Marantz Cinema 70S and MultEQ-X questions

[peng]

No as I don’t use a pc to listen to music. I have a SSD via USB into whatever source i may get.

Okay thanks, I used to do that sort of things too, but once I tried using the PC, and software such as jRiver, or Foobar(not as good but free) as player and output it to a good external DAC such as Toppings, Oppo's etc., via the Asychronus USB port and then from the DAC's analog output to a preamp, or even a good AVR such as Denon or Marantz's analog input I never look back, as I found that the difference between Dirac on and off is very noticeable. On the desktop system, doing it this way save me money as my LS50 no longer needs help from a subwoofer. I thought I mention it, because you seem to be one who believe in using RC even for two channel music listening.

 

[Miker 1102]

I'd look at the Denon X3800H instead of the 70s. It will give you full XT32 out of the box with the ability to upgrade to Dirac Live. If you're in love with the Marantz aesthetic, you'll need to go to the Cinema 50, which is the X3800H's twin. The 3800 is $1500 on Amazon right now, though it has been known to go on sale periodically.

MQX is great. Is it worth $200 compared to a Dirac Live license, though, particularly given the upgrade path to DLBC and ART? Up to you. Yes you can import from REW using MQX (again, $200 license for that feature), but I think it would be rather complex to average a multi-point measurement in REW to do what Audyssey and Dirac do at the press of a button. The better use-case I find for REW is to measure the result post-calibration and make adjustments as necessary.

Regarding the Eversolo, it's a 2-channel streaming integrated amp with the convenience of an ARC input. It's largely meant for dedicated 2-channel music listening. You can use it with ARC, but it's worth noting that the Eversolo cannot decode many codecs used by TV and film content. At best, it might be able to decode old-school Dolby Digital, but I don't see any logos on their site, so that's not guaranteed. This means that if you're bitstreaming these codecs (Dolby, DTS, Atmos), you'll get nothing but silence. In order to use something like the Eversolo in a home theatre context, you need your TV (or upstream source) to decode to PCM. The problem is you don't have much (any) control over that process. Does it downmix 5.1 and 7.1 into stereo PCM? Does it just drop all the channels except FR and FL and send you those? Depends.

The Eversolo also lacks room correction entirely. If you're using it exclusively for 2-channel streaming using Roon, then you can use Roon's convolution filter to do your RC and you're good to go. But that won't work with analog sources (or ARC) and....the Eversolo is not Roon Ready yet. If you want Roon and Room Correction, but still want to run a small integrated amp instead of an AVR, then you could look into an NAD M10 V2. That would give you Dirac Live, Roon Ready, and Dolby Digital decoding, plus multi-room streaming support. Long story short, I think the Eversolo is a bad idea all the way around and to be honest, their lunch is going to be eaten by the Wiim Amp at the low-end given their (Eversolo's) price point and lack of features. At the high-end of the admittedly tiny integrated market, you have the NAD M33, Hegel H600, Naim, and too many more to list.

I bought the WIIM. It's impressive. It sounds great. The app is great. And it has peq, sub out with crossover, ..it simply slays for the money. My wife loves it. My God if these guys who made this want to know what money sounds like to the audio community..it's those four words..My wife loves it. If you can create any audio product that gets that reaction you have hit the jack pot.

 

[Oski1928]

I bought the WIIM. It's impressive. It sounds great. The app is great. And it has peq, sub out with crossover, ..it simply slays for the money. My wife loves it. My God if these guys who made this want to know what money sounds like to the audio community..it's those four words..My wife loves it. If you can create any audio product that gets that reaction you have hit the jack pot.

My number one problem with the Wiim products is that they do not have usb inputs for local files. All my music is stored on an SSD. I don’t have any streaming services.

 

[tc2007]

@Oski1928 Have you checked out the NAD C389 / C399? They are a combination of Streamer / DAC / ample Class D (Hypex) amps / Dirac room correction. I am not sure if the 2 sub outs are independent or not. By the time you add the cost of Eversolo + 2.1 Pre-amp + Purifi amp, you are probably overshooting the C389.

 

[Golfx]

@Oski1928 Have you checked out the NAD C389 / C399? They are a combination of Streamer / DAC / ample Class D (Hypex) amps / Dirac room correction. I am not sure if the 2 sub outs are independent or not. By the time you add the cost of Eversolo + 2.1 Pre-amp + Purifi amp, you are probably overshooting the C389.

I had a hard time getting NAD to respond to support questions or just set up questions on their amps. Perhaps they have improved.

 

[Oski1928]

@Oski1928 Have you checked out the NAD C389 / C399? They are a combination of Streamer / DAC / ample Class D (Hypex) amps / Dirac room correction. I am not sure if the 2 sub outs are independent or not. By the time you add the cost of Eversolo + 2.1 Pre-amp + Purifi amp, you are probably overshooting the C389.

Well when considering the Eversolo route, due to the fact that I currently run 2.0 and am not set on changing (depends on the route I take) I was planning on using Eversolo as the pre amp.

 

[Miker 1102]

My number one problem with the Wiim products is that they do not have usb inputs for local files. All my music is stored on an SSD. I don’t have any streaming services.

The amp does have a USB file storage . I am using a 64gb pen drive. I am trying to figure out how much it will read..

 

[Oski1928]

The amp does have a USB file storage . I am using a 64gb pen drive. I am trying to figure out how much it will read..

Yea, but that’s the product I’m not really interested in.

 

[Miker 1102]

Yea, but that’s the product I’m not really interested in.

You want it to read usb to usb. Yeah, I think it's preferably something more people would like.

 

[Toasted]

4. Finally, one of the bummers is that it has Audyssey XT and not XT32, if I were to get MultEQ-x would the fact that it’s only XT and not XT32 have any effect? I’m still somewhat confused on what exactly the capabilities of MultEQ-x are but I will rewatch the audioholics video they did regarding that. Ideally I’d like to use it completely disregarding Audyssey and have it as a platform to input REW filters.

It doesn't even have XT. It has MultEQ.

Marantz are stingy.