Marantz SR5006 / Marantz SR6006 Receiver Thread - Page 8

Can you explain this some more, please? I'm just getting my 5006 configured. I haven't listened to stereo much, but I thought I noticed the same problem (no sub). Thanks.

I don't know if they will ship to you, but you can try Stereoland in Eden Prairie Minnesota. You can find them online.

The LFE and LFE+Main are sub settings and only apply when there is a sub in the setup. The LFE+Main setting is also known as "double bass" and is used when the front mains are set to LARGE (receiving a full range signal). This setting sends the front mains low frequencies (below the crossover setting) to the sub. So in addition to the sub getting the LFE (0.1) it also gets the low bass from the front mains ===> double bass. However, when listening to stereo 2.0 audio (eg CD) there is no LFE so the sub won't sound with the front mains set to LARGE, which is why the LFE+Main setting is required if you want the sub to sound. When all speakers are set to SMALL (as Audyssey suggests), then the LFE and LFE+Main settings provide the same result (ie. LFE+Main).

I've kicked the SR5006 around for a week now and here are my impressions so far, and some comparisons with the Class D Panasonic SA-XR57, which it replaced:

The SR5006 is obviously larger and it runs hotter than the Panasonic SA-XR57. The sound is comparable, although at first listen, in Stereo it seems a little less powerful than the Panasonic (which can use two amps per speaker in Stereo mode) -- not sure if this is necessarily true, will have to try it again (Gallo Solo speakers).

The Audyssey room correction and other enhancements provide a clearly noticeable difference to 7.1 movie listening, mainly in helping to enhance the dialog. This is the (only) one improvement which is making me keep this otherwise large/hot box

The Speakers A/B feature is largely useless, since the room correction and other Audyssay settings for Speakers A are passed to Speakers B, and turning it off is a chore. The Marantz also keep running the surround speakers at the same time with Speakers B, which is idiotic. I had to resort to using Zone 2, which of course does NOT accept any digital input. I am feeding the analog out to a Stereo Class D amp (Tripath TAA4100 - I love that little amp, not made anymore, AFAIK). Since I have to get the signal out of my HTPC, I just placed a pre-order for the super-cheap FiiO E10 DAC, which should provide enough of an improvement for what I need.

Overall, playing stereo music in a second room is much, much harder to achieve with the Marantz, than it was with the Panasonic (which required one button push).

The NET Radio features of the Marantz are somewhat disappointing, at least measured against my HTPC experience. Make that outright primitive, in terms of ease of use and GUI. Pandora "stations" cannot be saved as presets, nor can internet stations be saved as presets for Zone 2 (this is from Marantz second tier tech support -- BTW, the first line of tech support is about as bad as it gets).

So, at the end, I am keeping the receiver, only because of the Audyssey features. Otherwise, it is not in any way improvement over the Panasonic.

In terms of Stereo playback in a different room, the Marantz is simply not well thought out, although the same can be said about almost every other mainstream receiver on the market.

I recently experimented with this setting on my SR5006. I'm using Def Tech in-wall speakers and a Def Tech pro sub 800. Since my in-wall speakers are fairly full range and have frequency response all the way down to 40hz, they were automatically assigned by Audyssey as "large" speakers. Initially I didn't quite believe the Audyssey setting and manually changed the setting to "small", and the LFE to "sub only". I thought the sound in stereo mode was very bass dominant, the mids and highs sounded veiled. When I switch the receiver to "pure-direct" mode, nothing gets fed to the sub, and as a result, the mids and highs from the front speakers sounded with much better clarity; however, even though there was also more bass clarity, my front in-wall speakers weren't quite able to reach as low as when the pro sub 800 was on. So I decided to change the speaker settings to "large", and LFE settings to "sub + main". Immediately there was a very noticeable difference. Now the overall sound in stereo mode was much better. There was good clarity and definition from the highs to the lows. If you are using decent size front speakers, you should definitely set them to "large" and the LFE mode to "sub + main".

Just an FYI .... Audyssey doesn't set the speaker size, crossover, or volume ... rather the AVR does and a speaker gets set to LARGE if it is detected to be able to pass a 50hz or less signal (regardless of what it's paper spec indicate). The general recommendation by Audyssey is that if the AVR sets a speaker to LARGE, change it to SMALL and raise it's crossover up to 80hz. Keeping it at LARGE is of course a personal preference desired by some.

Thanks for the clarification. You are correct. My speakers were set to large mode when I was doing the auto setup through the receiver menu, which also included audyssey setup. So I assumed it was the audyssey setup that set the speakers to large. Anyway, I would still recommend setting the speakers to large and LFE to sub + main if your speakers can handle 50hz or lower if you do a lot of stereo listening.

How you save ANY netradio-stations in their presets??? I can't figure it out, and that damn manual doesn't say anything about it. Maybe I should ask that from Marantz if even they know about it.

btw. Have to say that having no proper display in device itself is huge minus, it makes everyday use very annoying and difficult. Definitely my next receiver has to have display.

I suspect that Marantz's think was that having the display overlay of HD was better than a larger display on the Receiver. When you consider the location of many receivers precludes easy visibility of the front panel they may have been right for a majority of users. Of course, that doesn't really help you or anyone else that prefers a wide rather than scrolling front panel display.

I have a friend that has a Marantz AV8003. It is not in the same room as his Listening Room. Since the 8003 will only display limited information on his HDTV he has set up a web cam in front of the 8003 display do he can check the settings from his Listening Room. He would be more thsn happy to have the status display capabilities of the SR5/6006.

There are two sets of 63 presets, one set for the Tuner and one set for Internet Radio.

Tune to the internet Radio Station then follow the instructions on page 35 of the SR6006 manual.
(the page numbers may be different for the SR5006 Manual.)

The procedure for creating Tuner and Internet Radio presets is the same.

that would be a poor recommendation for the great majority of people...

perhaps the better recommendation would be to use your own ears and listen to your setup. adjust the settings based on the type of speakers you are using... in my setup, i noticed a huge difference by changing the front speakers to "large" and the LFE to "sub + main". if you are using tiny front speakers, probably better to stick with "small" setting.

I had been noticing a bit of muddiness while streaming Pandora, and just realized that the SR5006 shows the streaming quality to be 128Kbps.

Since I have a paid subscription to Pandora, I should be getting 192Kbps.

Am I missing something about the settings on the receiver?

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Also, the onscreen internet radio picture quality is pretty bad -- it shows "snow" artifacts, kind of like an old TV tuned in to a weak channel. Anyone else with this issue?

no. the better recommendation was the one that has been given for a very long time. but it's your room.

it is very very rare that "lfe+main" results in objectively better bass, and thus would almost never be recommended... tiny speakers or otherwise...

there's good reasons for this...

not sure what that recommedation was, but anyway, i've done an extensive search on this topic in different forums, and there doesn't seem to be any concensus. do a google search, and you can find multiple subjective and objective opinions both way regarding this topic. i even went back and played around with the different settings again. i tried various combination of "small" vs "large" speakers and "LFE + main" and "LFE only". i think if I set the cross-over freq to below 60hz or below 40hz for the front speakers (set as small) and "LFE only", the result is perhaps pretty close to setting the speakers as "large" and "LFE + main". i do think that in my set-up, if i want to set the speakers as "large", my only option for the bass is to set it as "LFE + main" since if i set it to "LFE only", no siginal is sent to the sub at all.

^^
Personal preference will of course always prevail; however, the recommendation by Audyssey is to set ALL speakers to SMALL as noted in this post. With Audyssey MultEQ XT there are 8x more sub filters than speaker filters. In the vast majority of setups, the sub is generally always going to be able to process the lower frequencies better than the front mains, and this configuration provides more headroom to the AVR as well. If the setup is EQ'd properly there should be no reason for using "double bass" (ie. LFE+Main).

yes it does

Ah, well.... I dug a little further and it turns out that Pandora puts the 128kbps limit on stand-alone devices. Idiotic, if you ask me, and I hope they bump it up pronto, if they want to compete.

But still no answer on the "snow" artifacts on the Internet Radio screen. Is anyone else experiencing this?

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P.S. I agree that generally one should not monkey with changing the speaker size after the room correction system has set the filters - theoretically such a change would introduce far more problems than it would solve.

yes you can pass audio over HDMI through to the device and bypass the amp. But it is an option in setup under HDMI and applies to all inputs so that they all either pass audio through to the device or they all play via the amp.

I received my SR6006 last week and am really enjoying it. It is a huge step up in quality over my last receiver. One of the main reasons I purchased it was for the dual output so I could run my Samsung 46" 1080p as well as my new Optoma HD33 3d 1080p projector off the same unit. The dual output works well with the PS3 and image is just as good as a direct connect so that is good, but I'm having one major issue, I can't get it to work with my HTPC. The HTPC has an AMD card with HDMI output and it works just fine plugging it directly into either the TV or the Optoma, but when I plug it into the receiver (I put it in the SAT HDMI input), then all I get is blackness on both the LCD and projector. I'm using all HDMI 1.4a cables and windows 7 for the OS.

I tried to troubleshoot by having the 2nd output on the video card go into LCD direct. I went in there and messed with the resolution output and added a few more output options in the catalyst control center. It didn't seem to work as I still had the black image up on the projector while I trouble shot.

After messing with that for awhile with no luck, I tried unplugging the HDMI from the SR6006 input and put it into the LCD and changed the setting there, then put it back into the SR6006 and it actually showed a picture up until I changed the input or turned off the receiver, then it went back to black when I returned to the HTPC input.

I rebooted the cpu a few times and noticed that the signal comes through just fine during the boot up screens and doesn't go black until windows is loaded, so I'm guessing that the AMD driver just isn't playing nice with the Marantz.

I called up Marantz technical support and they told me that they don't officially support HTPCs but that I should keep playing with the settings on the video card. I was just hoping someone might have some experience with this to save me hours of trouble shooting.

As I noted above ... considering the co-founder of Audyssey recommends after running Audyssey to change ALL speakers the "AVR" sets to LARGE, to SMALL ... we can safely presume this change doesn't effect the Audyssey filters.

Review para 12(g) in this post for info that may help you with your HTPC.

Can anyone confirm that this amp can AirPlay to zone 2?

Well, i have found that it will send the signal to Zone2 but only if the main zone is playing. I switched off the main, and the whole thing stopped in zone2.

Hi all, I was wondering if there is a simple response to the following question since the main reason for choosing this model is the double HDMI out. I'm just freaking out with HDMI splitters and so on...

I've, as slelgan, an optoma projector (HD80, HDMI inputs, capable of 1080p) but - and this is the problem - an old LCD tv (samsung, DVI input, capable of "only" 1080i).

I've read on the user manual that i can decide for every input if doing or not the upscaling (hope i'm right) but my problem is to understand if I will be able to manually set the output resolution for the HDMI out separately.

Following the manual, if the output is sent to both the HDMI out and it's set in "auto"', the resolution will be the highest supported by the "worst" peripheral, so I guess 1080i. Obviously, I don't want this on my optoma videoprojector.

On the other hand, I thought that if I switch off the HDMI output #2 (television) when using the HDMI out #1, the resolution will be automatically set to 1080p. the other combination don't bother me, since when the tv is on the vp is off.

Last bu not least, what happens if I send a signal 1080p (WD TV live or BR player)? is the scaler capable of converting it to 1080i suitable for my tv? If I connect the WD tv live to my television with 1080p output, any signal is shown.

thanks for your help
Andrea

Yes, as long as you're not trying to pass 1080p to both the TV and PJ then you'll get 1080p to the PJ. Also, the AVR will downconvert to the resolution of the TV connected to it when the PJ is not selected.

that's great. Are you aware if there's a key on the remote to swtich the HDMI out to 1, 2 or both?
tnx again
Andrea

AFAIK ... no there is not.