Was KI really that important to the sound? I had always read that he tweaked equipment that had been designed by their in house team.
My lousy streamer aside, my other experience with Marantz products was that they did well in the bass and midrange, but gently rolled off the top end . My SACD player8005 and the aforementioned streamer sounded remarkably similar and I am guessing must have had similar DACs. I had a friend who owned their top line HT Processor and multichannel amp, which cost about 8K as a combo back in the early 2000s, and was struck by the same feature when I heard them a few years back. Was that a KI preference?
My only “Classic Marantz “ piece that I recall was a tuner that probably hailed from the early sixties. I tried it for a weekend from a dealer who would let you audition second hand gear. It probably needed an overhaul but it did have a comfortable warmth. I didn’t keep it because it was massive and threatened to break my equipment rack of the time.
My lousy streamer aside, my other experience with Marantz products was that they did well in the bass and midrange, but gently rolled off the top end . My SACD player8005 and the aforementioned streamer sounded remarkably similar and I am guessing must have had similar DACs. I had a friend who owned their top line HT Processor and multichannel amp, which cost about 8K as a combo back in the early 2000s, and was struck by the same feature when I heard them a few years back. Was that a KI preference?
My only “Classic Marantz “ piece that I recall was a tuner that probably hailed from the early sixties. I tried it for a weekend from a dealer who would let you audition second hand gear. It probably needed an overhaul but it did have a comfortable warmth. I didn’t keep it because it was massive and threatened to break my equipment rack of the time.