Both are very comparable AVRs .. the Denon uses Audyssey MultEQ XT32 and the Yamaha YPAO. Check the feature set of each one and select the one that meets those requirements, although neither is HDCP 2.2 so would require a dual HDMI 2.0/HDCP 2.2 BDP if upgrading to a 4k TV.
So the Yamaha then, as the Marantz seems bare-boned by comparison. Sorry, couldn't resist.
I have never owned a Yamaha receiver, so my opinion here is biased. I currently own a Marantz receiver, which was purchased to replace a Denon. Over the course of a few years I had moved through four different Denon AVRs, increasing the feature set and cost on each successive one. Then I jumped ship and went with a Marantz, and I will never go back to Denon. The Marantz has much more user intuitive menus; features are easy to find and make adjustments to. The Marantz has a dizzying selection of surround sound options. While everyone will say that AVRs have little influence on the sound, I feel that the sound of the Marantz AVR is better suited to my personal taste than any of the Denons I had previously.
Your mileage may vary.
I've owned many Denons, the last being the 3808, their flagship 5805 before that. I've always found their menu navigation somewhat confounding too. The Marantz 7008 improves on it a little, but Yamaha makes even the 7008 seem just as head scratchingly unintuitive.
Moving to a new house and convinced my wife to allow me to massively upgrade our home theater system from my current Denon AVR-591 and Paradigm MilleniaOne speakers with an SVS PB-12 NSD (only thing I'm keeping). Yay!
For speakers I've decided on the new(ish) SVS Prime towers and satellites (for rear surround) and the Ultra center, but now I need some help picking a receiver to power these bad boys.
The receivers I'm considering are the Marantz SR7008 and the Yamaha Aventage RX-A2030. I can get both of them for right around $1,000, and I'm sure they'll both be light years better than my 4 year old Denon. Just want the best sound I can get for my $$$, and thought I'd get everyone's opinion.
Also, I'm not worried at all about "future-proofing" as I won't keep this setup for more than 3 or 4 years tops.
Thanks!
I agree with others that they're both potentially great machines. The Marantz's ace in the hole is Audyssey XT32 IMO. YPAO just doesn't seem to compare. I'm far more confident with the results I get from the 7008 than even what I get from the 3030 which has a slightly better version of YPAO than the 2030 you're asking about and maybe one or two extra music dlcs (maybe not on that last part). If movies is your only concern, the Marantz will very likely provide better
auto-results, with emphasis on the word "auto". XT32 is the first auto solution I've used that didn't bump the sub 10dbs too. Even with basic XT I always had to dial back the sub 10 to 15 dbs. YPAO did the same.
The Marantz has independent amplification, so it technically has more real power, if you're driving all channels at once, but the Yamaha should still have plenty of power for any install that doesn't demand the kind of wattage you can only really get from separate amplification.
Yamaha sports newer ESS dacs, but I'd consider that more marketing hype than genuine reason to go with one or the other, if I were you. Without any EQ applied, both units sound unremarkably similar. Though, Yamaha is often said to have a characteristically bright sound, which with EQ applied, even at the natural setting, I sometimes notice, slightly. It's not something that I'd be discouraged by, but may not pair as well with certain speakers, and can likely be toned down or even eliminated with some manual tweaking, which is one of Yamaha's over-riding strengths.
Having used the Yamaha 3030 (a very small, potentiall negligible upgrade from the 2030, depending on your rooms needs, which I'd demoed prior to purchase) for about a year and having used the Marantz 7008 for only a couple weeks I get a very strong sense that Yamaha takes a lot more pride in their brand. The Marantz seems more like a budget receiver in build. The 7008 is smaller and lighter, surprisingly so for their flagship. My last Denon 3808 (Denon makes Marantz now, in case you were wondering why everyone keeps mentioning it, they're very similar, but not identical) has a weight and footprint similare to the Yamaha and the 3808 was I believe a 3rd or maybe even 4th-string player when I bought it in 2008, nowhere near Denon's flagship model.
I'm not overly concerned with Marantz build, but there is cause for concern in reports of Denon's floundering reliability in recent years, augmented by the fact that Marantz seems to have very few service centers (not a single one in our state according to their online search engine) and won't pay for shipping. So, if' you've got a warranty repair, it'll cost you about $150 for round trip shipping. Yamaha has the best rep for reliability, but I haven't checked into there service network yet. Yamaha reportedly puts their HDMI boards through certification, where I don't believe Marantz/Denon does. I've already noticed the HDMI handshake with the Marantz might be more problematic than the Yamaha: With the 7008 special features on BDs are always heard before they're seen. While I haven't had any dropouts so far in the middle of movies, there appear to be more and longer signal blanks when loading BDs, so I fear there may be more layer change dropouts and such. Neither the 3030 nor the 7008 can properly decode discs like Total Recall (remake) extended cut edition. But I still blame Sony for that, as their own PS3 and PS4 won't decode it properly either.
But what is potentially the thing that sets the Yamaha apart from the Marantz more than anything is the abundance of flexibility and features it has. Coming from the 3030 I was literally shocked how bareboned the 7008 seemed. Even basic features like dialogue enhancement are almost a useless with the 7008 which only offers a simple center channel bump, not a real tweak, independent tweak of the frequency range to enhance mid-range voice clarity. With straight (non-prologic) processing of stereo to two-channel mono (most mono encodes are two-channel) it's completely grayed out.
That 7008 seems to be built around Audyssey as it's primary selling point. It doesn't even have as many dlcs as it's sister brand Denon, not that Denon's dlcs are anything worthwhile other than maybe the basics like multi-channel stereo. But Yamaha takes dlcs to a whole other level. I haven't found them all that desirable for modern movies, but I did discover surprising results in a Fox disc recorded or originally mixed in 4.0 surround I believe; I think it was Romancing the Stone or Jewel of the Nile on BD. Using one of Yamaha's movie modes it actually sounded more natural and enveloping than the straight encode, though I need to check it out through the 7008 to confirm it was the disc and not something YPAO was doing.
I've never been an admirer of dlcs in general, but for music, I'm actually wondering if some of Yamaha's dlcs might prove hard to live without, relatively speaking. With well mixed lossless BD tracks not so much. But for poorly mixed tracks, stereo/PCM, or even lossy multi-channel - which most of my concerts are still from dvd and will never be made available on BD I now fear - some of Yamahas dlcs had profound benefit, better than what prologic was doing on the Yamaha. Which Prologic, Neo6 and multi-channel stereo are about the only choices offered by the 7008 and even those don't appear as tweakably implemented as they are via the Yamaha.
I haven't listened to any concerts via the Marantz yet, which I plan to rectify tonight to confirm if Audyssey might make as much difference with music as it does movies. Unless it does, effectively eliminating most of my desire to tweak those sources too, I'm really going to be scratching my head on which of these two units to keep. Through the Yamaha's incredible manual tweaking flexibility, I should be able to achieve the same calibrated results as I'm getting automatically from XT32, but having not done so in a year, I'm not really sure I have the time to learn something as seemingly complicated as REW.
I love what XT32 is doing for movies and TV. If Yamaha would abandon YPAO an auto solution they likely haven't invested a fraction of the R&D into that Audyssey has, I think it would be hard to dispute Yamaha as being the clear champ between these three brands. As is, Yamaha is the clear winner for advanced tweakers. Marantz wins out for those who want the trust the AVR to do everything automatically.
