This is a review and detailed measurements of the Marantz SACD player and USB balanced DAC. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $7,499.
The industrial design is good although usability is poor with super tiny fonts for various settings (e.g. filter number top left). Disc tray opens and closed buttery smooth -- a requirement for highend transports. The remote control is shiny silver which is odd and is plastic on the back. Back panel shows the connectivity:
Nice to see support for USB audio as so many of these products live in the past without. The SA-10 is incredibly heavy at 40 pounds. It weighs more than their Audio Video Receivers with many channels of amplification! I guess it gives comfort to owners that they have bought something of quality.
Marantz SA-10 DAC Measurements
Inclusion of USB eases my testing as I can drive the unit with all my standard tests. Let's start with our dashboard using RCA out:
And now balanced XLR:
I must say I was relieved that it did not measure poorly. SINAD of 105 dB lands it in the competent category:
But of course way, way below what we can get out of even budget desktop DACs. Distortion is at -112 dB which makes it inaudible but again, is not competitive. Note that I played with various optimizations such as Digital Off but none made any difference.
SNR is not great for a device in this price category:
That's about 17 bits of dynamic range. State of the art DACs reach up to 22 bits.
Multitone does well due to reduced levels it drives the DAC at:
Linearity is good enough but again, we expect more:
Jitter performance was disappointing:
The jitter components can easily be identified by frequency and sources found and eliminated. See how it was independent of which input is used so it means that the jitter is internally generated.
IMD test shows the impact of higher than desired noise level:
Company really believes in these super slow filters that allow a bunch of ultrasonic images to be there:
Even the faster filter 2 takes its time to do its thing. This directly impacts our wideband THD+N measurements as we take into account everything up to 90 kHz:
A $99 board that came out around the same time it did (dashed blue) outperforms it handily.
Marantz SA-10 SACD Playback Measurements
I do not have any SACD test discs. Only a few were created and are not easy to find. So I just played some music and grabbed the spectrum:
Notice the classic DSD stream ultrasonic noise. Some attempt is made to filter part of it above the peak of 100 kHz but by then the damage is done. There is as much noise energy at 100 kHz than we have at 3 kHz in music!
BTW, the first SACD disc I tried to play, Dvorak Symphony No 7 in D minor by Ivan Fischer would not play. The unit just said "no disc." Not sure what is up with that.
EDIT:
Marantz SA-10 CD Playback
Here is playback of 16 bit CD:
91 dB is the limit for dithered 16 bit content so player can't do better than that. That said, there is a spray of harmonic distortion that is unfortunate.
To see how the encoding works, here is a wideband view:
Looks like noise shaping combined with some of filter centered around 30 to 40 kHz.
Conclusions
The Marantz SA-10 measured performance is good enough to not embarrass the brand. But it is not remotely optimized enough to compete with DACs at 5 to 10% of its cost. Of course those DACs don't play physical discs so if you have a good sized library of SACDs, the SA-10 remains an option. But at such high cost? Very hard to justify based on my measurements.
Needless to say, I personally have no use for this device. My DSD content is downloaded and I just don't play my SACD discs. We would need to test lower cost SACD players to see where SA-10 lands.
I let you decide if this is a product worth recommendation.
Edit: video review posted:
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The industrial design is good although usability is poor with super tiny fonts for various settings (e.g. filter number top left). Disc tray opens and closed buttery smooth -- a requirement for highend transports. The remote control is shiny silver which is odd and is plastic on the back. Back panel shows the connectivity:
Nice to see support for USB audio as so many of these products live in the past without. The SA-10 is incredibly heavy at 40 pounds. It weighs more than their Audio Video Receivers with many channels of amplification! I guess it gives comfort to owners that they have bought something of quality.
Marantz SA-10 DAC Measurements
Inclusion of USB eases my testing as I can drive the unit with all my standard tests. Let's start with our dashboard using RCA out:
And now balanced XLR:
I must say I was relieved that it did not measure poorly. SINAD of 105 dB lands it in the competent category:
But of course way, way below what we can get out of even budget desktop DACs. Distortion is at -112 dB which makes it inaudible but again, is not competitive. Note that I played with various optimizations such as Digital Off but none made any difference.
SNR is not great for a device in this price category:
That's about 17 bits of dynamic range. State of the art DACs reach up to 22 bits.
Multitone does well due to reduced levels it drives the DAC at:
Linearity is good enough but again, we expect more:
Jitter performance was disappointing:
The jitter components can easily be identified by frequency and sources found and eliminated. See how it was independent of which input is used so it means that the jitter is internally generated.
IMD test shows the impact of higher than desired noise level:
Company really believes in these super slow filters that allow a bunch of ultrasonic images to be there:
Even the faster filter 2 takes its time to do its thing. This directly impacts our wideband THD+N measurements as we take into account everything up to 90 kHz:
A $99 board that came out around the same time it did (dashed blue) outperforms it handily.
Marantz SA-10 SACD Playback Measurements
I do not have any SACD test discs. Only a few were created and are not easy to find. So I just played some music and grabbed the spectrum:
Notice the classic DSD stream ultrasonic noise. Some attempt is made to filter part of it above the peak of 100 kHz but by then the damage is done. There is as much noise energy at 100 kHz than we have at 3 kHz in music!
BTW, the first SACD disc I tried to play, Dvorak Symphony No 7 in D minor by Ivan Fischer would not play. The unit just said "no disc." Not sure what is up with that.
EDIT:
Marantz SA-10 CD Playback
Here is playback of 16 bit CD:
91 dB is the limit for dithered 16 bit content so player can't do better than that. That said, there is a spray of harmonic distortion that is unfortunate.
To see how the encoding works, here is a wideband view:
Looks like noise shaping combined with some of filter centered around 30 to 40 kHz.
Conclusions
The Marantz SA-10 measured performance is good enough to not embarrass the brand. But it is not remotely optimized enough to compete with DACs at 5 to 10% of its cost. Of course those DACs don't play physical discs so if you have a good sized library of SACDs, the SA-10 remains an option. But at such high cost? Very hard to justify based on my measurements.
Needless to say, I personally have no use for this device. My DSD content is downloaded and I just don't play my SACD discs. We would need to test lower cost SACD players to see where SA-10 lands.
I let you decide if this is a product worth recommendation.
Edit: video review posted:
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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