Marantz MODEL M1 Wireless Streaming Amplifier

[ccjl6-1]

Marantz support have replied to me. They said “Sounds like a potential hardware fault. Please get the unit back to your retailer or place of purchase for warranty servicing”

 

[Ramez7151]

Yea I’m not surprised. I’ve had 2 with the exact same thing. I’m pretty confident your second will be the same but the support staff don’t know anything but you can try.

 

[ccjl6-1]

Where do we stand for a refund if there are concerns about the longevity of the amp?

 

[Ramez7151]

Whatever the warranty period is. You won’t get a refund just a replacement. My suspicion is that this is a firmware issue that will likely be fixed in the future but no guarantee obviously.

 

[Ramez7151]

It’s so odd. If I leave the device for like a couple hours and turn it back on I get the hissing sound. If I reboot it the sound is gone. I don’t know what to make of it. Quick start is a way to avoid it going into deep standby for hours.

I assume it’s a firmware issue but i don’t know. I’ve had two devices do the exact same thing.

 

[DRC]

It’s so odd. If I leave the device for like a couple hours and turn it back on I get the hissing sound. If I reboot it the sound is gone. I don’t know what to make of it. Quick start is a way to avoid it going into deep standby for hours.

I assume it’s a firmware issue but i don’t know. I’ve had two devices do the exact same thing.

Do you really mean Deep Standby? The Marantz M1 has two standby modes and will only enter Deep Standby if the wired or wireless network is removed for 60 minutes and the LED will go off (according to the manual). My Denon Home Amp has never gone into Deep Standby.

 

[Ramez7151]

Do you really mean Deep Standby? The Marantz M1 has two standby modes and will only enter Deep Standby if the wired or wireless network is removed for 60 minutes and the LED will go off (according to the manual). My Denon Home Amp has never gone into Deep Standby.

Sorry the auto standby mode. Basically if I leave it alone for an hour without audio playing through it.

Quick start no issue but since I use another dac connected to rca for some reason I have to change the sound mode to anything to get it to start playing audio. No matter what I do to get everything functional it takes effort.

When you do these things it works great. Nearly Completely quiet background noise when no audio is playing.

 

[MelodiousThunk]

Do the LS50's sound good on a class D amp?

I think that the M1 sounds quite nice with the LS50 Metas. I have no complaints. I do have a small subwoofer hoked up.

 

[MelodiousThunk]

Once I switched to using the LS50 Metas, I have had no issues with the M1. That being said, I did have issues with the three previous sets of speakers I tried! Since the switch to the Metas, everything has been great.

 

[Ramez7151]

I also have the metas and have no complaints on the sound quality. They sound very good:

All my issues are related to rca input and hiss out of deep standby that goes away on restart.

 

[MelodiousThunk]

I also have the metas and have no complaints on the sound quality. They sound very good:

All my issues are related to rca input and hiss out of deep standby that goes away on restart.

What do you have hooked up via RCAs? I had a CD player hooked up yesterday. And, I hooked up a DVD player (to play CDs) earlier today. I have had no issues thus far. Is it safe to assume that you are using quality interconnects? And, that you have tried different interconnects?

 

[Ramez7151]

I have a jds labs element 4 connected to it via rca. It’s a headphone amp/dac connected to my computer. For some reason it sounds a lot better than the optical audio.

Yes they are higher end locking rca cables.

I have no issues unless I’m turning on the amp out of the auto standby. If I reset it it’s dead silent and works great. It’s the weirdest thing. I cannot figure out the cause.

I was told by the guy on live chat this is a known issue with an upcoming firmware update. The second guy I talked to just seemed confused and told me to firmware reset then escalated me to someone else who wanted to schedule a call.

I have tried actually purchasing another m1 just to test if another device has this issue.., and it does. Replicated in the exact same way. So I don’t want to rma it because they are all like this. It’s clearly not defective because it sounds excellent after restart.

 

[MelodiousThunk]

I have a jds labs element 4 connected to it via rca. It’s a headphone amp/dac connected to my computer. For some reason it sounds a lot better than the optical audio.

Yes they are higher end locking rca cables.

I have no issues unless I’m turning on the amp out of the auto standby. If I reset it it’s dead silent and works great. It’s the weirdest thing. I cannot figure out the cause.

I was told by the guy on live chat this is a known issue with an upcoming firmware update. The second guy I talked to just seemed confused and told me to firmware reset then escalated me to someone else who wanted to schedule a call.

That stinks. Have you tried hooking up something else to the M1 via the RCAs to see if the issue is still present?

 

[Ramez7151]

I honestly don’t have anything else. But this dac is radio silent. I use It for my headphones as well. Like I said if I restart the m1 literally zero noise. This isn’t introduced by the dac/amp.

Sometimes also the machine doesn’t go into standby at all and just stays on. In those situations it just works without hiss when the audio starts. But obviously it’s on. I don’t know if that affects longevity but obviously I don’t think I’m going to be keeping this device for ten years…. We leave our active speakers on for years without issue why is this any different.

I’m fairly confident it’s an issue with the way this machine comes out of standby with an analog signal. Hopefully they fix it.

 

[MelodiousThunk]

I may be wrong, but because of the M1’s "direct digital," isn’t using a DAC with the M1 redundant?

 

[Ramez7151]

I may be wrong, but because of the M1’s "direct digital," isn’t using a DAC with the M1 redundant?

Maybe but it sounds better to me. Also gives you better eq capabilities. Honestly I just like the volume knob. It works well and has an app with your pc. Overall more pleasant usability.

Going through usb to dac pretty much avoids any sound processing from the pc and it occurs within the element 4. I assume that the m1 has its own processing as well which is the redundancy you’re talking about. At the end of the day it sounds better to me… don’t know why.

If the m1 has an rca out it should work without issues. This can’t be that hard.

 

[Ramez7151]

Maybe but it sounds better to me. Also gives you better eq capabilities. Honestly I just like the volume knob. It works well and has an app with your pc. Overall more pleasant usability.

Going through usb to dac pretty much avoids any sound processing from the pc and it occurs within the element 4. I assume that the m1 has its own processing as well which is the redundancy you’re talking about. At the end of the day it sounds better to me… don’t know why.

If the m1 has an rca out it should work without issues. This can’t be that hard.

I’m going to try buying a higher end power cable off of Amazon. I read this could be related to some sort of power issue on initial startup. Will let you know if it works.

I never thought these power cables actually do anything but now I’m curious. Figure 8 plug to 3 pronged with a ground.

 

[Ramez7151]

So I realized what the issue is. I have tried this on two separate devices. It seems that if you have an active rca connection and it’s coming out of standby it will have static until restart. After restart clean signal… no static. It’s odd because it has to be coming out of standby after it’s been left in standby for like an hour. You can’t go into deep standby and immediately take it out and get static.

If you take the device out of standby then turn on the device providing rca signal no static.

I assume this is something that can be fixed via firmware update.

 

[ccjl6-1]

I’ve taken mine back to the retailer who are going to investigate. I will say though that I didn’t have anything plugged into my RCA inputs. I only used it with HDMI to my tv and even when I unplugged the HDMI the issue was still there.

 

[Ramez7151]

Does it improve on reboot? I don’t understand with wiim amp it just worked. This much much bigger denon company can’t get this device to a workable state 8 months post release. It’s a bit ridiculous.