I am definitely looking forward to PEQ prior to Dirac on the HTP-1. I am not convinced that the majority of HTP-1 owners are taking advantage of what that really means and the difference in practice may be small.
I agree with that, mostly. Loudness compensation is the more important feature for most people, and D+M including Dirac without a replacement for Audyssey DynamicEQ is IMO suboptimal. Dolby has a new version of Dolby Volume called Dolby Audio Processing or something like that. Maybe they will add that? I thought the"Volume Modeller" (loudness comp) component of Dolby Volume was very good.
PS the the other use case for PEQ before Dirac is to transform passive/DIY subs without introducing a separate controller. It’s a niche use too (one that I personally use in one of ours HTP-1’s ) admittedly.
And we both went from Yamaha CX-A5100 to HTP-1, so we are actually more similar than most for the HT area.
Good memory! Though I had a Marantz AVP in between, as well as a couple evaluation units (
Bryston-branded StormAudio, Lyngdorf MP60v1.) So a number of years passed between the two. FWIW, I never liked the 5100 and was glad to replace it. The room correction wasn’t up to snuff and the UI was a continuing challenge. The only reason I bought it was, it was the only AVP to maintain Dolby Pro Logic II for music upmixing along with Atmos. Auromatic made losing DPL2 more palatable.
Still
1) It’s readily available for purchase.
2) No screen doom loop. The noise on XLRs was quickly addressed.
3) 8K switching, D&M gold standard HDMI CEC reliability. My understanding is that the Marantz runs cooler despite the 8K support.
4) XLR analog inputs plus a phono input
4) Bass Transducer support
5) DTS X Pro is working and the promised firmware updates have come on time.
Collectively (assuming availability) that does not look like several thousand dollars of benefit to me, especially weighed against the two disadvantages discussed above.
! I’ll concede 1, until and unless MP develops a track record of continued availability (though one must also continue to assess A/V's relative place at Masimo, given recent events...), and 4-2 (transducer). Also 2 in part: though this issue hasn’t cropped up in either of mine for some time, but the fact that it was an issue reasonably leads to some doubt unfortunately.
DTS:X is IMO near pointless here. On a 16 channel processor it's only useful for the handful of people who
a] have more than 7.x.4 speakers,
b] still play from video disks, and
c] either don't care about bass fidelity (channels taken away from DLBC) or have endless hours for manual optimization of multiple subwoofers.
XLR analog inputs in a digital processor seem wasteful. What would be connected to it? If someone says “a DAC for 2 channel” because that just shows user ignorance and delusion. The reasonable advantage here would be that Marantz builds in AirPlay2 (they still do, right?) but you need an AppleTV or WiiM-type device to play music over AirPlay on the HTP-1.
Phono preamp does ticks a box I suppose, but I would expect anyone using vinyl would have their own anyway. The phono preamp in my old 7703 was not very good. A Parks Audio Puffin with digital input into the AVP is much better.
As for HDMI, by the time 8k means anything in terms of content we'll be on HDMI 7 (or, more hopefully, beyond HDMI entirely and just stringing normal ethernet cables between everything). FWIW my old Marantz 7703 at least was inferior to HTP-1 as well as Bryston/Storm and Lyngdorf. It could not pass Dolby Vision through my optical HDMI while the others all could. Inadequate voltage for the driver. Maybe new ones have more grunt, but everyone was touting Marantz's HDMI superior performance way back then too.
