. Why can’t I play Lode Runner on the Apple TV? I can on my iPhone.

Gaming is probably the biggest let down right now. The controller I bought, the SteelSeries Nimbus, is a little too big for my six year old’s hands so he’ll have to use the Siri remote. That works pretty well for him, though he got tired of driving his race car off the track in the first game we played pretty quickly.

But the simple handoff of text input from the onscreen remote to the iPhone is brilliant, and makes up for some of the other disappointments with the device. I can’t wait to hook up the new receiver when it gets here and really take the thing through its paces.