Denon AVR-4520CI, Marantz, Boston and More at CEDIA HiPer Demo Room

[admin]

We checked out some cool Marantz, Denon and Boston Acoustics gear at the 2012 CEDIA High Performance (HiPer) Listening Rooms. This entailed sinning up some Dire Straits on vinyl and also listening to some tracks on SACD from Marantz' new SA-11S3 SACD Reference player. Everything was being played back through a pair of Boston Acoustics M-Series tower speakers. What we loved was the detail and clarity of the tracks, particularly in the Dire Straits album - there was no compression to be found anywhere. The M-Series tower speakers also put out an incredible amount of bass that wasn't bloated or overdone - but it really made us wonder if "DenonMatt" was pulling the wool over our eyes and using a pair of subs to sweeten the soundstage (he wasn't). At times we could swear there were subs in the room.

Discuss "Denon AVR-4520CI, Marantz, Boston and More at CEDIA HiPer Demo Room" here. Read the article.

[brianedm]

I must have it!

[marathonman]

Thanks for the great review. The feature sets sounds great. Unlike the new Marantz av7701, it has Audessey xt32. In your opinion, does it make sense to consider the 4520 as a preamp for the main home theater (using my own amps with the pre outs) and relegate the internal amps to height and zone 2? Or would the dedicated preprocessor (Marantz av7701) be a better choice? The only other preprocessor I know of that has these features is the Integra (and it's already 1+ years old--ancient in these days). Thanks.

[Sugarbear]

Thanks for the great review. The feature sets sounds great. Unlike the new Marantz av7701, it has Audessey xt32. In your opinion, does it make sense to consider the 4520 as a preamp for the main home theater (using my own amps with the pre outs) and relegate the internal amps to height and zone 2? Or would the dedicated preprocessor (Marantz av7701) be a better choice? The only other preprocessor I know of that has these features is the Integra (and it's already 1+ years old--ancient in these days). Thanks.

Go for the XT32-enabled option every time...

[GlocksRock]

Will audioholics be doing a review of the AVR-4520CI? I'd be interested to see how it does, as it looks quite impressive.