Marantz CINEMA 70s AVR has been recently reviewed by
@amirm here and I had it purchased online a couple of hours prior to the above review to be published on ASR. Also, audio.com.pl had it
reviewed earlier as well.
I bought it for improving movies listening experience in an audio surround environment, for its PRE-OUT outputs for all its 7 channels, but also because it was the only AVR with a low height I’ve seen on the market at a reasonable price. I paid for it 646 EUR on amazon.de with free shipping, so it’s an OK price I’d say. I had it connected to a couple of
Canton GLE 496 as Front speakers, one
Magnat S 14C as Center, a couple of
JBL Control 28-1 as Surrounds, a couple of
JBL Control 23-1 as Front Height / Atmos and a
SVS SB-3000 subwoofer.
For those willing to read the Datasheet can have a look
here or to the infosheet
here, while the Owner’s Manual can be read
here while its PDF version can be download from
here.
I did like the way it was packed inside, very organised and all items were safely arranged in there, without using a lot of cardboard, but also protecting just fine the inside equipment and accessories. The corners were also perfectly protected and the cardboard was of a good quality and hard to bend. The new design of the CINEMA series is definitely better than the old one that I have known for a couple of decades. A TV attached would be needed to set everything up, as the AVR will not operate otherwise, not even as a stereo amplifier. So, all relays will remain open until the setup gets finished.
The startup takes about 30 seconds, probably a bit longer than I was expecting, but this is something normal for all contemporary AVRs that are filled with several chips inside and each chip has its own startup time, then they all need to sync together and work in such a way a central microprocessor tells them to.
The Setup menus are similar to other’s AVRs from the market, with lots of settings from where you can set up both Audio and Video, but also the ubiquitous Audyssey settings from where you calibrate your audio setup, but you can also manually modify the calibrated audio measurements as per your liking. An ADC chip, I wasn't able yet to identify it, is handling the analogue Mic-input for the Audyssey microphone, so the AVR to be able to calibrate its sound by reprogramming the settings inside the DSP chips to modify the audio coming from each speaker in a way to make for the listener the best audio experience for its home theatre. It basically corrects phase issues, timing between channels, volume levels, but it also has a parametric equalizer that corrects deeps and peaks to flatten the sound and to make it sound as good as a "reference" audio system
The
Power On Level can be set to a desired value between 1 and 98 or to Mute or to Last, but it can also be set to a hard limit between 60 and 80 which might be a good thing if you don’t want someone else to increase the max. volume past this level. I set it up myself to 80 which is a reasonable high value for my living room and this way will ensure that the amplifier itself will not overheat and our hearing will not be damaged at the same time.
When I want to listen louder I connect the PRE-OUT of the Front channels to my
Yamaha A-S701 external amplifier, this way the internal power supply of the CINEMA 70s will be able to deliver more current to the remaining five channels achieving lower distortions for the output stages. The volume level for the A-S701 I need to set it up to precisely 12:30 o’clock to match the exact output level of the CINEMA 70s, then I set master volume through the CINEMA 70s’s volume knob that will change the volume on all the five channels and on the two Front PRE-OUTs connected to A-S701 at the same time.
The case is not grounded and the power plug is also a 2-pin model, so the amplifier is an IEC Class 2 device, more details
here. However, there is a dedicated grounding screw on the backside, but this is most likely to get all the audio sources to the same potential in case of hum noises.
An audio DSP chip made by
Cirrus Logic CS49844A-CQZ is located on the main board. As per manufacturer wrote:
“The DSPs support all legacy DVD audio codecs and all Blu-ray Disc® audio formats, along with enough DSP capacity to support a wide variety of concurrent post processing algorithms all in a single chip without need for external memory”, so I suppose it’s used to decode all 70s’s audio formats for music playing.
Another chip marked
R5F564MJCDFC, from the RX64M family of MCU’s manufactured by Renesas, is a 120-MHz 32-bit RX MCU with on-chip FPU, a 3 Mbytes internal flash memory and 512 Kbytes RAM. It seems to be taking care of Ethernet communications and USB communications too.
A
Pango PGC1KG 6CFBG256 programmable chip is part of the Compa series of
FPGA chips (see also
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/understanding-fpgas.249/)
“suitable for system configuration, interface expansion and bridging, board-level power management, power-on sequence management, and sensor fusion. and other application requirements, it is widely used in communications, consumer electronics, drones, industrial control and other fields”. It supports 1276
LUT4 operations and 1595 flip-flop numbers.
A
Panasonic MN864788 integrated circuit is most likely handling the remote control operations, but it’s hard to find the datasheet for this chip, nor schematic examples using it. However, it appears to be widely used in Denon / Marantz receivers.
Four
PCM5102A and one
PCM5100A DAC chips are handling digital to analogue audio streams decoding for all the 7+2 channels.
The mains AC voltage that comes from the transformer is regulated by a 25A
D25XB60 bridge rectifier followed by a couple of 6800 uF / 63V @105C electrolytic capacitors.
View attachment 337044
The two 6800 @ 105C filtering electrolytic capacitors following the AC / DC bridge rectifier
There are a few 3-pin fixed linear regulators, manufactured by KIA Semiconductor Technology, following the above bridge rectifier, like 7805 for the +5V rail, 7807 for +7V and 7907 for -7V, that along with many other smaller regulators from the electronic boards are providing power to all the stages of this AV, but also to the relays and to logic components from the main board.
The output power stage is built around seven pairs of complementary Darlington transistors:
SANKEN 2SB1560 being PNP and
SANKEN 2SD2390 being NPN. These are 10 A and 150 W powerful transistors used in many AV receivers, some of them having twice CINEMA 70s’s power, so at least in theory, with a beefier power supply and with active cooling this AVR could be transformed into a more powerful one, tough
some say that the on-die biasing resistor might get damaged in case of overheating. Not just Denon / Marantz are using these transistors models, but also Pioneer, Onkyo, Cambridge Audio and perhaps other manufacturers too.
Below there is a schematic with the amplifier inside the Onkyo A-9010 AVR that is built around the same 2SB1560/2SD2390 pair of transistor, that seems to have a similar output power as the reviewed one:
Onkyo A-9010 Audio Video Receiver ampilfier schematic
There is an
Auto Power Off feature implemented in CINEMA 70s that takes care of two zones independently: Main zone consists of five internal amplifiers 5ch+Sub1, while Zone 2 consists of the remaining two internal amplifiers 2ch+Sub2 from Surround Back R+L, but it can also take care of all 7.2 channels, depending on the settings we choose from the Settings menu. This will ensure that when we're listening to 5.1 environment the remaining couple of channels could get into a stand-by mode and vice-versa, when we listen to Zone 2 stereo speakers the remaining 5 channels will get into a low power state according to the Power Off settings we set up. Basically, if the AVR is not going to be used for the no. of minutes/hours that was setup earlier then it will automatically shut off entirely or only one of the two Zones.
Another energy saving feature is also the
Eco Mode that allows energy saving when set to ON. With
Eco Mode set to
OFF I measured an idle power consumption between
25.8-27 W, while with
Eco Mode set to
ON it got lowered to
18.5-19 W, so quite a low idling power consumption for an AVR. Exactly the same
18-19 W value I was getting while listening to a low power level late evening. Compared with my stereo amplifier (
Yamaha A-S701) that has an idle power consumption of about 20-25 W, the CINEMA 70s with its
27 W seems resonable to me, especially the 17 W value with
Eco Mode turned
ON).
Eco Mode setting turned to OFF
For those willing to use this AVR on moderate levels for watching movies I think they might experiment with different power levels until they find the “sweat spot” that will better blend energy consumption and output power. However, below are a few
Eco Mode ON vs.
OFF measurements and my 2 cents thoughts as well.
With
Eco Mode turned
OFF I measured on Front outputs a
SINAD of 75.1 dB at about
5 W / 4 Ohms and turning this feature
ON lowered the
SINAD to 59.7 dB, so a decrease of about 15 dB in SINAD and also in THD+N. Similar measurements done for about
21.5 W @ 4 Ohms showed that
SINAD decreases from
80.7 dB to
43.5 dB, meaning a difference of 37.2 dB, so increasing the volume when
Eco Mode is turned
OFF may not be a good idea, unless energy consumption matters more than audio quality.
I was able to measure at
5 W / 4 Ohms (approx. 4.5-4.6 V RMS @ 4.1 Ohms) a
SINAD of
75.1 dB on the Front Right channel and about
69.9 dB on the Front Left channel, a
SINAD of
78.5 dB on the Surround Right channel and
77.5 dB on the Surround Left channel. It's interesting to see that the Surround channels are a bit better in terms of SINAD / THD+N than the Front ones, kind of unexpected.
Increasing the volume a bit more, to about
22 W / 4 Ohms (approx. 9.4-9.4 V RMS @ 4.1 Ohms) improves SINAD results to 80.6 dB for the Front Right channel and to -73 dB for the Left one, while the Surround gets to -80.8 dB for the Right channel.
What's very interesting is the difference between the SINAD figures when comparing
ECO Mode OFF vs.
ON. For the Right Front channel there's an increase from
75.1 dB to 59.7 dB @ 5W and from
80.7 dB to 43.5 dB, so much worse than the distortions at 5 W, which is quite normal given that enabling the
ECO Mode feature means lowering the voltage for the output stage. To summarise, the ECO feature does a good job for low output levels up to
10W / channel, while for higher output levels it should be left
OFF or to
AUTO to ensure that the distortions will not become audible. Worth mentioning that a
SINAD of 43.5 dB means 0.668%, but most people don't perceive distortions if below 1%.
View attachment 337047
Front channel Right, SINAD of 75.1 dB, 5W @4Ohms, Eco Mode OFF
View attachment 337046
Front channel Right, SINAD of 59.7 dB, 5W @4Ohms, Eco Mode ON
View attachment 337049
Front channel Right, SINAD of 80.7 dB, 21.5W @4Ohms, Eco Mode OFF
View attachment 337048
Front channel Right, SINAD of 43.5 dB, 21.5W @4Ohms, Eco Mode ON
View attachment 337050
Surround Right channel, SINAD of 78.5 dB, 5W @4Ohms, Eco Mode OFF
View attachment 337051
Surround Right channel, SINAD of 80.8 dB, 21.5W @4Ohms, Eco Mode OFF
I haven't noticed a better SINAD result when using
Pure Direct, though the "skirt" around the fundamental signal disappears completely with Pure Direct pushed, so the output signal is cleaner when Pure Direct is pushed, although this doesn’t change the final THD+N results.
How is Marantz / Denon achieving such an energy saving with this
Eco Mode feature? They added a rather big and powerful relay
HF115F / 012-2ZS4A 8A/250VAC on the main board that seems to switch on-the-fly from one winding of the transformer to another one, decreasing the AC voltage that powers the bridge rectifier shown a few paragraphs above. I measured
96.5 VDC on +/- rails of the bridge when
Eco Mode is turned
OFF and
38.53 VDC with this setting turned
ON, an unexpected big difference. What’s important is that turning the Eco Mode OFF is indeed saving a lot of energy. Another example is when I was listening to a rather compressed song to a bit over 90 dB peaks and I’ve noticed that by turning the
Eco Mode ON decreased energy consumption from
96 W to
47 W maintaining the same output level; audibly it was very difficult for me to notice the increase in distortions, although focusing only on the bass I think it was a slight difference.
Below I'm posting a few pics with the internals. I find the modular design and implementation to be easier to service, at least for the authorised repair services where they simply swap the defective module with a new one.
View attachment 337036
The AC transformer is on the left, the 14 powerful output transistors are on the bottom
View attachment 337038
On the mid-left, with heatsink on top, there is the MBBVOP13082E module that takes care of wireless comms.
On the right there is the small power supply that takes care of powering the device On / Off.
When listening loudly to music tracks on all 7 channels, the inside temperature of the hottest components from the upper board gets to
60 - 63 C, while the output stage’s heatsink reaches
53 - 56 C, with top case taken off; I expect with the case back on and with the AVR placed in small cabinet / rack or inside the furniture things to get much hotter inside, with at least 10 C more, especially when listening to music on all 7 speakers.
Given the passive cooling of the CINEMA 70s, I would recommend this AVR to be placed on a well ventilated place, same being recommended by the manufacturer as well, as per
Owner’s Manual (PDF manual
here):
“Power turns off and the protection circuit indicator flashes in orange approx. every 2 seconds.
- The protection circuit has been activated due to a rise in temperature within this unit. Turn the power off, wait about an hour until this unit cools down sufficiently, and then turn the power on again. (v p. 276)
- Please re-install this unit in a place having good ventilation.”
Marantz CINEMA 70s also has more protections in place that turns the device OFF in case of a short-circuit on the speaker cables or in case one of the speakers gets accidentally removed while playing, as per below:
“Power turns off and the protection circuit indicator flashes in orange approx. every 0.5 seconds.
- Check the speaker connections. The protection circuit may have been activated because speaker cable core wires came in contact with each other or a core wire was disconnected from the connector and came in contact with the rear panel of this unit. After unplugging the power cord, take corrective action such as firmly re-twisting the core wire or taking care of the connector, and then reconnect the wire. (v p. 34)
- Turn down the volume and turn on the power again. (v p. 70)
- This unit’s amplifier circuit has failed. Unplug the power cord and contact our customer service center.”
Thank you for reading and I'm wishing
Merry Christmas to all Christians and
Happy Hollidays and a
Happy New Year to all of us!
No offense to good lawyers intended. You know who you are. All the reviews seem to focus on the unit as a whole thus making a judgement about its capability as a pre/pro a huge question. Can anyone address this?
