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Marantz SR8200 with MA500 versus SR8002 - which would sound better (2 Viewers)

Al Roeth

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I have an older Marantz SR8200 AVR, which although rated at 120Wx6, I think with all channels driven probably isn't quite capable of delivering that kind of headroom. At least that's how it sounds to me. Also, to power both rear channels(speakers) for 7.1 material, I need to pick up an outboard stereo amplifier or something like two MA500 separates. If I put a pair of MA500s on the rear, I'm thinking I might actually benefit from putting some MA500s on the fronts/center and side surrounds as well to balance it out. Since they are mono separates, they can obviously drive all channels to their rated capacity and have plenty of headroom versus the integrated amps in the SR8200.

But as I started to add up the cost of five to seven MA500s, used at about $100-150, and the present value of my SR8200(~$300) ... I could probably just by a refurb SR8002 for a few hundred more if I sold the SR8200 and put the money toward the SR8002 instead.

So here is my question though: The SR8002 does have some nice new features, but I probably wouldn't benefit from most of them for a while as DVD and other media catch up. So from a feature standpoint my SR8200 is probably good enough for a while. But I am curious which amplifiers would actually perform & sound better and have better dynamics, a brace of separate MA500 amps or the seemingly also highly regarded integrated 7 amplifiers in the SR8002?

I wonder if the power supply in the SR8002 has enough heft to really power all 7 channels well, as well as the unit itself.

Has anyone had a chance to compare a scenario like this?

Thanks,
Al
 

Selden Ball

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The easiest way to determine if the 8002 really has more amplification ability than the 8200 is to look at the rating of the power supply.

According to http://www.marantz.com/p_prod_specnew.cfm?id=583&cont=u&line=rcv , the SR5200's power supply is rated at 450W.
According to the 7002/8002 manual that I downloaded from Crutchfield, the 8002 power supply is rated for 6.7A at 120V (~800W).

In other words, the 8002 has significantly more headroom than the 5200, although you won't actually be able to play it much louder at maximum.

Although more headroom can help, the best way to improve the sound is to upgrade your speakers and room acoustics. However, since the 8002 includes Audyssey MultiEQ, it also should be able to compensate for many speaker/room frequency response issues which the 5200 can't.
 

Al Roeth

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Thanks for feedback.

So just based on the power supply specifications alone, it does sound like using the discrete MA-500 monoblocks(each draws 230W) leads one to believe they probably have a bit more oomph(translate to headroom).

Interesting specs.
 

gene c

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Although more headroom can help, the best way to improve the sound is to upgrade your speakers and room acoustics. However, since the 8002 includes Audyssey MultiEQ, it also should be able to compensate for many speaker/room frequency response issues which the 5200 can't.

Unfortunately, as it states on page 56 of the manual:

"ACOUSTIC EQ MODEs are not used during

playback of Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, or

DTS-HD signals"

Not sure why but...
 

Selden Ball

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A workaround is to decompress the audio in the player. Turn off bitstream and output LPCM.

This has the advantage that you can also hear the secondary audio (directors' commentaries) and menu animation audio, which bitstream doesn't transport. (To mix menu animation and secondary audio, the player would have to decode DD&DTS, mix in that audio, then re-encode the audio into DD or DTS. No player that I know of includes DD and DTS ENcoders, only DEcoders. My understanding is that encoding still needs so much computing power and "look-ahead" information that it can't be done in realtime.)

No currently available Marantz equipment can apply Audyssey to the DD and DTS lossless audio formats. They don't have enough DSP processing power to both decompress those two formats and apply various audio manipulations to them. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future DSP design.

However, they can apply Audyssey to multichannel LPCM (which is sent only over HDMI) which already has been decompressed.
 

Selden Ball

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An example of having to use LPCM is the most recent Harry Potter movie (#6 -- Half Blood Prince). You can't hear the Maximum Movie track, which includes popup PIP windows and info about the next movie, if you're listening to the bitstream output.
 

gene c

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No currently available Marantz equipment can apply Audyssey to the DD and DTS lossless audio formats. They don't have enough DSP processing power to both decompress those two formats and apply various audio manipulations to them. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future DSP design.

However, they can apply Audyssey to multichannel LPCM (which is sent only over HDMI) which already has been decompressed.
Thanks for the info. I figured it was something like that. An acquaintance has a Marantz 7001 which is hooked to the BR player by sending the formats out as LPCM and he seems quite happy with it that way.
 

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