Marantz, the longest-running name among all receiver makers, has taken a decidedly “audiophile-value” approach with its current lineup. The company’s SR6004 has nearly all of the latest audio functionality — 7-channel onboard power, latest-gen high-rez audio decoding and surround processing, Audyssey auto-setup/room EQ and “smart-volume” DSP — yet it carries a suggested price that’s as little as one third as that of the costliest A/V receiver behemoths you can buy.
Sure, the SR6004 gives up a few watts to these gilded lilies, along with a few features, most notably networking and streaming-audio abilities and speedy high-def onscreen graphics. Yet with the SR6004, Marantz continues to display a seriousness of purpose and commitment to sound quality that’s wholly fitting for one of the first high-end audio manufacturers.
The SR6004 continues Marantz’s recent styling cues, including dramatically rounded front corners and a substantially smaller size than that of many competing models (plenty welcome around here!). It’s a quietly different look that I like.
SETUP
The receiver’s Audyssey MultEQ auto-setup routines proceeded as usual, with circulating chirps and onscreen prompts to move the supplied test microphone to subsidiary listening positions. The SR6004 only offers up its onscreen graphics for the setup routine, with its “graphical user interface” confined to a few speaker and sofa pictograms in its manual-setup screens. Otherwise, its 480i-format GUI uses quotidian plain text and is fairly slow to appear or disappear.
The SR6004’s Audyssey results were also as usual, yielding a tighter, more detailed-sounding midrange, audibly more solid and extended bottom two octaves, and more expansive yet focused surround ambience. (The SR6004 doesn’t include the “XT” Audyssey variant found on a couple of competitors in the same price range, which empowers more mike locations for analysis, and enables Audyssey MultEQ Pro so that an installer can perform even more in-depth correction.)
