The Marantz is a rebadged 3312, with 10% better remote control and 100% worse LCD screen.
You admit below that this is simply not true so why say it in the first place? If you have proof that they are then I'd be happy to retract what I said.
For one thing your statement that "most people" sit too far from receiver to see the LCD is wrong. Most people ate watching watching TV at 10-11 ft or less. We know this from studies of Tv usage and living room design. And the TV is typically set up further away from users than their receiver.
Also the Marantz 6xxx and below are pretty much rebadging other than the useless LCD crippling, the barely better remote and the external box. Same sweatshop in China too. Call a spade a spade.
You're right I suppose I should have worded it better but my point still stands. The ease of use of the GUI, which more and more people are using now to control their AVR's has made the small LCD less useful than before. It's still great for giving you a quick glance of what processing you may be using and what source is running, but many of the small icons are still barely useful at 8 feet away. Since many, if not most people now hook up their AVRs to a tv via HDMI or some other video source then why not downsize the LCD and make the GUI better and easier to use. The LCD "crippling" is a matter of opinion. In your opinion it was a poor design choice, in mine I kind of like it.
I did indeed call a spade a spade. The Marantz is not a rebadged Denon to my knowledge and from my experience with the two units. If what you say is true I should be able to pop open my 5006 and it should look identical to a 3312. Since they don't I can only assume that the Marantz isn't simply a rebadge. Very similar AVR's, many of the same parts, but there are some differences. I don't know enough about the technical aspects to spell it out, but the internals look a little different and, IMO the Marantz had a little different sound. In a different thread one of the EE's on here said that even simply rearranging some of the internal parts can change the sound of an amp. I don't see why this wouldn't be true of a receiver as well, which reinforces my beliefs that they are not simply rebadges of each other.
That being said I do believe that the differences between many of the budget and mid-line receivers from all of the major companies have a lot more in common then they'd like us to believe. To me the real differences only start to come out in their flagship models, but those are only my impressions.
