I've had an SR4001 for a while together with a set of Monitor Audio Bronze BR2 speakers, and I quite like this relatively cheap setup for sound, both with regards to movies (DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray) and music. It'll certainly do for now.

I got tired of using my Panasonic S97 as a CD player though, so when a local shop put the Marantz CD 5001 on sale, I bought it, and it arrived today. Now, the question is, should I use a coaxial or stereo phono cables? I tried using the cables that came with the player, but both are cheap and I can hardly hear a difference, and much less tell which one is actually the best. Does anyone know whether the D/A converter in the player or the receiver is the superior one?

I can get Black Rhodium cables at 50% off, so whether it's analogue or digital that is the superior connection between these two relatively 'High Fidelity' components, I'll get a fairly good cable to go between them.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

I just gave away my Marantz SR7400, but I had a similar situation to you. I used a Marantz DV6400 universal player. Since the DACs were so similar between the two devices, I couldn’t really find a significant sound quality difference between them.

That being said, a coaxial connection would be better simply because your receiver can apply the speaker channel adjustments and bass management. If you’re using the analog outputs of the S97, it would be using the player’s adjustments, which I’m guessing isn’t that great.

As for a good cable, Coaxial carries a digital connection. No sense in spending a lot of money on cables. The sound either gets there or it doesn’t.

I'm using coaxial on the S97.