My new Marantz AV10 arrived earlier today. Fedex gave me a delivery window of 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM. Since a direct signature was required, I spent my entire morning at home waiting, [forgoing a tempting motorcycle ride] but the orange and white truck finally appeared in my driveway, around 1:50 PM.
For general balance, I typically limit my time in the HT to about 2 hours per evening, usually 5 - 7 PM. Remembering the experience I had with the Anthem AVM70 back in March, I initially decided I wouldn't have time to both setup and enjoy the AV10 today and resolved to wait until tomorrow to unbox it. Being the tech nerd and home theater degenerate I am, however, I quickly succumbed to my addiction and headed down to the HT.
I'm not going to comment on sound quality or anything of that sort just yet as I've had literally an hour or so of actual listening time and it wasn't meant to be a critical session. I'm also going to resist any urges to heap too much praise on the AV10 right away as I did that with the AVM70 [some totally deserved] and ended up ultimately not liking the overall package offered by Anthem.
Enough qualifying, here are my initial impressions thus far.
The AV10 is double-boxed by Marantz and arrived in perfect condition. It is quite a bit heavier than the AV7702MKii it is replacing.
The remote is elegant and a huge improvement over previous iterations.
Sadly, the Audyssey mic and cheesy paper tripod have been retained. I wasn't expecting a UMIK 1 but this mic and tripod seem oddly out of place for a flagship product.
OK - Here is the AV10 installed. Physical installation was completed in minutes but that is the case with virtually any AV processor thanks to the shelves I've recently installed. Once physical installation was complete I moved on to the part where I figured there might be trouble, the logical setup and speaker configuration.
The Marantz setup assistant in my AV7702 MKii was the best I'd seen and a large part of why I found the Anthem AVM70's menu system [despite that products many positive attributes] completely unacceptable. The AV10 improves on previous generations in every way, making logical setup an absolute pleasure. Anyone familiar with Marantz or Denon receivers/processors will have no trouble at all. I'd suspect even the unfamiliar would find the system quite intuitive and simple to follow.
Within a little over an hour of opening the box, I had the AV10 ready for Audyssey calibration. The on-screen guide has been enhanced and includes much more comprehensive menus than before but I was able to skip though all of it, giving attention only where needed to get my system calibrated. Once started, the calibration took about 20 minutes.
After that there is an additional section of menus designed to assist in setting up the video inputs. I found these menus to be overkill as you're better off just accepting the defaults and then correcting any anomalies manually. Using the assistant here caused a few blank screens and resets which could have been avoided. I also found it odd the unit assumes it will be connected to a TV and expects an ARC/eARC device by default. I'd think most who buy the AV10 will be using projectors but I could be wrong.
Once I got everything setup and calibrated, the unit rebooted itself and prompted me a firmware update was available. This process was seamless, taking about 9 minutes as indicated and counted down on the porthole display. By contrast, the Anthem AVM70 took about 30 minutes to complete it's firmware update and that was after nearly an hour spent trying to get it to actually complete.
These are just my initial unboxing and setup impressions of the AV10. For now, color me impressed. The build quality [minus the Audyssey components] of this unit are quite impressive indeed. Both it's weight and girth are closer to what you'd expect in a power amp, not so much a processor. It is also a very good looking unit, aesthetically. I'll be adding more here as I continue to spend time with the AV10.
For general balance, I typically limit my time in the HT to about 2 hours per evening, usually 5 - 7 PM. Remembering the experience I had with the Anthem AVM70 back in March, I initially decided I wouldn't have time to both setup and enjoy the AV10 today and resolved to wait until tomorrow to unbox it. Being the tech nerd and home theater degenerate I am, however, I quickly succumbed to my addiction and headed down to the HT.
I'm not going to comment on sound quality or anything of that sort just yet as I've had literally an hour or so of actual listening time and it wasn't meant to be a critical session. I'm also going to resist any urges to heap too much praise on the AV10 right away as I did that with the AVM70 [some totally deserved] and ended up ultimately not liking the overall package offered by Anthem.
Enough qualifying, here are my initial impressions thus far.
The AV10 is double-boxed by Marantz and arrived in perfect condition. It is quite a bit heavier than the AV7702MKii it is replacing.
The remote is elegant and a huge improvement over previous iterations.
OK - Here is the AV10 installed. Physical installation was completed in minutes but that is the case with virtually any AV processor thanks to the shelves I've recently installed. Once physical installation was complete I moved on to the part where I figured there might be trouble, the logical setup and speaker configuration.
The Marantz setup assistant in my AV7702 MKii was the best I'd seen and a large part of why I found the Anthem AVM70's menu system [despite that products many positive attributes] completely unacceptable. The AV10 improves on previous generations in every way, making logical setup an absolute pleasure. Anyone familiar with Marantz or Denon receivers/processors will have no trouble at all. I'd suspect even the unfamiliar would find the system quite intuitive and simple to follow.
Within a little over an hour of opening the box, I had the AV10 ready for Audyssey calibration. The on-screen guide has been enhanced and includes much more comprehensive menus than before but I was able to skip though all of it, giving attention only where needed to get my system calibrated. Once started, the calibration took about 20 minutes.
After that there is an additional section of menus designed to assist in setting up the video inputs. I found these menus to be overkill as you're better off just accepting the defaults and then correcting any anomalies manually. Using the assistant here caused a few blank screens and resets which could have been avoided. I also found it odd the unit assumes it will be connected to a TV and expects an ARC/eARC device by default. I'd think most who buy the AV10 will be using projectors but I could be wrong.
Once I got everything setup and calibrated, the unit rebooted itself and prompted me a firmware update was available. This process was seamless, taking about 9 minutes as indicated and counted down on the porthole display. By contrast, the Anthem AVM70 took about 30 minutes to complete it's firmware update and that was after nearly an hour spent trying to get it to actually complete.
These are just my initial unboxing and setup impressions of the AV10. For now, color me impressed. The build quality [minus the Audyssey components] of this unit are quite impressive indeed. Both it's weight and girth are closer to what you'd expect in a power amp, not so much a processor. It is also a very good looking unit, aesthetically. I'll be adding more here as I continue to spend time with the AV10.
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