Marantz SR8001 THX Select2 Surround Receiver

by Marantz

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 45 pounds
• ASIN: B000LW27VC
• Item model number: SR8001
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #244,444 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 18, 2005

Product Description

Let's begin with the obvious - THX Select2 certification. It's your assurance that, in addition to the power you'll need to fill average-sized rooms with theater-quality sound (125 watts continuous from each of its seven amplifiers), other performance parameters like signal-to-noise and distortion are absolutely first class. Then there are the Marantz touches. A toroid-based power supply. Current feedback amplification. An anti-interference copper plated chassis that's less than 16" deep so it will fit in more places easily. The SR8001 is also one of the few receivers to feature Audyssey's unique auto calibration capability. This is a significant improvement over previous "room correction" strategies in that it improves the listening characteristics of your entire room rather than for just one or two seats. Adding to the audio flexibility is a 3rd Zone output (with an individually selectable source!) to make your SR8001 the center of a whole house distributed audio system. On the A/V side, the SR8001 features HDMI switching (version 1.2) for up to four sources and two display devices. And there's format conversion to HDMI with Time Base Correction so even your older video sources will look their best. If you're not quite ready for HDMI (or if your displays aren't), the SR8001 offers two assignable component outputs, too. One infrared receiver input and two IR outputs add enormous control flexibility as do two DC "trigger" outputs. In short, the Marantz SR8001 is simply a culmination of everything you've come to expect from us. Refined cosmetics. Sterling performance. Sophisticated advanced to enhance your enjoyment. Let's put this even more succinctly - it's a Marantz!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Audiophile standard, not department store fodder, February 18, 2008

By 

W. R. Valiunas "cne9999" (Illinois United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Marantz SR8001 THX Select2 Surround Receiver (Electronics)

Oh my! Comparing a Marantz to Harmon Kardon. Even old man Harmon knows his equipment is nothing more then department store product and no way in the same class as this brand.

Marantz.... created by Saul Marantz. Saul was a world renowned classical guitarist who was friends with Andres Segovia and who also knew the concept of pure true to life sound over colorized attempts at rewriting how a tone was meant to be heard. Saul created a world class brand not department store fodder. It is very sad we lost in Saul in January of 1997. Very few have contributed to the audiophile hobby as much as he and his two engineering companions, Sidney Smith and Richard Sequerra have. He would be laughing if he heard of a so called `enthusiast' picking an Onkyo or HK over one of his Marantz 8000 series AV receivers.

What a joke. I am partially responding to the previous review and writing a review myself. Sorry for this.

I own the SR8001. I also own a ZR6001 currently in use and one of its remote units also still in use, and an SR5400 from a few years ago sitting in the closet and finally a few of their CD and DVD players. I also own two mono-blocks from the early 70's all with the Marantz name on them, now relegated to the closet because of little ones running around the house now days. I can only say one thing. Fantastic musicality and true to life reproduction of tone with incredible depth, separation and balance. I am no stranger to Marantz or Onkyo or Harmon Kardon.

I have long since given up the luxury of separates due to the little ones running around the house now and my finances now having more important dependants. This has left my audio shelves quite bare. But nonetheless, I almost fell off my chair laughing when I read this incredible review of the 8001 stating it was poor quality and was not in the same class as the Onkyo's and HK's of the world. It is true the Marantz is not in the same class as these other brands but it is also true these other brands are department store fodder class while the entire Marantz line is an audiophile standard class. This is the actual class difference the previous reviewer neglected to clarify. It has been this way for more then 50 years. Old man Harmon sold out to the Japanese engineers years ago and had to go bankrupt to buy his name back when they started making those $99 `Book Shelf' Stereo systems with the HK name on them. Sad. They used to rock now they rot. Onkyo is a good home theater supplier but still only department store grade product. Neither Onkyo nor HK could find their way to legitimately driving a good pair Martin Logans or comfortably sitting on the shelf next to a Conrad Johnson but any Marantz product would be perfectly situated and very comfortable in both of the aforementioned scenarios.

Ask any audiophile why you do not see a Marantz sitting on the shelf at Best buy or Circuit City. It is simple. They (Best Buy or Circuit City) couldn't sell the brand because they couldn't explain the product. It's the same reason you don't see B&Os at Wal-Mart or Martin Logan's at Fry's. It's the same reason you don't see me buying my equipment at Best Buy. It's the same reason the previous reviewer probably has a pair of lonely Boston Acoustics sitting there looking pretty sad and with no where to go. These products (HK and Onkyo) are for the average person who cannot discern the subtle but profound differences in tonality, musicality, depth, separation that a true flat response can give the human ear. Marantz is not for the light hearted it is for the audiophile. If it didn't sound good to you then I would start by looking closer at your system and the room it is in and how it is setup. I wouldn't look at the strongest part of your system, the Marantz. Or maybe you should even invest in a hearing test.

OK. So I have stated my response it is time for actual review.

This receiver is second to none in the `non-separates' world. It has an incredible depth and presence. I use a mish mash of speakers ranging from a center channel Mirage (soon to go) to dual Martin Logans in the front to a pair of Wharfedale Opals in the rear and for the second surrounds. I even have a pair of Infinity reference series I actually like and use with the ZR6001. But I digress. Even with this mish-mash of speakers I have, with the help of this product I was able to tune my room to an awe inspiring live uncolored and perfectly balanced theater of sound. This product is unreal. I have it controlling three rooms. But it shines in the main hall it was bought for. I have it attached to a 61" 1080p Samsung set and a Toshiba 1080p HD DVD player as well as two different satellite receivers. I have the full compliment of 7.1 speakers which are topped off with a Martin Logan Dynamo. It all sits in a 17'x21' rectangular room with a couple odd wall cutouts that make it hard to tune to the room. But this unit did 99% of the work for me and just tweaked the speakers here and there and Voila! Perfect theater!

Highs - The upper range from around 15 to 20 is remarkable and never tinged with harmonics or a tinny feel as is prevalent with the Harmon Kardon's (the full line). Even the Onkyo had some restraint on the top end but the HK was just a screech owl. Even though my ears have lost some off the top end (maybe 3-5k) over the last decade or so this unit is perfectly clean as my mic and meter told me so. The HK's always left me hearing a tinny somewhat shallow blending of a screech owl and nails on the chalk board that some less experienced listeners might attribute to `excellent highs'. Unfortunately this is actually exaggerated, colored and unbound screeching; basically a loss, or worse yet, a coloring of what should be realistic tones. After all when was the last time you heard a violin play a high C that sounded like a screech owl rather then a song bird reaching for the heights of a specific well rounded but pinpoint tone?

Bass - As for the bass, the unit shows uncanny restraint but not once has it lost the spatial importance of the low notes to overwhelm the ear with muddy hollowness. Nor has it ever been at a loss for power at the low end. It pounds where it is supposed to and muffs where it is supposed to. I can shake the walls without a hint of distortion or color. It puts forth a tight but free bass response that never loses the harmonics of the actual tone either digital or analog. It has never overdone the harmonics like some banger's trunk mounted kicker. The bass from Jaco Pastorius in Overture Cotton Avenue from Joni Mitchell's Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is so overwhelming yet `in bounds' (a term I made up) it nearly made me call Marantz to ask how they could release an all-in-one AV receiver with the tonal response of their Model 9!

Mids - Take a listen to David Brubeck's Take Five, original release. Close your eyes and the liquid Sax will have you leaning over to shake Paul Desmond's hand. The clarity at half volume was enough to make me cry. The recording from original analog to DVD was so clear I could hear Paul Desmond's shirt ruffle as he leaned into the most important sax solo of this century at probably close to 90 decibels. Try this on an Onkyo. It was so slick you could almost hear the cigarette's ash falling into the ash tray on the table next to piano.

But any way... Don't let any old amateur fool you. This is not Best Buy special or Circuit City bargain table item. It is not a plug and play item either. You can't take out of the box and simply connect cables to willy-nilly. You need to learn this unit and set it up correctly. But once done you will reap the benefits for years and probably decades to come.

Finally, functionality...

The Audio section has an S/N of 105db - Wow!
An analog in frequency response of 8Hz - 100kHz (+/- 3 dB) - Holy cow Batman!
A digital in frequency response of 8Hz - 45kHz (+/- 3 dB) - Unreal!
8 channel pre-amp out!
8 channel in!
4 HDMI in 2 out. Nice!
4 Optical's in!
3 digital coax's in!
Oh yea, and don't forget... HDCD decoder, Source direct, On-screen display, A-B speaker switch, Upgradeable firmware, Auto sound calibration with the supplied mic, Gold plated connectors, Multi-room audio output, Analog to HDMI up conversion in unit or pass through!, Composite video to S-Video conversion, S-Video to component video conversion, Composite video to component video conversion. Geese! Need more?

Pretty much all the decoders you need: DTS 96/24, DTS Neo:6, THX Select 2, DTS-ES decoder, DTS-ES Matrix 6.1, Dolby Pro Logic II, DTS-ES Discrete 6.1, Dolby Pro Logic IIx, THX Surround EX decoder, Dolby Digital Surround EX.

Who could ask for more. Well... the other guy who likes the HK might be looking a bit dopey right now in my eyes but let him enjoy his HK. I'll take my good old Marantz any day.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've now had this receiver for a year., August 29, 2009

By 

Coug Moog "s_gil" (York, PA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marantz SR8001 THX Select2 Surround Receiver (Electronics)

So now I can tell you what it's like living with it.

First off, it steers lossless compression-decoded audio from blu-ray effortlessly. So if you have this receiver, all you need to do is make sure your BD player can decode all the latest formats. If it can, you're in audio heaven.

It also switches 1080p wonderfully. From BD or DirecTV, HD switching is accomplished with no visual artifacts.

It also upsamples to mild HD, good for putting dvd movies onto your HD screen as well as regular TV signals. This combined with my Samsung monitor's signal processing results in watchable standard def programming--important for everybody in a world where most of the shows are still not in HD.

Okay. That's not why you're looking at Marantz. You can get a nice picture from Sony gear. You're reading Marantz reviews because you're interested in beautiful, liquid sound. And this baby delivers guts on that level.

I'm running a 5.1 setup with this at the heart. DirecTV HDDVR, Sony Blu-Ray, and my baby, the Ah! Njoe Tjoeb (New Tube in Dutch) CD player. I replaced an older Marantz with this unit. Analog music connections with Kimber silver interconnects, which gives the tubed CD player a little more sizzle in the high end.

The Ah!, if you're not familiar, uses a Marantz higher-end CD player, keeping the body and transport and ditching the electronics inside. They are replaced with a hot-rodded PCB with a tubed clock and tubed output stage. It is the most beautiful-sounding CD player I've ever heard, and it is instantly noticeable if you're playing CDs on the blu-ray player or on the Ah!

I use Canare 4S11 biwire cabling to all five of my KEF RDM2's. I found my spool of 4S11 for 78 cents a foot. That's a pretty good deal for this cable. I did my own terminations with bare wire on the speaker ends and side-entry screwmount bananas on the amp end. The RDM2 was a Stereophile-recommended speaker during its entire product life and far better than the KEF products of today. The front channels are biamped from the receiver using the remaining 2 channels of its 7.1 amp section, and flipping the rear panel biamp switch. As for my sub, an ultra-rare New York-manufactured Alon, it is a coffee-table sized thing with twin 12's of Alon's on manufacture arranged in an isobaric configuration. It sucks power from its own dedicated amplifier, a Bryston monoblock which is one of the few that can handle the low impedance of this sub without frying itself. I'm told this thing can go flat down to 16 hertz (!). If you want to screw up your body's autonomic system, just play 16 hz organ pedal music at full volume for a while. You might just feel like puking after. Anyway, audible as well as tactile bass has never been so fast and clean from this setup as it is now. A real improvement in the quality of bass from my last Marantz.

The 8001, if you've checked the reviews of this receiver, has much more power than other receivers with similar power ratings. Whereas a H/K, Sony or Onkyo 125-watt receiver will actually output around 70-80 watts with all channnels driven, this receiver will easily go over 100 on the same test bench. And with my RDM 2's, which present a 6-ohm nominal load, it comes close to its rated power of 125 watts per channel, one of the only receivers that can do this. Now, there's not much audible difference between 80 watts and 100 watts, especially when your speakers are normally seeing between .2 and 2 watts. But the reason most receivers just can't sound like separates is because their amp sections are puny compared to many dedicated amps. The Marantz has guts other receivers in its class don't match, and it pays off in superior loudspeaker grip and control at the extremes.

This is because of its massive toroidal power supply. When called on, this baby can really suck the juice. Just as importantly, Marantz designers have constantly tweaked their interior designs, coming up with housekeeping solutions that minimize noise and interference, maximize heat dissipation and allow for better performance across the audible range.

This was Marantz' top offering before the 8002 came out, and it cost $2k. Mine was $699 and the change I saved allowed me to step up to this level. What I really wanted was an Arcam 350, but those are silly expensive. Far better sounding, but man do you pay for it. I've heard Arcam has now discontinued the 350 and the only av receiver you can buy from them now is their brand new $5k monster (and oh, I would pay for it if I could!).

Bottom line on this product: video performance is quite good--HD throughput is excellent and upsampling of SD info is acceptable.

Audio compression decoding: no HDMI 1.3, meaning your BD player will just have to decode the stream before outputting it to the 8001. No loss there, since once the decoded lossless audio is sent via HDMI 1.2 to this receiver, it converts it beautifully and steers it with aplomb. As long as your BD player can do the latest formats, this receiver will sound exactly as good as the 8002 that replaced it, because other than the HDMI 1.3 enhancements it's almost exactly the same unit.

SOUND: if the rest of your equipment is good, this unit will sound good. I love good sound, which is why I shelled out a thousand for a tubed CD player and searched high and low for 5 matching KEF RDM2's. This is the system I wanted, and for stereo music listening, TV, movies, HD games on the 360, whatever, this baby delivers the sound and video you want at a price that is right. If you only have $699 to spend I suggest you get over to Accessories4less.com and see if they have any more of these factory-renewed in their stock. You will not get better sound with a warranty at that price.

If you can't afford B&K or Arcam, but you want something better than Denon or H/K or Onkyo, this may be your ticket. Listen to one and see if it is as good to your ears as it is to mine.