I agree with Most of what Ekobesky said. # 2,3,5, & 6 are spot on. However # 1 & 4 I disagree. I am using a Marantz SR-5005, the bigger brother of your receiver. Our systems are very similar actually. I’ve switched from using the internal amplifier on my Marantz to 3 Emotiva UPA-1’s. the difference in the sound was night and day! While Ekobesky is right modern receivers have come a long way, you can’t match the performance of a separate quality amp. Emotiva and Outlaw (I prefer emotiva by far) have some very nicely priced components and very reasonable prices, wait for the end of the year sales and you can get great deals. Again agreeing with what Ekobesky said, try it in your house. Emotiva offers a in house 30 day trial. I got my amps on Thursday and then had a all weekend movie/music marathon to see if I liked the amps. We did!
Moving on to point 4. The internal DAC in your Marantz. I was using a sony cd transport and a appletv to play my cd’s and mp3’s. I connected them to my Marantz via toslink and digital RCA. This set up did the job. But once I got my Cambridge audio DacMagic it was a vast improvement! My personal suggestion, and this is just from my experience, try adding a quality external DAC to either your CD player or AppleTV. I hear HRT makes a good DAC and I’m a fan of my DacMagic, you can get a nice jump in performance for not allot of money.
The once last thing i’d have to suggest is if you do use toslink use a GLASS toslink cable. I’ve never believed in cable “voodoo” and hype but I was astounded in the difference a short Glass toslink cable can make, I got a half meter Glass toslink via amazon from cables to go for $15.00!!! The vast majority use a plastic fiber but I found them to not be as good and the shorter the better.
I also used Pangea AC-9 2meter cables on the Emotiva amps. I got them used off amazon for $30 each. I would never pay more than that but it did make a difference, the amps sound “tighter”. Like I said I don’t believe in cable hype/voodoo but that was an inexpensive experiment. I guess my over all point with this post is if you wait for a good deal and do a some research you can find very good dollar-to-audible-difference upgrades.

kenm80 February 24, 2012 17:40

Did you try out the speaker placement method I recommended?

bruce30 January 27, 2009 07:49

"(2) As for the SACD player, there are so few discs out there these days and the difference between regular CDs and SACDs will be so slight as to go unnoticed in a system like yours. Save your money and use it for #3 below."

I agreee 100%, I feel that the limited amount of available music, mostly classical, makes this format unpractical.

I also agree about the cable/wire issue, this should be the icing on the cake, not the cake. Once happy with components and speakers, then do wires, for the money Kimber, Audioquest and Tara make some nice stuff. Don't go crazy here and don't buy into the hype, $2000/pair speaker cables, $1500 interconnects at least to me are overkill, save your $$$$$ for better speakers as this is where huge leaps can and will come from.

nissancrazy January 11, 2009 15:44

If you're thinking about going retro with 2-channel you're making a smart move. The experts are saying that the stereo format will be around for quite some time (at least 20+ years) so you shouldn't worry about throwing your $$ away.

If properly setup, stereo can produce creepily good results. The trick, of course, is properly setting it all up; especially the speaker-to-room interface. The best thing you can do is to start to train your ears by experimenting with the speaker-to-room interfacing.

Try listening for the different types of character you can create by moving your floorstanders side-to-side, front-to-back, toe in/out, canted up/down. I'm not familiar with your particular model of floorstanders but you will start to notice very distinct changes with each position as well as musical details obscured by phase irregularities from the x-overs, ceiling/floor reflections, etc.. If you're in an experimenting mood I can give you some more pointers & methodology. Let me know & happy listening!

bruce30 January 09, 2009 09:32

That Marantz AVR is built very well and is an outstanding AVR. Good job building a budget powerhouse.

artk December 22, 2008 04:42

"Just be sensible and enjoy. What you have now is not bad at all. "

Yeah I know. I've just been corrupted ever since I joined Club Polk months ago. I'm trying to keep my head on straight with this stuff.

sswx2187 December 18, 2008 20:11

You know, some of today's home theater receivers come within shouting distance of budget-priced "audiophile" integrated amps. With that in mind:

(1) Pioneer's receivers in particular can sound very good. Your receiver is probably fine. Keep it until you can afford something much, much more expensive. In fact, try to borrow whatever you plan to replace it with to make sure it's really an improvement that's worth the money.

(2) As for the SACD player, there are so few discs out there these days and the difference between regular CDs and SACDs will be so slight as to go unnoticed in a system like yours. Save your money and use it for #3 below.

(3) The built-in phono stage and the stock cartridge that came with your Denon turntable leave a lot to be desired. Buy an outboard phono stage in the $100 range like the Cambridge Audio 540P, NAD PP2, Music Hall Phono Pack, Pro-ject Phono Box or similar and upgrade the cartridge to something like the $99 Ortofon 2M Red or Denon's own DL-110 for $140. You will hear a major difference now and even more so if you later use it in a dedicated two-channel system.

(4) Your receiver probably has decent DACs. Try feeding the signal from your digital sources into its optical or coaxial digital inputs. That may yield a nice improvement.

(5) Your speaker wire is fine for now. Wire is the finishing touch. When you get a system that you're happy with, THEN think about upgrading your speaker wire and interconnects.

(6) Finally, there's no reason why your home theater and 2-channel rigs can't coexist. Many integrated amps have home theater pass-through circuits so you can use your "audiophile" integrated amp for 2-channel and your HT receiver for movies without ever swapping a cable. Also, there are many "audiophile" home theater receivers available from the likes of NAD, Rotel, Cambridge Audio, Arcam, and so on. Don't count them out.

And don't listen to people who tell you stuff like "put your Playstation 3 on a $500 isolation platform" or "upgrade the power cord on your $300 receiver to a $1000 wire" or "replace your 14-gauge wire with $500 Fire Breathing Dragon Super Speaker Cable and it will make your system sound three times as expensive."

Just be sensible and enjoy. What you have now is not bad at all.

ekobesky December 17, 2008 16:27

the first thing i would look into would be a outboard usb DAC,i just purchased one from blue circle called the thinggy,works very well for $170 bucks,happy listening

beachbum007 December 17, 2008 14:21