Marantz CD6006 CD Player - Review/Measurements

[Robciak]

Hi,

Here is my review of the Marantz CD6006 CD player. This series has been replaced by the CD6007 (which costs about $600).

It is a standard CD player with analog, digital and telephone outputs.

The manufacturer claims a dynamic range of 100 dB, which should meet the requirements for a standard CD resolution of 16 bits.

Measured Files

Since there is no inputs, I used Wav files burned on CD. As file I used 1 kHz sine and sweep (20Hz-20kHz) both with 16 bits resolution and 44,1 kHz sampling rate. The audio files were dithered which slightly lowered the resolution. Below is a reference measurement performed on an APx525.

Quick comparison
Let's start with a quick comparison of all outputs.

Measurements
Unfortunately, the CD6006 offers resolution of less than 15 bits, which is not enough for a CD. Even the digital output does not meet the requirements.

RMS level
Analog out slightly over 2 V, what accordance with typical RCA output.
Phones output: drives most headphones.

THD+N %

SINAD

ENOB
All outputs have a lower resolution than the CD standard.

Dynamic range
Dynamic range lower than declared by the manufacturer.

Intermodulation distortion ​

Frequency respons
Here are two measures of frequency response. The first is based on RMS level in the frequency domain and the second is a level relative to 1 kHz.

Analog
Unrelevant differences between channels around 0,01V. The Flatness of the frequency respons does not exceed 0,03 dB in the highest range.

Optical
Flat frequency response.

Phones:
Small differences between channel, around 0,04 V, with a 0,7 V drop at 20 kHz. Linearity drops to 0,2 dB at 20 khz (sorry for the bad framing of the graph).

 

[MacCali]

@amirm

 

[Lopsided]

Thank you for your high quality measurements!
The distortion profile seems to indicate Windows messed with the burning process; see this post.
@amirm it would be great if you can promote it to the homepage.

 

[WillBrink]

A $600 CD player that does not even measure well? What would explain those measurements? Are they audible? I'd have expected most modern CD players, many of which are far less $, to perform well today no?

 

[NTTY]

Hello @Robciak, thanks very much for the report.
How did you burn the test CD? I see the distortion is of the same nature on both the analog and digital outputs which could indicate that it’s part of the CD, not the player.
With the digital output, distortion should be visually under the noise floor (on your 1kHz FFT).
Note that when burning with WMD, the “Adjust levels” box is enabled by default, and that adds distorsion when burning CDs.

EDIT: I found a print screen of some tests I performed a year ago. The FFT below (linear frequency scale) is of a burnt CD (from the digital output of a Denon DCD-SA1) with the default “adjust levels” in Windows Media Player. The distortion profile is exactly what you get too, so I think that’s where the problem is:

What we see here is a low level square signal added to the initial 1kHz sine. Again, this is exactly what you see on the digital output in your test.

Regards

————
Flo

 

[Robciak]

Hi @NTTY, many thanks for the advice. I'll analyze it and get back with the results!

Thanks!

​

 

[PO3c]

Anyone know if CD6006 will downsample 48/16 from USB input before playing it through its internal DAC?
Manual only specify it will convert everything going to the S/PDIF output to 44,1kHz. Which make sense for compressed audio but not so much for the 192kHz capable CS4398 DAC if hi-res files is available on the USB media.

 

[Robciak]

@NTTY you were right. The distortion was added by the “Adjust Level” function in WMP. Here are the measurements for the coaxial and analog output:

COAXIAL OUT

ANALOG OUT (sorry for FFT in Vrms)

 

[NTTY]

Thanks for the effort and update!

 

[Timmy]

Well ... So up to a certain point, the measurements posted here on Feb 17 are actually the results of an incorrectly burned test CD?