Marantz Cinema 70s AVR Review

[Sky_Law]

$560 for a new C70s is a very good price. Where did you buy it from?

Best buy. What are your thoughts on the ncorex/purifi amps vs the hypex?

 

[peng]

Best buy. What are your thoughts on the ncorex/purifi amps vs the hypex?

Purifi has better specs on paper bit I am very happy with the buckeye NC502MP that costs much less. Sounds the same anyway. Make sure you get it with the standby switch, and the trigger if you need it.

 

[Sky_Law]

Purifi has better specs on paper bit I am very happy with the buckeye NC502MP that costs much less. Sounds the same anyway. Make sure you get it with the standby switch, and the trigger if you need it.

Did you request those when you placed the order?

 

[peng]

Did you request those when you placed the order?

I requested the standby switch option only as I don't need trigger for my use. He wouldn't do it because I opted for the much prettier Glentaudio case that was too small for the switch he was standardizing on for his own custom made case at the time. In the end he agreeed to drill a hole sized for the microswitch I intended to use, and I installed it myself.

The switch is needed to avoid the thump on power up that at times could get scarely loud. I doubt such thumps could cause damages to my speakers but it would not be a good feeling id you heard one.

 

[Sky_Law]

I requested the standby switch option only as I don't need trigger for my use. He wouldn't do it because I opted for the much prettier Glentaudio case that was too small for the switch he was standardizing on for his own custom made case at the time. In the end he agreeed to drill a hole sized for the microswitch I intended to use, and I installed it myself.

The switch is needed to avoid the thump on power up that at times could get scarely loud. I doubt such thumps could cause damages to my speakers but it would not be a good feeling id you heard one.

Ill make sure to request the trigger at the very least. Did you opt for the 2 channel amp or 4? Thinking that my r2/r6 center isnt going to be able to be driven off the cinema 70’s internal 50w amp

 

[peng]

Ill make sure to request the trigger at the very least. Did you opt for the 2 channel amp or 4? Thinking that my r2/r6 center isnt going to be able to be driven off the cinema 70’s internal 50w amp

I used my avr-x1800h for 2 channel and one sub so I only bought the 2 channel amp.

If you are using the C70S for 7.1, and KEF R series speakers, then you should get a 3 channel amp at the minimum. The C70S has a very decent prepro section but tbe power amp section would be the weak link for the R series except for nearfield use listening to relatively low spl.

 

[krhymer]

Hopefully this question isn't out of place... I am thinking of buying the 70s for a home theater setup. I will be running separate power amps for all channels so I will be using this as a pre/pro.
My question is... for the Zone 2 output can it be used as a line out/ rec out function or is is a variable output. I still record some music on cassette and would prefer to not have to use zone 2 to go to another receiver just for recording.
I have looked at the Marantz manual for this model and it does mention that you can set the volume level for Zone 2 but it does not specify that it can be used as a line out.
Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Kevin

 

[René - Acculution.com]

Hopefully this question isn't out of place... I am thinking of buying the 70s for a home theater setup. I will be running separate power amps for all channels so I will be using this as a pre/pro.
My question is... for the Zone 2 output can it be used as a line out/ rec out function or is is a variable output. I still record some music on cassette and would prefer to not have to use zone 2 to go to another receiver just for recording.
I have looked at the Marantz manual for this model and it does mention that you can set the volume level for Zone 2 but it does not specify that it can be used as a line out.
Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Kevin

In the menu under Zone 2 I can select Variable or a fixed level between 1 and 98.

 

[krhymer]

In the menu under Zone 2 I can select Variable or a fixed level between 1 and 98.

Thank you. I will have to try it once I get the unit. I will have to test it to find the right level for recording but will hopefully work.

 

[barao2work]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Marantz Cinema 70s home theater Audio/Video Receiver (AVR). It was kindly drop shipped by a member and costs US $1,200.
View attachment 333466
The 70s sports the new industrial design of Marantz AV products which I very much like. It looks even more attractive in this slim package. The display is not very informative but I can see it fitting the style now better than it ever did. Back panel shows a simpler layout which again, I prefer:
View attachment 333467

Many of us want a compact setup to go with our flat panel TVs or alternatively serve as our main music and TV/video sound and this is all we need really.

I updated the 70s to latest firmware which took about 10 minutes but otherwise was effortless.

Marantz Cinema 70s DAC/Pre-out Measurements
As usual we start with pre-out to determine the fidelity of digital to analog conversion. Per testing of prior Denon/Marantz products I set the volume to 82.5 and managed to nicely get the 2 volt output using HDMI as a source: (all testing with the output set to "Pre-out")
View attachment 333468
I was really hoping to see noise+distortion as expressed in SINAD to be north of 100 dB but it was not meant to be. I did try Toslink to see if that is any better:

View attachment 333470
The "grass" in the FFT noise floor improves but SINAD remains the same. Going with what we have, the 70s lands in not so good ranking:
View attachment 333471

Sweeping the input levels shows that optimal performance is at lower voltage although you don't gain much:
View attachment 333472

Multitone is at lower level so benefits from above factor:
View attachment 333473

IMD sweep though shows that more optimizations should have been done in noise and distortion front:
View attachment 333474

For comparisons to measurements elsewhere, here is 50 Hz response:
View attachment 333475

There is no filter selection so I was worried that we would see the very slow one from previous generation Marantz products. Fortunately they have adopted a more proper one:
View attachment 333476
Out of band attenuation is very modest though which will cause pain in the wideband THD+N measurements below. Frequency response shows the appropriateness of the filter in that domain:
View attachment 333477

Here is what I talked about:
View attachment 333478

Analyzing the spectrum of a 1 kHz tone shows that the ultrasonic energy is indeed the problem:
View attachment 333576

The unit is susceptible to audio samples when it comes to jitter:
View attachment 333480

Linearity is not great although better than some other AV products:
View attachment 333481

Not a lot to celebrate here although if you look at the review of Marantz NR1510, you will see that it has much rougher results even though top numbers are close.

Marantz Cinema 70s Amplifier Measurements
When I test an amplifier, I first let it warm up at 5 watts into 2 channels of a 4 ohm load. I show this at the end usually since it usually is not eventful. That was not the case here:
View attachment 333482
I left the amp running for a bit and was very surprised when I looked and saw that jump in distortion around 2 minutes. It also has this odd behavior in that every time you send it audio, distortion is higher and then settles down after about 7 seconds. While the amp was warm I don't expect the amplifier to go into any kind of mode to protect itself with just 10 watts of output. Note that I had ECO mode turned off (double checked). Performance before this effect clicked in was already poor. Giving up another 10 dB is just a sin. Here is the same issue in the dashboard:
View attachment 333489

After a minute or two you get this:
View attachment 333490

As noted, once the AVR goes into this mode, you can't get out of it unless you power cycle the amp. Simply turned down the volume, stopping the source, etc. won't make a difference. I almost stopped here as this is just unacceptable. As a minimum it should be documented. But then I considered that the company doesn't seem to be making claims about 4 ohm ability (lowest power rating is at 6 ohm) so I decided to continue and used the better SINAD value in the rankings:
View attachment 333491

If I use the lower number, it would literally fall of the right side of the chart!

Here is an FFT of before and after warm up:
View attachment 333502

FYI I could not replicate the issue at 1 and 2 watts.

Back to the dashboard, I also tested with analog input:
View attachment 333492

Performance is essentially the same so I continued testing with that as that makes comparison to stand-alone amplifiers easier. But I did confirm that in Pure Direct mode, the input is NOT digitized:

View attachment 333493

I set the crossover to 80 Hz and there, if you don't go to Pure Direct, you not only get that crossover, but output gets limited to which indicates it is going through an ADC. Nice to see even in that condition the bandwidth is large seeing how you have output to almost 48 kHz making me think sampling rate of the ADC is 88/96 kHz.

Noise performance is not great at 5 watts but improves at full power:
View attachment 333494

Note that you lose some of this with EQ so we really need better performance.

Multiutone shows the busy grass indicating a lot of intermodulation distortion:
View attachment 333495

Same with 19+20 kHz tones:

View attachment 333497



Crosstalk could definitely be better:
View attachment 333499

We see the distortion kink in the power measurements:
View attachment 333500

Good headroom though since I am only testing two channels and there is power supply capacity for more:
View attachment 333501

Here is the 8 ohm sweep:
View attachment 333503
We beat the spec by 15%.

Sweeping frequencies doesn't impact the overall response but the "hump" behavior changes:
View attachment 333504
FYI sweeping at higher levels caused the AVR to go into protection and would not recover on its own, requiring power cycle. Gave me a scare thinking it was damaged for good!

Conclusions
On the heels of the Marantz AV10 processor review, I had my hopes high for excellent performance but that was dashed with the Cinema 70s. While there seems to be some improvement compared to prior generation, the overall picture doesn't change. DAC performance is just "OK" and amplifier rather poor. Once price goes north of $1,000 I expect better performance. The good looks are there but sadly, the rest is not.

I can't recommend the Marantz Cinema 70s. Company can and should do better.

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Ooops, I just commented on the Polk ES60 review that I would give it a listening with this AV 70S……, I liked it at a dealer when paired with KEF floor standers streaming Tidle. The price came down to Euro 600… - I wonder….