Marantz SR6001 - Good? (1 Viewer)

[Javal]

Hi all, one of many posts. Please check out my other posts in other sections and offer feedback if you can. Would very much appreciate it, lots of great information on this forum.

Background: I am building a new home which is a walkout and we are finishing the basement and are putting a projection home theater in. The room with have blackout blinds to light control. The room size is open concept 32 long X 15 wide. Plan to use majority of room (18 X 15) for the home theater and the other have will be bar, siting, etc.

The more I deal with a home theater store/designer the more I am thinking I want to do most of it myself. Please check my other posts in the hardware sections and offer feedback on what they are trying to sell me vs what you think I may actually need.

The receiver they have for me is the Marantz 6001 - however, looking at the options this does not look like it has the options a person needs. Have been reading the forum and quite a few people like the Onkyo receivers, however, concerned that it seems to offer a lot of functionality but is cheap? Is it a lower quality brand?

The 6001 doesn't seem to have TrueHD and only upconverts to 480P? Unless the Onkyo upconversion is of lessor quality it says it does it to 1080i.

Thanks in advance.

 

[gene c]

Marantz makes very good products but the 6001 is last years model so it is missing the latest features. Onkyo seems to offer good bang for the buck, but Marantz is no slouch. But I think you would need the 7002 in order to get DD-HD and TDS-MA. My only issue with Marantz is the 480P up-scaling thing. All else is first rate. If it has the features you need.

 

[Christian Behrens]

Upscaling in a receiver is not necessarily something you want. If you already have high-quality picture sources (BluRay, HD-DVD, or even an Oppo 983 for SD-DVD), then you don't want the receiver to touch the picture but instead just hand it through to your display unmodified.

Similarly, if you have a new display with a great scaler built-in, you'd want that to do all the heavy lifting for the image quality, and not the receiver.

And lastly, decoding the latest HD audio codecs is not a requirement to listen to them. A decent HD player can actually output the new codecs as PCM to an HDMI capable receiver. I believe the SR6001 could handle that as well. But if you can swing it, the SR7001/2 or SR8001/2 are probably preferrable, for number of HDMI connections alone.

-Christian

PS: I'm still looking to upgrade a receiver this year myself and can't seem to make up my mind/wait for new models to come out which then make the previous models cheaper.

 

[Javal]

Thanks...

That's a good point regarding PCM. Just so I get this correct, PCM is raw audio that is sent to the receiver which the receiver can then send to a discrete channel? ie: 7.1/5.1 The receiver does not have to decode anything it just amplifies it and "switches" it to the right channel?

However, concerned that some sources will not send audio via PCM. Cable boxes, etc.

I am looking at picking up a projector which I do not believe has built in video processing. JVC-DLA-Rsx1 so the receiver would need to do it.

Thanks again.

 

[Christian Behrens]

PCM is already decoded sound that the receiver will then just amplify. This is only really necessary for BluRay or HD-DVD; for everything else the built-in decoders for Dolby Digital and dts are more than adequate.

For picture quality, BluRay and HD-DVD don't need processing, they (typically) output 1080p already. Processing would only be needed for anything that's not high-def. Any projector will scale any input that is different from its native resolution, but yes, it will depend on how well the projector handles it; not sure about the one you plan on buying.

-Christian