This is a review and detailed measurements of the Marantz DR700 stereo player, CD recorder and transport.
As I've already mentioned, I'm a lot into CD players and especially old ones, such as the Marantz CD-73 which I already reviewed.
Marantz DR700 - Presentation
This CD recorder from 1998 had a high price tag at the time, and a pro version (CDR-630) of the same was available with rack mounting front face.
I got interested by this player (and as a CD Player only) because it's using an old 1bit Philips converter which I did not test yet, the TDA1305T. It is a relatively low cost DAC, all integrated, with oversampling and noise shaping. It features a THD+N in the range of -90dB to -81dB, limited that is.
The back panel is a little more busy than usual, of course because it includes digital and analog inputs of top of standard outputs:
The pro version offers XLR outputs on top.
The inside is full of emptiness:
The reason is that both ADC and DAC are located under the drive, on a small card which also includes servo control and decoding. The right side, I suppose, hosts the analog output card for XLR out on the pro version.
Using this player is a real pleasure, with a super fast drive, I love it. Also the Play/Stop/Pause buttons are easy to spot, not cryptic, that I like a lot too. Funny, it has a view meter, like an old cassette deck, nice. Skipping a track back and forth is ultra fast, so cool! And note that one track back does not get you to the beginning of current song but the one before. Maybe a pro habit.
The feel and touch is surprisingly pleasant, in par with the price of the time, I’d say.
When I first powered on the Marantz, I could hear the power supply buzzing, not good and I suspected I would find some issues there.
Let's check what this old tech has to tell us.
Marantz DR700 - Measurements (Analog out)
I described my measurements in the post “More than we hear”, and as I reported them for the Onkyo C-733 review. Over time, this will help comparing the devices I reviewed.
The Marantz DR700 outputs 1.89Vrsm, a little less than the standard 2Vrms.
Here you go with the standard 1kHz sine @0dBFS (dithered) from my test CD (RCA out) :
Both channels are represented but only one gets evaluated in that window. Left channel is less performing, but other than H2, rest is very similar. The THD+N is in the published performances of the DAC TDA1305T, which means it's well implemented here. We are missing one bit of CD resolution, too bad, and that is due to higher than usual noise floor.
Same view at -6dBFS:
Using shaped dither, we can lower the noise floor in digital domain, so let's see if the Marantz benefits from it:
This is an overlay of a trace without dither and the same with shaped dither. The noise floor is the same, which means this is the limitation here. It is impossible to break the 15bits resolution due to the noise generated by this player. With some high resolution players, shaped dither allows reaching 19bits of true resolution. We are very far from that here.
You probably already noticed some power supply–related spuria in its output (at-100dB at 50Hz and 100Hz and other harmonics):
No surprise, the buzzing I could hear leaks into the circuitry. Does it require some service? Maybe, and it's good to remember that 20+ years old devices might need some attention before performing as new.
And well, I tried to listen to noise through the output, and I could not hear, I think it is in a area where our ears have a natural high attenuation in loudness.
Next on my list is the bandwidth:
We see a gentle roll off at both ends, just like the Marantz CD-73 with much less ringing from the oversampling filter though. So that's ok.
As you can see from the plot on the above graph, the two channels are perfectly matched, 0dB difference, this is very good.
Staying on the oversampling filtering effect, let's have a look at wide band (up to 48kHz) :
We see the oversampling filter ringing above 22kHz, which means it's old fashioned, lacking computing power, but again "à la" Marantz CD-73. The filter is otherwise relatively sharp but attenuates poorly at -50dB only.
The above view contains an overlay of the AES IMD test (18kHz + 20kHz) so that you can see how their artifacts are attenuated at 24.1kHz and 26.1kHz (roughly -60dBr).
Let's continue with multitone test (1/20 decade):
This view shows that the Marantz has some difficulties to clear 16bits of distorsion free resolution. There's a suspicious spike at 150Hz, else it's kind of ok for 15bits.
The DR700 showed very low Jitter:
The red trace is what's recorded on the CD. We see some additional side band frequencies, but it's very low in level and can't be heard. The noise floor is higher than other CD Players, that's the true limitation here.
On your request and support (more information here), I am adding an "intersample-overs" test. It intends to identify if the oversampling filter has sufficient headroom to process near clipping signals. Indeed, and because of the oversampling, there might be interpolated data that go above 0dBFS (see the values in the table) and would saturate (clip) the interpolator and therefore the output. This effect is highlighted with the measurements below, and revealed through THD+N measurements up to 96kHz:
I left several other references for you to compare with. The oversampling filter to the Marantz DR700 does not have headroom to process Inter-sample overs. The Yamaha CD-1 shines in that test because it does not use an oversampling filter.
Here are other measurements:
And of course, one of my favorite measurement, the THD (without noise) vs Frequency at -12dBFS. I already commented elsewhere that I use it especially to test older R2R architectures as it shows their difficulty to be linear below full scale. Below are measurements of the Left and Right channels, overlaid with the previously tested (and near best in class for a CD Player) Onkyo C-733:
Well, yes, the Marantz DR700 suffers here as we have more distortion than usual You also see right channel doing 4dB better. All that said, good luck to hear -90dB harmonic distortion at -12dBFS into musical content
But that is in par with real resolution limited to 15bits.
Marantz DR700 Measurements - Optical and Coax Out
As usual, let's have a look at how this player behaves when used as a transport.
Because of the good precision of the clock (14ppm), I could get a better than usual trace (I could go up to 8 averages without windowing effect). This is my standard 999.91Hz @0dBFS:
That's the content of the CD, the test file. I can't see any evidence of digital modification. To me that is a perfect trace, as we should see all the time.
I am also using an undithered 1kHz sine at -90.31dBFS to verify the quality of the drive. With 16bits, the signal should appear (on a scope) as the 3DC levels of the smallest symmetrical sign magnitude digital signal, which is what we get with the Marantz DR700:
That's the smallest 16bits digital signal. At this level, the digital content is only -1, 0, 1. And so it outputs a square wave with ringing due to bandwidth limitation (Gibbs Phenomenon).
As such, and compared to analog outputs, the digital ones will benefit from Shaped Dither, allowing to reach 19.7bits of true resolution, up to 5kHz. This is the comparison of 999.91Hz @0dBFS without dither and with shaped dither:
You can see I had to change this axis by a lot to show the much lower local noise floor with shaped dither. That means this player would be very great with a high resolution DAC.
Very good digital output is what we get here, and that's nice. And that means when using a very good budget DAC such as the SMSL PS200, this is what you get:
This is extremely close to the digital signal of the CD. It will be hard to get closer to the recorded master than that. Ideal to enjoy your CD collection!
Marantz DR700 - Testing the drive
What would be good measurements if the drive would not properly read a slightly scratched CD, or one that was created at the limits of the norm? The below tests reply to these questions.
The drive was able to consistently continue playing, without generating typical digital clicks, with dropouts of up to 1.5mm. There was no transition between correctly reading a track and hearing clicks. With dropouts equal or greater than 2mm, the player failed to read and simply stopped. The Marantz had no issue with variable linear velocity and/or track pitch, as well as with HF detection.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed reading this review as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Considering the compact build, inside, and all functionalities, for a 25 years ago player, I guess we can accept limitations in pure performances. And it records on CDR! You just need to accept loosing 1 bit of resolution...
I did not test the performance when recording, it would be long and I don't expect anything interesting. That said, and it's to note, the Marantz will stop recording after 3 seconds of signal at less than -50dBFS, considering it is silence
When used as a transport, it's performing extremely well. So a little modern DAC behind, and it'll much improve. Add to that the speed of the drive, plus touch and feel and you get a lot of pleasure at very low price. And there's a dB meter, how cool is that?
Enjoy the weekend.
--------
Flo
As I've already mentioned, I'm a lot into CD players and especially old ones, such as the Marantz CD-73 which I already reviewed.
Marantz DR700 - Presentation
This CD recorder from 1998 had a high price tag at the time, and a pro version (CDR-630) of the same was available with rack mounting front face.
I got interested by this player (and as a CD Player only) because it's using an old 1bit Philips converter which I did not test yet, the TDA1305T. It is a relatively low cost DAC, all integrated, with oversampling and noise shaping. It features a THD+N in the range of -90dB to -81dB, limited that is.
The back panel is a little more busy than usual, of course because it includes digital and analog inputs of top of standard outputs:
The pro version offers XLR outputs on top.
The inside is full of emptiness:
The reason is that both ADC and DAC are located under the drive, on a small card which also includes servo control and decoding. The right side, I suppose, hosts the analog output card for XLR out on the pro version.
Using this player is a real pleasure, with a super fast drive, I love it. Also the Play/Stop/Pause buttons are easy to spot, not cryptic, that I like a lot too. Funny, it has a view meter, like an old cassette deck, nice. Skipping a track back and forth is ultra fast, so cool! And note that one track back does not get you to the beginning of current song but the one before. Maybe a pro habit.
The feel and touch is surprisingly pleasant, in par with the price of the time, I’d say.
When I first powered on the Marantz, I could hear the power supply buzzing, not good and I suspected I would find some issues there.
Let's check what this old tech has to tell us.
Marantz DR700 - Measurements (Analog out)
I described my measurements in the post “More than we hear”, and as I reported them for the Onkyo C-733 review. Over time, this will help comparing the devices I reviewed.
The Marantz DR700 outputs 1.89Vrsm, a little less than the standard 2Vrms.
Here you go with the standard 1kHz sine @0dBFS (dithered) from my test CD (RCA out) :
Both channels are represented but only one gets evaluated in that window. Left channel is less performing, but other than H2, rest is very similar. The THD+N is in the published performances of the DAC TDA1305T, which means it's well implemented here. We are missing one bit of CD resolution, too bad, and that is due to higher than usual noise floor.
Same view at -6dBFS:
Using shaped dither, we can lower the noise floor in digital domain, so let's see if the Marantz benefits from it:
This is an overlay of a trace without dither and the same with shaped dither. The noise floor is the same, which means this is the limitation here. It is impossible to break the 15bits resolution due to the noise generated by this player. With some high resolution players, shaped dither allows reaching 19bits of true resolution. We are very far from that here.
You probably already noticed some power supply–related spuria in its output (at-100dB at 50Hz and 100Hz and other harmonics):
No surprise, the buzzing I could hear leaks into the circuitry. Does it require some service? Maybe, and it's good to remember that 20+ years old devices might need some attention before performing as new.
And well, I tried to listen to noise through the output, and I could not hear, I think it is in a area where our ears have a natural high attenuation in loudness.
Next on my list is the bandwidth:
We see a gentle roll off at both ends, just like the Marantz CD-73 with much less ringing from the oversampling filter though. So that's ok.
As you can see from the plot on the above graph, the two channels are perfectly matched, 0dB difference, this is very good.
Staying on the oversampling filtering effect, let's have a look at wide band (up to 48kHz) :
We see the oversampling filter ringing above 22kHz, which means it's old fashioned, lacking computing power, but again "à la" Marantz CD-73. The filter is otherwise relatively sharp but attenuates poorly at -50dB only.
The above view contains an overlay of the AES IMD test (18kHz + 20kHz) so that you can see how their artifacts are attenuated at 24.1kHz and 26.1kHz (roughly -60dBr).
Let's continue with multitone test (1/20 decade):
This view shows that the Marantz has some difficulties to clear 16bits of distorsion free resolution. There's a suspicious spike at 150Hz, else it's kind of ok for 15bits.
The DR700 showed very low Jitter:
The red trace is what's recorded on the CD. We see some additional side band frequencies, but it's very low in level and can't be heard. The noise floor is higher than other CD Players, that's the true limitation here.
On your request and support (more information here), I am adding an "intersample-overs" test. It intends to identify if the oversampling filter has sufficient headroom to process near clipping signals. Indeed, and because of the oversampling, there might be interpolated data that go above 0dBFS (see the values in the table) and would saturate (clip) the interpolator and therefore the output. This effect is highlighted with the measurements below, and revealed through THD+N measurements up to 96kHz:
| Intersample-overs tests Bandwidth of the THD+N measurements is 20Hz - 96kHz | 5512.5 Hz sine, Peak = +0.69dBFS | 7350 Hz sine, Peak = +1.25dBFS | 11025 Hz sine, Peak = +3.0dBFS |
| Teac VRDS-20 | -30.7dB | -26.6dB | -17.6dB |
| Yamaha CD-1 | -84.6dB | -84.9dB | -78.1dB |
| Denon DCD-900NE | -34.2dB | -27.1dB | -19.1dB |
| Denon DCD-SA1 | -33.6dB | -27.6dB | -18.3dB |
| Onkyo C-733 | -88.3dB | -40.4dB | -21.2dB |
| Marantz DR700 | -31.5dB | -25.2dB | -16.7dB |
I left several other references for you to compare with. The oversampling filter to the Marantz DR700 does not have headroom to process Inter-sample overs. The Yamaha CD-1 shines in that test because it does not use an oversampling filter.
Here are other measurements:
- SNR : 92.4dB (1kHz @-60dBFS without dither)
- Crosstalk : -126dB (@1kHz)
- IMD AES : -82dB (18kHz + 20kHz 1:1 @-5dBFS)
- IMD DIN : -87dB (250Hz & 8kHz 4:1 @-5dBFS)
- Pitch Error : 19'997.72Hz (19'997Hz requested) ie 14ppm
And of course, one of my favorite measurement, the THD (without noise) vs Frequency at -12dBFS. I already commented elsewhere that I use it especially to test older R2R architectures as it shows their difficulty to be linear below full scale. Below are measurements of the Left and Right channels, overlaid with the previously tested (and near best in class for a CD Player) Onkyo C-733:
Well, yes, the Marantz DR700 suffers here as we have more distortion than usual You also see right channel doing 4dB better. All that said, good luck to hear -90dB harmonic distortion at -12dBFS into musical content
But that is in par with real resolution limited to 15bits.Marantz DR700 Measurements - Optical and Coax Out
As usual, let's have a look at how this player behaves when used as a transport.
Because of the good precision of the clock (14ppm), I could get a better than usual trace (I could go up to 8 averages without windowing effect). This is my standard 999.91Hz @0dBFS:
That's the content of the CD, the test file. I can't see any evidence of digital modification. To me that is a perfect trace, as we should see all the time.
I am also using an undithered 1kHz sine at -90.31dBFS to verify the quality of the drive. With 16bits, the signal should appear (on a scope) as the 3DC levels of the smallest symmetrical sign magnitude digital signal, which is what we get with the Marantz DR700:
That's the smallest 16bits digital signal. At this level, the digital content is only -1, 0, 1. And so it outputs a square wave with ringing due to bandwidth limitation (Gibbs Phenomenon).
As such, and compared to analog outputs, the digital ones will benefit from Shaped Dither, allowing to reach 19.7bits of true resolution, up to 5kHz. This is the comparison of 999.91Hz @0dBFS without dither and with shaped dither:
You can see I had to change this axis by a lot to show the much lower local noise floor with shaped dither. That means this player would be very great with a high resolution DAC.
Very good digital output is what we get here, and that's nice. And that means when using a very good budget DAC such as the SMSL PS200, this is what you get:
This is extremely close to the digital signal of the CD. It will be hard to get closer to the recorded master than that. Ideal to enjoy your CD collection!
Marantz DR700 - Testing the drive
What would be good measurements if the drive would not properly read a slightly scratched CD, or one that was created at the limits of the norm? The below tests reply to these questions.
| Test type | Technical test | Results |
| Variation of linear cutting velocity | From 1.20m/s to 1.40m/s | Pass |
| Variation of track pitch | From 1.5µm to 1.7µm | Pass |
| Combined variations of track pitch and velocity | From 1.20m/s & 1.5µm to 1.40m/s & 1.7µm | Pass |
| HF detection (asymmetry pitch/flat ratio) | Variation from 2% to 18% | Pass |
| Dropouts resistance | From 0.05mm (0.038ms) to 4mm (3.080ms) | Up to 1.5mm |
| Combined dropouts and smallest pitch | From 1.5µm & 1mm to 1.5µm & 2.4mm | Up to 1mm |
| Successive dropouts | From 2x0.1mm to 2x3mm | Up to 1mm |
The drive was able to consistently continue playing, without generating typical digital clicks, with dropouts of up to 1.5mm. There was no transition between correctly reading a track and hearing clicks. With dropouts equal or greater than 2mm, the player failed to read and simply stopped. The Marantz had no issue with variable linear velocity and/or track pitch, as well as with HF detection.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed reading this review as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Considering the compact build, inside, and all functionalities, for a 25 years ago player, I guess we can accept limitations in pure performances. And it records on CDR! You just need to accept loosing 1 bit of resolution...
I did not test the performance when recording, it would be long and I don't expect anything interesting. That said, and it's to note, the Marantz will stop recording after 3 seconds of signal at less than -50dBFS, considering it is silence
When used as a transport, it's performing extremely well. So a little modern DAC behind, and it'll much improve. Add to that the speed of the drive, plus touch and feel and you get a lot of pleasure at very low price. And there's a dB meter, how cool is that?
Enjoy the weekend.
--------
Flo
Last edited:
