Marantz AV10 AV Processor Review

[Dj7675]

Great review. Only missing 2 things I can think of...
-Dirac ART. I won't purchase anything without it. It actually works great.
-Manual PEQ. My best sounding results to me have been no automated EQ above around 500hz or so. And if anything needs to be done above that, manual PEQ. I wish Marants/Denon would enable this.
While this seems quite expensive, it is a very good value in the market IMO.
Now they need to release a Denon, digital only version. No analog inputs, no headphone amp, just a pure digital theater processor. I wonder if they could hit a $5k price point for such a unit.

 

[GXAlan]

Yeah but the HTP-1 ART announcement was made by a guy who sits in his house and works for a budget cable company. And who has a reputation of making optimistic statements to make people happy in the moment.

That's little better than Marantz Europe's "We're looking into it," in my mind.

It's very different. The HTP-1 ART announcement is made by Hobie Sechrest. So you have a name to go with the claim, and a title, "Business Unit Manager" for the Monolith, AV and Pro-Audio of Monoprice.com, which did $61 million in revenue in 2022. Yes, DTSX Pro is late, but Mr. Sechrest acknowledges that it is late. The fact that I have a human that is associated with the statement and the budget cable company has very high revenue, is one level of confidence. It can still hit a dead end, but at least there's someone that's accountable.

When you have a statement like "Marantz Europe" , what does that mean? Marantz Europe does have some engineering, based upon Rainier Fink's work, but is it a marketing division, technical division, sales division? Until you have a name to go with D&M getting Dirac ART, it's just a rumor.

 

[amirm]

Let's be polite please. Hobie is *the* person behind Monoprice monolith products. if he says something about them, I would much more trust it than not.

 

[ban25]

Let's be polite please. Hobie is *the* person behind Monoprice monolith products. if he says something about them, I would much more trust it than not.

Point taken.

 

[AdamG]

This + Buckeye Amps and you’ve reached endgame.

This is exactly what I am doing with my Denon 8500 and 12 502 channels of Buckeye Amps. Never sounded better. Maybe not end game for most. But for me it is end game. All thanks to the wonderful ASR community. Really thankful for so many people here who have supported me and helped guide my journey.

 

[Acerun]

Great review. Only missing 2 things I can think of...
-Dirac ART. I won't purchase anything without it. It actually works great.
-Manual PEQ. My best sounding results to me have been no automated EQ above around 500hz or so. And if anything needs to be done above that, manual PEQ. I wish Marants/Denon would enable this.
While this seems quite expensive, it is a very good value in the market IMO.
Now they need to release a Denon, digital only version. No analog inputs, no headphone amp, just a pure digital theater processor. I wonder if they could hit a $5k price point for such a unit.

Could you use Multieq-X for Denon PEQ?

 

[Dj7675]

Could you use Multieq-X for Denon PEQ?

I have seen it has that capability and it might be as precise but I wouldn't think it would be as precise. And the issue would be if you wanted to use Dirac/DLBC or Dirac/ART (if or when available), that wouldn't be available. But yes, if you stayed with the Audyssey PC app it could be an option.

 

[amirm]

the remote also looks like something you get from a $500 costco special

Oh, definitely not. It is made out of metal and is quite heavy compared to plastic stuff you get from Costco. It is also ergonomic with a curved back where your finger would go. I usually don't praise remotes but this is definitely a step up.

 

[SynthesisCinema]

Waiting for Marantz to launch AV20... hopefully at 1/3 the price... less would be better. I still have the AV7702 processor which have served me well over the years. I am mostly using it to decode Atmos nowadays (via ARC), relegating HDMI switching to my LG TV.

New flagship AVR will be announced soon, Cinema 30! Probably just a face lifted SR8015 with optional Dirac Live, 4x sub outs, full set of hdmi 2.1 in/out. Price 4000-4500$?

 

[GXAlan]

I have seen it has that capability and it might be as precise but I wouldn't think it would be as precise. And the issue would be if you wanted to use Dirac/DLBC or Dirac/ART (if or when available), that wouldn't be available. But yes, if you stayed with the Audyssey PC app it could be an option.

The nice thing about the Audyssey app is that it allows you to import REW filters, so it's supposed to be very good.

I don't know how accurate this summary is, but the main criticism is the lack of phase control that Dirac brings

Audyssey MultEQ-X Features and Thoughts

Audyssey has introduced MultEQ-X, a PC based software program that connects to Marantz and Denon AVRs that currently support the Audyssey Mobile App. Here are its main features and my thoughts.

simplehomecinema.com

But Audyssey does have patents in that space

US8218789B2 - Phase equalization for multi-channel loudspeaker-room responses - Google Patents

A system and method for minimizing the complex phase interaction between non-coincident subwoofer and satellite speakers for improved magnitude response control in a cross-over region. An all-pass filter is cascaded with bass-management filters in at least one filter channel, a[ 1 d preferably...

patents.google.com

Maybe the bigger issue, with all due respect to the technical team at Audyssey today, is that the founding team and core scientists have left the company.

Chris Kyriakakis was the co-founder of Audyssey and a professor at USC. He left for Syng

Tomlinson Holman was the other co-founder. He went to Apple.

Sunil Bharitkar was one of the original employees. He ended up at Dolby for a bit, then HP, and is now at Samsung Research

Phil Hilmes was one of the orignal employees. He's at Amazon Lab126.

If you look at the innovations, they largely stopped after the team left and it seemed like the iOS app, developed by Sound United, and MultEQ-X developed by the current technical team are all ways to take the core algorithms and apply different targets but not actually new algorithms.

 

[JDS]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Marantz AV10 Audio/Video Processor (AVP). It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $7000.
View attachment 330800
My picture doesn't do justice to the nice look of the unit. It is a massive step up from past Marantz AV products. I am still not a fan of the port hole and little information it shows but at least it now blends in with the rest of the unit. This thing is extremely heavy for a processor as well. I had to double check that it did not have amplifiers in it! The user interface is high resolution and relatively easy to use. One nit was that even though I had the HDMI out to my monitor, it would not bring up the full setup if I had it on CD with Toslink input. It required an HDMI input to do that. Strange.

An attractive metal remote control is provided. Usually these metal ones are not ergonomic but this one is.

Back panel shows the myriad of connectors due to 15.4 processing capability of this unit:
View attachment 330801

Watching technical video of the unit from Marantz, I was smiling ear to ear seeing measurements that closely mirror mine! Clearly company put focus on them to deliver a better performing product. Let's measure and see if that is so.

Marantz AV10 Processor DAC Measurements
I tapped the front left and right XLR/RCA outputs on bottom left above and fed the unit Toslink digital input. Volume was set to 82.5 to achieve 2.0/4.0 volts on RCA/XLR respectively (same as all Denon/Marantz AV products which is nice):
View attachment 330802
This is a big step up from previous Marantz processors I have tested. Performance remains the same for XLR as that is derived from unbalanced output:
View attachment 330804

SINAD is about 1 dB better than company measurements although their noise floor is cleaner than mine. I rechecked the unit later after it warmed up and SINAD had dropped a bit to 106 and change. To give benefit of doubt, I went with 107 which places the AV10 at top of every AV processor tested so far:
View attachment 330805

Testing with HDMI was more problematic as if I just plugged it in, noise floor would go up independent of which input was actually used. Here is that with HDMI as the source:
View attachment 330803
Company measurements again don't show this as they likely use the Audio Precision as HDMI source rather than my testing which uses a Windows PC GPU HDMI output. I like to see the company investigate this but for now, let's use Toslink input unless stated otherwise.

The processor is capable of far higher output than what I set it to. Alas, performance drops. Here is what happens if you change the digital input and sweep that at three different volume control positions:
View attachment 330806

But you won't be using the unit that way. Instead, you crank the volume up and down so here is the same sweep but now I am turning the volume control to change output:
View attachment 330807
As you see in both graphs, optimal output is more or less what you see in the dashboard. So don't go getting a very low gain amplifier thinking you are coming out ahead. Likely a medium gain amp is the best combination.

Multitone performance is excellent for an AV product even though I used HDMI (sample rate is 192 KHz which Toslink doesn't support):
View attachment 330808

The noise spikes did interfere with my linearity test though:
View attachment 330809

You can see the impact of HDMI noise in Jitter test:
View attachment 330811

The spikes are at 1 kHz which tell me they are USB noise (my analyzer uses that to communicate with the source PC). Your standard AV product may not have that issue.

IMD test shows very good performance for an AV product:
View attachment 330814

I was so pleased to see Marantz take our input and provide an alternate to their default, almost no filter setting of the DAC:
View attachment 330810
As you see, they are exposing a second filter that is the typical default one in DAC ICs. This nicely gives us flat frequency response now:

View attachment 330812

Our wideband THD+N test naturally depends on filter setting:
View attachment 330813

Marantz AV10 Phono Input Measurements
Let's start with our standard dashboard and RCA Output:
View attachment 330815
Gain is a bit on the low side but output is very clean, landing an above average position in our SINAD ranking:
View attachment 330816

XLR output gives higher gain of 41 dB with similar performance:
View attachment 330818

RIAA equalization could be a bit better though:
View attachment 330817

Headroom could be higher but good news is that it remains essentially the same across all frequencies (many phono stages drop like a rock at higher frequencies):
View attachment 330819

Marantz AV10 Headphone Measurements
I used Toslink input and measured the headphone output at 300 ohm:
View attachment 330820

This is good performance and passes my target of 100 milliwatts of power. 32 ohm load causes strain, resulting in too little output for mains operated device:
View attachment 330821

The reason for that becomes obvious as we switch loads:
View attachment 330822
Those graphs should all start from the same point. When they keep going backward with decreasing load, it means the output impedance of the headphone amp is non-zero, causing power loss. Not good if you have a headphone with variable impedance (non-planar).

Conclusions
Ever since my initial contact with Denon & Marantz, I had hoped that they would target proper measurements and work to improve fidelity of their products. It is clear that they have done so in this Marantz processor, pushing the line's noise and distortion way down, landing at the top of our AV chart. In addition to that, the industrial design has been enhanced taking the processor from last place to top of the class. Even the remote control has benefited from this.

Phono stage is good enough but headphone amp could use some work. I suspect the latter gets little use so I am not worried about it. If you can afford to spend $7K on this processor, you can spend another $200 to get a proper headphone amp.

People who said AV processor can never be improved to perform, are proven wrong now.

It is my pleasure to recommend the Marantz AV10 AV Processor. Expensive, yes. But at least now performance goes with the increased cost.

------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

A very significant review -- a milestone, even. A mainstream, name-brand consumer electronics company has proven that a mainstream, name-brand consumer electronics company CAN produce a thoroughly competent AV processor for which no apologies need be made. The price is prohibitive for me, and I doubt I will ever have need for 19 channels. But I sincerely doubt that the things that make this a $7000 product and the things that make it test well have a ton of overlap (with the possible exception of NRE, which would be easy to amortize over the large number of units that a less expensive unit would move). Less expensive performant AV processors are now possible. Apologists just ran out of excuses.

Match this performance in a smaller box with half the channels for under $2k and I'm ready to throw down.

 

[Acerun]

You can get a

A very significant review -- a milestone, even. A mainstream, name-brand consumer electronics company has proven that a mainstream, name-brand consumer electronics company CAN produce a thoroughly competent AV processor for which no apologies need be made. The price is prohibitive for me, and I doubt I will ever have need for 19 channels. But I sincerely doubt that the things that make this a $7000 product and the things that make it test well have a ton of overlap (with the possible exception of NRE, which would be easy to amortize over the large number of units that a less expensive unit would move). Less expensive performant AV processors are now possible. Apologists just ran out of excuses.

Match this performance in a smaller box with half the channels for under $2k and I'm ready to throw down.

You can get a Denon X8500 with an AKM DAC for between 2600 and 2900 dollars that has 104 SINAD. Add Ncore outboard amplifiers and you're farting through silk.

 

[Newman]

Great review. Only missing 2 things I can think of...
-<snip>
-Manual PEQ. My best sounding results to me have been no automated EQ above around 500hz or so. And if anything needs to be done above that, manual PEQ. I wish Marants/Denon would enable this.

I'm pretty sure that Audyssey MultEQ-X allows manual PEQ, yes?

 

[PJ 1]

and you know this, how?
Please provide proof of your claim.
Even if it is 90% what is your point.
Are businesses not allowed a profit?
Who are you or anyone beyond the business to say what profit is acceptable

I suggest you open and run a business to make a living and then i am highly confident these comments will never come to your thoughts again

Yup. Exactly. That's my issue with most of us hobbyists and our attempts at arguing value when hardly any of us have ANY IDEA what these manufacturers' cost per unit is after accounting for all that goes into it. I imagine if we all did the same research on how much our home cost to build and compare that with the current home market of late, we'd all scream about "value" but from the standpoint that 200-300% markup is acceptable.

 

[amirm]

This is a flagship product where you can expect to make maximum margin. At the other end of the product line they may actually be loosing money!

 

[Acerun]

I'm pretty sure that Audyssey MultEQ-X allows manual PEQ, yes?

Yes

 

[GXAlan]

This is a flagship product where you can expect to make maximum margin. At the other end of the product line they may actually be loosing money!

The other interesting thing is that you can find refurbs or open box units sub $6000. (And AMP10 for $4500).

These are so new that you have to imagine that the refurbs are pretty good and must have minimal damage.

 

[tjcinnamon]

I have seen it has that capability and it might be as precise but I wouldn't think it would be as precise. And the issue would be if you wanted to use Dirac/DLBC or Dirac/ART (if or when available), that wouldn't be available. But yes, if you stayed with the Audyssey PC app it could be an option.

I own it and it’s precise. You can import REW filters. It works great. But it can’t be used with Dirac. It’s either/or

 

[JPA]

The other interesting thing is that you can find refurbs or open box units sub $6000. (And AMP10 for $4500).

These are so new that you have to imagine that the refurbs are pretty good and must have minimal damage.

Yes. The unit Amir reviewed is refurbished. I got it for $5500.

 

[CleanSound]

For $7k, I am expecting this level of measured performance.