Hi guys,
So, I have a chance to test Marantz SR7005 vs Yamaha RX-A2020.
My old receiver is Yamaha RX-V465
When comparing both receivers, Yamaha feels (weight, back inputs, etc) like it costs twice more than Marantz. It just looks better made and it weighs 30% more.
I always complained that my old Yamaha made my speakers sound too bright and uncontrolled.
Marantz makes Sierra speakers sound much softer and not as bright and ear beaming. Listening to Chaka Khan, if on Yamaha her high pitch vocal was a bit too bright that I wanted to turn down the volume, on Marantz it's soft enough not to jump for the remote. Still hear that high pitch, BUT at least it doesn't hit my ear as bad as it did on Yamaha.
Overall I feel like Yamaha was just taking whatever sound came into it and just throwing it up at me. Marantz on the other hand is controlling it.
When I tested "Dark Knight" first 2 minutes .... again, sound was much more controlled. When they start shooting in the bank with that loud pops and echo ... Marantz controlled it very well and even though I heard more bass than I did with Yamaha, high pitch sounds were controlled very well. Still loud but not loud enough to grab the remote.
When I tested "David Foster concert" in Tru HD .... sound is much nicer. Again, warm and pleasant and much better controlled. No complaints about violin or saxophone sounding too dimmed down.
When testing "Flight of the Phoenix" ..... plane crash .... everything sounded great, BUT .... old Yamaha made that scene even louder and boomy .... I felt like Marantz toned it down a bit. Strange.
When I tested regular cable TV programming in Dolby Digital ... Marantz felt a bit too dimmed out. I felt like human voices did not pop as much as they did in my old Yamaha. Everything was just a bit too dull.
Testing MP3s 320kbps through Samsund bluray USB ..... Yamaha playing via all channels (even though this is not recommended) was not much worse than Pure Direct in Marantz. Maybe even better overall sound.
So ... movies and concerts sound great, but regular cable TV in dolby is so so.
Here are some pics of the EQ, etc that Marantz created.
As always, I had to change back to Speakers = Small and get the crossover at 100.
If I could only get the cable sound a bit more up front and get human dialog a bit louder ... that would be great. In the speaker levels, I did increase center speaker a little and in subwoofer I did lower it down just a tad,.
Changing to Dynamic EQ High did not give me a major sound difference for dialog. Turning Audyssey all together also was not a major change in sound.
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