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Review 2 of 17
Price Paid:
$339.00
from Advance Electronics Summary:
Hi, I bought the Marantz cd5001 to upgrade from entry level samsung and yamaha dvd-cd players, which had been doing double duty for movies and music. I have it paired with a NAD c325bee integrated amp, playing through Athena asb1 bookshelf speakers and an athena asp400 sub.
The biggest difference in moving from a dvd player to the marantz was the soundstage. Hard to describe, but with the dvd players (and assuming you are about 9 feet centered in front of the speakers 6 feet apart), it seemed as if most of the music was being played moreso in front of you, with some variation and placement of instruments a little to the left and right of the center spot, but never to the full extremes of the right and left channels. With the marantz, the whole soundstage spectrum was filled (all the space between the speakers and then some), so that it seemed you could place each instrument, including vocals, more easily. And because of this, the music seemed less "congested" and more airy and spacious.
Vocals and words being sung were more clearly articulated and understandable. Compared to the dvd players, I noticed a lot less sibiliance.
Lastly, and again this is hard to describe, the music seemed more balanced. With the dvd players, often it was coloured in favour of vocals being over pronounced in the mix. With the marantz, it just seems to sound more balanced and neutral. Strengths:
Sounstage improvement, clarity, more neutral presentation than stock entry level dvd/cd players.
Has many more cd playing friendly features than would your typical entry level players.
Fairly good build quality, attractive unit.
Headphone output with its own volume control. This sounds real good and the signal to noise ratio with the headphone output is very good. I tend to use it over the headphone output of the amp, in fact.
In all I was surprised at the level of improvements. For this price, pretty happy overall. Good 3 year warranty. Weaknesses:
On some recordings, it can't seem to tame harsh treble, but maybe this isn't necessarily cause and effect by the cd player. I am using admittedly a budget bookshelf speaker system that I plan to upgrade.
There is no doubt better stuff out there, but the next price level for cd players seems to be twice that of the Marantz cd5001. So I'll give it 4 stars for sound quality but definitely 5 on the value-to-price ratio.
Similar Products Used:
Yamaha and samsung entry level dvd-cd players, sony mini system which broke down after 3 years.
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