Got the Cinema 40 set up last night. That was by far the best setup experience on a receiver! Also, my subwoofer (B&W DB4S) got a serious boost after running the Audyssey setup (with my Pioneer SC-91, while the level that was measured during calibration was 75 dB, it just didn't seem to have much punch).
Full list of what I love:
- Minimalist design. We have it outside our cabinet so won't ever have heating issues and thus also don't need to complicate things with cooling fans. Really like that the front panel isn't plastered with logos from Dolby, DTS, etc. etc.
- No issues at all driving the B&W 700 series 3 speakers (702 S3 mains, HTM71 S3 center, 702 S3 surrounds) 5.1 setup. While Audyssey had set the mains to "large", I've since changed that to "small" since I have a DB4S subwoofer. Audyssey selected 60 Hz as the crossover point for the speakers so will leave that for now. May adjust to 80 Hz later when I dive into the detailed Audyssey setup via the app. The receiver's power usage bar just barely goes above the half-way mark even when peaks during playback of movies hit 86 dB. I also have Eco mode turned completely off.
- Doesn't run as hot as I thought it would. Though we haven't yet watched a complete movie at our preferred listening level. And really doesn't matter since it's outside our cabinet.
- Input setup was awesome. Part of the on-screen (TV) guided setup was how to configure inputs. Super easy. And you can also use the component input for any of the 7 inputs. By default, the component video inputs are labeled as "Media Player", but we use that input for the Apple TV. Then put the original Wii on Aux 1 which uses component video and analog audio inputs.
- Status and Info. Really nice to be able to see the exact details about what signals (e.g. 4K/24, 12-bit) out being output from source components and what the receiver is then outputting. The Pioneer lacked such details.
- No issues in overlaying information on any resolution (480p from the Wii, HD or 4K). The prior Pioneer, while claimed to be "4K ready", could not overlay and info on top of any 4K picture. So once we moved to Apple TV 4K and a 4K Blu-ray player, doing things such as adjusting volume would not display the current volume setting overlay on the TV.
- Individual button on the remote for all inputs. Huge win for convenience. Due to the Pioneer's half-baked HDMI inputs and strange remote, we had three inputs that ended up sharing the same physical button on the remote. You had to repeatedly press that button to cycle amongst the inputs. Doubly annoying since the Apple TV was one of the components to share that button and the TV couldn't overlay the "source" info on the TV when the Apple TV was selected. Now, we can switch to any of our inputs using a dedicated button on the Marantz remote.
- 12 V trigger out was enabled by default to on all source components in the main zone. Not a huge deal, but on the prior Pioneer, it was off by default. I had to go in to each different input setting for all sources and enable the trigger. We use the trigger to power on/off the subwoofer.
Couple minor things I miss from the Pioneer SC-91
- Speaker distances could be adjusted in increments of 1/2 inch. For the Cinema 40, you can use either increments of 1 foot, or 0.1 feet. While I didn't need the 1/2 inch resolution the Pioneer offerred, I wish that Marantz would have used an inch as the smaller incremental unit. No big deal; just need a calculator for converting inches to tenths of feet.
- When you performed manual level adjustment on the SC-91, the receiver would set the master volume to its reference point before playing the pink noise. This was I believe -30dB. So easy to then dial up/down to achieve 75 dB output. On the Marantz, the pink noise is played at whatever level you have the current master volume at. The manual doesn't call out at all what you need to set the volume to before performing level adjustment. I was hoping to do a quick manual setting to get an initial setup and then run Audyssey later. However, I ended up running the full Audyssey calibration first. I'll be reaching out to their support to see what volume setting to use for manual adjustment.