What brand was better than it is today?

What’s wrong with today’s marantz products? Has any one even had a listen? I understand of course the legendary status of their 60’s amps etc....but some of what they produce today is pretty darn good, especially their reference series components, ie the pm14s1 and the associated sa14 cd player....I own the pm14s1 integrated as well as the sa8005 sacd player and i think they sound terrific. The ruby series of components are pretty nice as well... 

As a brand: Theta Digital.

Not necessarily for product quality, but lack of innovation and introduction of new products.


As a huge fan of the old Casanova I was really looking to see the replacement, the Supernova come out, but it never made it out of the prototype stage.


This is a brand that has been relegated to back-burner stuff for a while. They promised HDMI compatibility for what, 2 years, then they introduced I think 2 new versions of the casablanca, some new Class D amps, and now are back to barely operating publicly. The last press release of theirs was in June of 2017:

https://www.thetadigital.com/press-releases/




Best,

E

Threshold, Marantz, Mark Levinson, Martin Logan, Pass Labs, Revel, B&W, lots of others. The problem with the question is relativity. Rega was once the 2nd best turntable, for example, now they don't make the list at all.

Everything was better sounding 30 or 40 years ago because there was a lot less RF floating around in the air.

The other problem is that many people don't get the distinction between sound reinforcement, pro audio gear and that designed to reproduce music.
JBL and Klipsh for example have never made good speakers for music reproduction. DJ turntables sound aweful compared to a Pro-ject or Clearaudio.