This is a review and detailed measurements of the Marantz AV7705 Audio/Video Processor (AVP). It was kindly purchased as a refurbished unit by a member and drop shipped to me. Normal price on Amazon is US $2,399.
I continue to not be a fan of Marantz design with the port hole requiring opening the panel below to see real information:
Back panel has the silly inputs no one uses these days such as composite and component video inputs, in gold plated no less:
I powered the unit and let it go through a firmware update which took an eternity. But all was well when it restarted.
I focused my testing on the front left and right balanced outputs. For inputs I tested HDMI and Toslink.
Marantz AV7705 Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard using HDMI although Toslink performance was identical. I adjusted the volume until I got 4 volts which is the nominal output of most stand-alone DACs:
Well, this is not good! There is a ton of distortion and it is 3rd harmonic dominated so can't hide behind "it is good distortion" line. I played with various "pure" modes and it didn't make a difference. The SINAD of 75 dB is one of the worst in any AV receiver or processor I have tested:
You might say that 4 volt output is high so let's test different outputs:
Best performance is at 2.5 volt but even then, SINAD doesn't improve beyond the red ("poor") range of AV products we have tested.
I was hoping dynamic range was better but it is not:
Jitter performance was poor indicating a number of interference sources:
Could linearity be better? Of course not:
Intermodulation vs level shows the high noise floor, not being better than a freebie phone headphone dongle:
The DAC reconstruction filter is the typical very slow and wrong type:
This exerts a penalty on our THD+N vs frequency test due its wide bandwidth:
But there is more that is wrong here as changing the sample rate to 192 kHz would eliminate that factor. We see a bit of reduction at the top end but performance is still quite poor. We can see why if we look at the spectrum at 1 kHz:
The spray of distortion seems to go on forever so adds up to high THD+N with 90 kHz bandwidth (dashboard is at 22.4 kHz).
Multitone produces subpar performance as well:
Conclusion
It is simple: Marantz group takes perfectly good platform uses in its sister Denon division and screws it up across the board. Everything is degraded no matter what we test. It really is time for Marantz to go back to producing well engineered products rather than chasing subjective aspects they can't demonstrate. And poor notions like the slow reconstruction filter. It is depressing to test an AV product in 2021 with such poor performance.
Needless to say, I can't recommend the Marantz AV7705. Get a Denon AVR, shut off its amps and use it as a processor instead.
----------
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/
I continue to not be a fan of Marantz design with the port hole requiring opening the panel below to see real information:
Back panel has the silly inputs no one uses these days such as composite and component video inputs, in gold plated no less:
I powered the unit and let it go through a firmware update which took an eternity. But all was well when it restarted.
I focused my testing on the front left and right balanced outputs. For inputs I tested HDMI and Toslink.
Marantz AV7705 Measurements
As usual we start with our dashboard using HDMI although Toslink performance was identical. I adjusted the volume until I got 4 volts which is the nominal output of most stand-alone DACs:
Well, this is not good! There is a ton of distortion and it is 3rd harmonic dominated so can't hide behind "it is good distortion" line. I played with various "pure" modes and it didn't make a difference. The SINAD of 75 dB is one of the worst in any AV receiver or processor I have tested:
You might say that 4 volt output is high so let's test different outputs:
Best performance is at 2.5 volt but even then, SINAD doesn't improve beyond the red ("poor") range of AV products we have tested.
I was hoping dynamic range was better but it is not:
Jitter performance was poor indicating a number of interference sources:
Could linearity be better? Of course not:
Intermodulation vs level shows the high noise floor, not being better than a freebie phone headphone dongle:
The DAC reconstruction filter is the typical very slow and wrong type:
This exerts a penalty on our THD+N vs frequency test due its wide bandwidth:
But there is more that is wrong here as changing the sample rate to 192 kHz would eliminate that factor. We see a bit of reduction at the top end but performance is still quite poor. We can see why if we look at the spectrum at 1 kHz:
The spray of distortion seems to go on forever so adds up to high THD+N with 90 kHz bandwidth (dashboard is at 22.4 kHz).
Multitone produces subpar performance as well:
Conclusion
It is simple: Marantz group takes perfectly good platform uses in its sister Denon division and screws it up across the board. Everything is degraded no matter what we test. It really is time for Marantz to go back to producing well engineered products rather than chasing subjective aspects they can't demonstrate. And poor notions like the slow reconstruction filter. It is depressing to test an AV product in 2021 with such poor performance.
Needless to say, I can't recommend the Marantz AV7705. Get a Denon AVR, shut off its amps and use it as a processor instead.
----------
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/
