Wich Marantz should I buy?

[Broes]

If I want to replace my old SR14, which Marantz receiver should I buy to be able to use the plugin?
Is the plugin working with the SR7xxx serie?

[Broes]

Is no one using this plugin with an SR7xxx?

[Tomgru]

Did you ever figure this out? In the market for a couple of receivers.

[George]

Honestly, I am a big Denon fan and have the new X4500 125W/Channel 11.2 receiver with HEOS, Dolby ATMOS, IMAX decoding, 4K up/down scaling and a ton more codecs. It's still on it's way, replacing my current X4000 but before I pulled the trigger I researched AVR's again. There were 2 reviews that saw, I think one was on Crutchfield, that put the Marantz against the equivalent Denon model. The X4500 beat the Marantz in both features and THD specs. The Denon X_500 series are not just upgrades but built up from scratch.

So depending on the power you'd like, or the Zones, speakers, amps, etc, you might want to look at the 4500 5500 or X6500. Don't look at any of the receivers starting with an S as those the Best Buy/Costco models.

Why did I pick now to upgrade my AVR and get a new Sony Blu-Ray player? Because my wife wanted me to get her the AquaMan (the only Marvel Universe movie she likes, go figure ). Of course, the BluRay is UHD/BD (4K Ultra HD) and is encoded in Dolby ATMOS. So new Blu-ray player and AVR for me (about $1.5K) for a $30 movie for her. I think it was a fair trade! Now to wait until the 88" wall OLED's come down out of the stratosphere.

[Tomgru]

Thanks for the thoughts. I actually use all Denon now and have been fairly happy...so this might be the way to go.

[George]

I'll let you know what my thoughts on the X4500 are when I get it. Hum, that leaves me with a rather new X4000 laying around.
Is there a Wanted/For Sale forum on this board? Not just thinking the X4000 but people may have older devices like X-10 or Omni's that we can get a better deal here than trying to sell them at eBay.

g

[msinklair]

There is a thread for used automation items.
https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/ge...tomation-items

[Tomgru]

George , I got the 4500 and will install next week. How do you like it?

[George]

Tom,

Probably the best decision I've made in a while. One small detail which might cost you about another $200 bucks or so. I have a 7.2 system, (Left, Center, Right, Left Wide, Right Wide, Back Left Wide, Back Right Wide, 2 sub-woofers, but if you don't have height speakers then getting the full use of Dolby Atmos requires either height speakers or a Dolby Atmos enabled speaker pair.

I ordered two Sony Dolby Atmos enabled speakers (2 day delivery from Amazon) and sat them right next to my side speakers. They are supposed to go on top, but my main towers are the Def Tech Mythos STL Super Tower powered speakers, They are curved at the top and not flat. So I ended up setting these Sony Atmos speakers right next to the towers and reran the Audyssey setup. These little puppies are angled at approximately a 35 degree angle and designed to bounce sound off the ceiling of the room creating the Atmos effect.

So now I have a 7.4.2 system and using 9 of the 11 amps in the 4500. The 2nd .2 in the series is the Atmos delineator. The 4 is because of the 2 sub-woofers and also the 2 in the Def Tech Mythos Tower speakers, so the amp spreads the LFE to all 4 sub-woofers. This leaves me with only two extra outputs for Zone2. But I don't plan on using Zone 2 anyway.

We picked up the Blu-Ray Queen Bohemian Rhapsody in the full Ultra Hd and Dolby Atmos.

The sound is incredible. We heard sounds coming from places we had no speakers at all.
We must have played that Blu-Ray about 8 times. The sound was immersive.
I had it set to the Dolby theater standard of 75db so all the speakers, including the sub-woofers in the Mythos Towers kicked in.

In the Live Aid concert section (and also the full session in the bonus extras) the 2nd song has a bass riff that we heard literally coming out of our ceiling fan in the middle of the freaking ceiling! We played it again, and again, no matter where we stood it came out of the ceiling fan!

Now, to wait a year or so, for the 8K Samsung Q9 series QLED's to come down to somewhere out of the stratosphere!

Took me about a day and five different calibration cycles (definitely did not help the WAF) but the receiver not only can decode Atmos but can also take a 5.1 multichannel signal from my Sat dish or regular DVD's, you can put it into a mode they call Dolby Digital + DDSurround + NeuralX. The NeuralX has the smarts to not only drive the wides (creating a wider audio stage) but also simulate and utilize the Dolby Atmos speakers.

If you press Info on the Denon remote, it will put up the screen where you can not only chane the settings but show you the input channels and each and every one of the active output channels that it is using.

Right now I'm just watching X-Men Origins on Dish Network and it shows that my inputs are LFE, FL, C, FR, SL, SR.
But it's driving all the speakers and showing FDL, SW, FDR (Front Dolby Right), FL, C, FR, SL, SR, SBL and SBR.
So it's creating Side Left/Right, Surround Back Left/Right and the two Dolby Front Left/Rights from just the 5 input plus the LFE channel.

A lot of thought and programming went into these new series and even my wife agreed that for her $25 Auqaman movie, it was worth it buying the receiver, Blu-ray player and then the 2 Atmos speakers.

Here is a link to the speakers I picked up to fully enable the Atmos system. Now, if you already have height speakers installed above your media center, you would not need them. The setup explains exactly which speaker to connect to which terminal.

Oh well, enough of a thesis, here are the speakers, let me know what you think when you get it all setup! Enjoy,

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B48FJFH

I got them for $158 because I got lucky and they were on a lightning deal when I was searching.