The sound... the sound is incredible. If you've never heard one of these through decent speakers, you owe it to yourself to make it happen. This is not the same "stuff" they're trying to sell you at Best Buy. Seriously.

Aside from the high quality of the sound itself, another significant benefit is all of the receiver's functions are right up front, each with its own knob, button, slider or indicator. There are no menus to hunt through, trying to figure out where the designers hid one feature or another. You want to adjust the bass? Reach for the bass knob. Need left channel mono? Reach for the mode knob. Everything is right there. And there's that blue and silver face... that's just prettier than today's black monoliths.

Finally, this thing is rated at 125 watts a channel. If you compare that to one of today's receivers, you'll find that a modern unit can typically produce its rated power output in one channel... for a few minutes... and then will shut down due to overheating.

The Marantz power rating reflects the fact that this receiver can produce 125 watts RMS in both channels at once for one hour continuously, and at the end of that hour, measuring the distortion of the system will still yield the rated distortion across the entire power bandwidth.

In other words, for this receiver, 125 watts per channel is a comfortable operating regime. It isn't easy to buy that kind of headroom today, and you pay through the nose when you do buy something that can perform like that. 1970's Marantz units are available on EBay, and they aren't very expensive. Just a tip from your local audio freak.

#audio #marantz

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