Opinions needed Yamaha RX V1300 and Marantz 5300 (1 Viewer)

[John-Miles]

I have been recommended both of these receivers by my local dealer, but honestly i dont knwo alot about receivers, so please feel free to flood me with information.

My main concerns with upgrading are well not having to upgrade for a while. to that end I am planning on gettign a receiver that can do DD EX and DTYS ES (discrete of course) plenty of inputs is a must, particularly regarding optical inputs and digital coax. my current receiver si a sony STRDE 445 which only has one optical input and one digital coax, and both are for the dvd source... uggggg.

so i am hoping you can all flood me with info about what i should look for, i know the marantz dosent do component switching, and that is a downside for me, are there any decent options for component switching? my tv only has 2 inputs and i fear in a year or two i may need at least 3.

 

[John-Miles]

no one has an opinion? well im going to give it a shameless bump in anycase hopefully someone will say somethign

 

[ChrisAG]

Unless the newer models have changed, after comparing the Yamaha RX-V1000 to the Marantz SR6200 and 5200, I much prefered the Marantz for music.

 

[John-Miles]

Thanks Chris, if you dont mind me asking what was it made it sound better to you? was it clearer? or it just sounded better?

 

[ChrisAG]

The Yamaha sounded downright harsh, very unpleasant in comparison to the Marantz. This was in evidence at the stereo boutique using the same speakers that I own (Mordaunt-Short 906) along with an Onkyo 797 receiver as a 3rd comparison. The Onkyo split the difference between the Yamaha and Marantz - punchier than the Marantz but not harsh like the RX-V1000. I still prefered the Marantz for music, as it had a nice, enveloping sound that did not fatigue the ears. I took the Onkyo home for a week to try - it was a little better than the Marantz for HT (more lively). The brand of speakers you use is obviously a factor, but for me, unless they have improved the current models over the RX-V1000, I would look at brands other than Yamaha.

 

[John-Miles]

cool i will keep that in mind

 

[ChrisWiggles]

I just got in the marantz 5300.... a nice unit indeed. There are a few quirks, but I still strongly recommend it. I would also recommend that you look at denon, they have some nice units too. I've not compared yamaha receivers, but my intuition tells me that marantz, or denon or some others might be a tad better. That's just intuition though. The quirks I'd like to mention are soft clicks when you change volume, these are hardly noticable unless you put your head next to the speaker. Also, signal bleed, or interference surprised me. I had the cd player playing, and i switched to another input that had nothing on it to see what kind of background noise is in the unit, and to my surprise, a low-volume version of the highs of the song that was playing on the cd player came out of the speakers if i turned it up loud. Different other inputs reduced this effect, perhaps because they were further away? I assume this would also happen on other receiver. Anway, its a very nice unit, and a heavy power supply. That impressed me. The power supply is on the far left side, which was funny when I first got it because i lifted the right side out of the box, and was dissapointed at how light it was. My mistake was bending over and lifting the left side and expecting it to be just as light. Oops. The unit gets my recommendations anyway, and like the others say, marantz tends to have a better two channel presentation, and a HT presentation that is about the same as everything else in the range.