Marantz AV8801 Preamp/Processor Official Owner's thread - Page 6

The 7005, SR7007, and AV7701 all have aluminum faceplates, so just as the case as with the 4520CI, the 8801 should have an aluminum faceplate as well.

The cost to license XT32 from Audyssey is a lot more than "a few bucks" more than XT

Hurry up marantz

^^

Hay, I'm excited Marantz finally got around to creating the 8801.
And priced right, I'll be a buyer. However, there's nothing here
to justify a $600 to $1,000 price increase.

Enough already! You've said this about as many times as you can. We get it, and we don't care. Why? Because you have no idea what you are talking about. Nobody yet knows what is in this thing, or how it will sound, because nobody has SEEN OR HEARD it yet! Give it a rest until you've actually heard it. In the meantime, allow the rest of us to be excited.

jd,

Are the front panel end pieces aluminum? I looked at the AV7007 at BB and the end pieces looked like they were plastic.

Bill

Will this even release this year? lol.
Edited by Geronimo.USMC - 10/20/12 at 10:58pm

No THX processing on this unit????

I'm going by on-line specs as the last time I was in Best Buy I only confirmed the aluminum faceplate on the 3313CI.

It's understandable that a 2013 AV8801 would be significantly more expensive than a 2008 AV8003. Five years is a long time.

1/ 8003 was 7.1 and the 8801 is 11.2. So, a more capable processor and a lot more internal circuitry is needed.
2/ Prices of raw materials have gone up in price
3/ Prices (MSRP) are set at the introduction and remain the same for the entire life-cicle. Raising prices without adding features or improvements is considered not commercial, even if economics would justify it. That's also why most replace models after one year, even if changes are really small, they can set a new (higher) price

Also, there was no AV7005/7701 available when the AV8003 was introduced, so maybe the price was kept lower to tempt more buyers. Just speculating.

It's a lot more interesting to know if the AV8801 is worth it's premium to the Denon 4520 (in pre-amp mode or not) which uses the same template. We don't know this, we will have to wait until it surfaces and a good soul compares them. Throwing in opinions now would be speculating also. What we can say is that the difference in SQ (if there are any) will be subtle. Too subtle for many probably to justify the extra cash. That's cool. To each his own.

Well for $3499 could they please bring back the front spinning wheel at least?
Probably pulls too much dust inside but it sure looked cool. A better feature than the tiny port hole display. A large attractive color display that I could see from my seating position would easily be worth an extra $100-150 to me.

Not sure that is always. Looking at say the Denon high end AVR, the 5805 had an MSRP of $7200 when it came out in 2006. The newer 5808 which has more bells and whistles, is $5,500.

My guess is the price was simply set by the market (i.e., competition) and has little to do with input costs as they're more than likely getting a much higher margin than they would on the AV7701 for instance. The Integra 80.3 is clearly what Marantz considers the competitor for this unit. MSRP of that is/was $3k. MSRP of this unit will be ~$3k. Thought I'd love to see it closer to $2k then $3k as well!

The 4520 is an interesting unit. Plus, I find Denon's are usually sold at considerable discounts to the MSRP whereas Marantz aren't. Unfortunately for me, for some reason when I use RCA cable vs XLR's from my Sunfire Cinema Grand 700x2 amp, I get a lot of feedback noise (never figured out why), so receivers are out of the question as processors.

Nobody i know would consider the 5308 (there is no 5808) a better unit than the super receiver the 5805 was. What denon did was split the range the 5308 was a downscaled 5805 while the highend was split into separates avp+poa with a price tag of $14000. This left a hole in the middle price range but it worked out for them i guess both the 5308 and avp/poa sold very well compared to the somewhat weird 90lbs superreceiver the 5805.

Daniel.

Here in Oz the AV7701 has only been officially released relatively recently. Was at the Australian AV show in Sydney over the weekend & the Marantz people there were not expecting the 8801 until this time next year. Certainly no way it will be in Oz before Christmas.

That push some towards the denon

I was just looking at the 7701 product page on the Marantz site. It indicates that the front panel of the 7701 is "Aluminum / Glass-resinforced resin". So the end pieces must be the "Glass-resinforced" resin which sounds like a fancy term for plastic . Looking at the 7701 you can see the center of the front panel is a brushed aluminum. But the end pieces have a smooth flat black finish to them.

Bill

AFAIK, there has been no talk of Airplay licensing this capability.

Not true.

That would suck! if true that puts the Integra 80.3 back at the top of the list. Anyone care to be a myth buster:D

I inquired with this string early on about HDMI 1.4b capabilities of the upcoming
8801. If Marantz really wants to make a splash, the 8801 should come HDMI
ethernet channel-enabled, along with audio return. They could do away with
at least three of those ethernet inputs on the back. This would be a legitimate
advance in technology.

Hello Bill-looks like Marantz "exported" the general specifications page, for the 7701, from the SR7007; both units consume 670 watts (5.6 amps according to Ohm's law)-Is the 7701 also a toaster?

At the moment I don't believe that there are any HDMI Source or Sink Devices that support Ethernet over HDMI. The Ethernet Switch in the 8801 will have to stay and it is, at least, a small step forward in reducing device clutter in the rack and power strip.

I would love it if I could fold down the front flap and insert a slice of bread . However the 7701 is missing the amps necessary to toast my bread. The back panel quotes 60W (on the 240v version).

I noticed that the power use for the recent pre-pros are:
7005 - 60W
7701 - 60W
8003 - 85W ?
8801 - 90W

I understand that the 8003 is from a much older generation and so can't really be compared, but I'd be interested to hear any ideas why the 8801 consumes 50% more power over the 7701. Does it have much more horse power inside it. Could it also be why the 7701 doesn't have XT32? Maybe XT32 is only available on the 3 CPU version of the chipset (a la AVR4520)

9 to 11 channels?

I was in my local Hifi shop in Yokohama, Japan today and had a chat with the guy in there (with my embarassingly poor Japanese).

Currently Japan seems to have been screwed over with this year's AVP / AVR releases. The SR6007 was released here in September, but we didn't get the SR5007 nor the SR7007.

On the pre-pro front we still haven't had the AV7701 released here yet. When I asked the guy, he said they wouldn't be out until next year. I was kinda hoping they were going to be released at the Tokyo International Audio show in November. The poor guy looked particularly displeased with the situation.

As for the AV8801 all he could offer was next year. So maybe they'll release the whole lot together some time in Q1.

On a slightly more off topic note, the MM7055 has been heavily discounted in the last week (over 10%) and is now showing as out of stock in 6 of the 7 internet retailers here. Checking a certain internet retailer in the States shows it's also out of stock. My new friend in the Hifi shop kinda hinted it'd been discontinued but I couldn't quite understand what he was saying. Is it just a blip in the supply chain, or has it been discontinued without fanfare to push people towards the new MM8077. I was really hoping to pair the AV8801 and a MM7055 and maybe one day get a McIntosh to drive the front pair if I upgraded from 5.1 to 7.1 on my enevitable chain of upgrades.

I'm more than a little annoyed that these amps / pros are made here in Japan and then exported, but we can't buy them. Maybe I could just drive to the factory and pay one of the truck drivers to let me take a box home...

Kaorin

I still think I would get an xpa-5 over the mm7055

The porthole "design" is simply dreadful, imo. The appeal of of a 1 1/2" inch window that can reveal little to no pertinent information on a $3-$4000 pre-pro over a 2" X 8" tastefully integrated display must appeal to someone though, right?

And no, I'd prefer to NOT overlay (read: obstruct) my video with a menu screen to accomplish the same thing. Thanks though.

And good for anyone who can justify the additional cost (if indeed it lands around $3500) for this over a 4520, or worse, a 4311- or even better: those who don't have to worry about it.

I'd like the XLRs, the "better" (lol) DACs, and if it does digital inputs to the zones even better, but at $1000+ (or $2000+ vs the 4311) dollars? Jesus. That would be an awfully hard trigger to pull, AFAIC.


James
Edited by mastermaybe - 10/23/12 at 12:48pm