am i mad?

[SoCal Sam]

Yamaha in general builds with a 'natural sound' philosophy that meant they strived for dead accurate, uncolored amplification. Some love it, some think it sounds flat. The Marantz sound is "warmer," typically, some love that, some think such coloration undesirable. In the end, everything depends on your speakers, your room, and your subjective response to what you hear. We are talking about differences that can be obvious or subtle, depending on all those factors I just mentioned, especially the part that happens between your ears.

Your Marantz is suspected of being inferior to 'real' Marantz units since it dates to after Phillips bought the company and began a process that eventually took the marque way down in quality. But I did a little searching here of previous reports on your Marantz. Some owners reported liking it a lot. It may have plenty of the 'real Marantz' stuff.

Actually, Yamaha's color the sound a great deal with plenty of rounding and some tilting in the bass curves. Nothing offensive here, the result is flat and easy to mistake for warmth. Compare the consumer CA's and CR's with a PC2002M, which has much better rise and you will hear the difference in clarity.

 

[mhardy6647]

The OP is in a unique experiment to do a controlled experiment and to decide which phono section - and what configuration - he prefers.

I'd encourage the OP to do just that.

 

[Zygmo]

I think people are overreacting to the 'signal path' issue. As long as you're bypassing the vol and tone controls of the Marantz, and you are, I don't see that you're going to get anything much 'degraded' from what the Marantz would put out by itself. And while that's a 'Phillips era' Marantz, it's an 'early Philips era' unit, and people report liking them a lot. Both it and the Yamaha are rated 40 wpc--you might consider just going with the Marantz, although you're getting a bit of a power boost by preamping twice with your setup.... Bottom line--if you don't hear a problem, there IS no problem.

'Real' Audiophiles are prone to do that. Read Don's bottom line. :thmbsp:

 

[DonQuixote99]

Actually, Yamaha's color the sound a great deal with plenty of rounding and some tilting in the bass curves. Nothing offensive here, the result is flat and easy to mistake for warmth. Compare the consumer CA's and CR's with a PC2002M, which has much better rise and you will hear the difference in clarity.

I'm definately looking forward to the opportunity, when it may come along, to compare a PC2002M to all sorts of things. It would really be interesting to compare it, say, to a Marantz SM-1000....