First, I wouldn’t go by YouTube videos alone, and headphones are also limiting in revealing important aspects of what speakers can do. Read reputable reviews to see if they back up what you’re hearing, and by all means travel if at all possible to go hear some of the speakers you’re interested in at a dealer and/or go to an audio show — either would be well worth the effort at the price level you’re at. You’ve already got a couple good ones, and some others in a similar price range I’d mention and worth a look if you can find them — ProAc D30/D20, Joseph Audio Profile, ATC SCM40 v2, Usher Dancer Mini-Two, Dali Rubikore 6, MoFi SourcePoint 888, and Dyneaudio. Take your time and enjoy the search and you’ll be greatly rewarded for your time/effort.
Showing 6 responses by soix
What @ghdprentice said. One of the things I didn’t learn fully until I began reviewing audio equipment is just how critical a preamp is and how much it affects the overall performance of an audio system, and there’s a good reason that it’s often called the heart of an audio system. Put another way, discount the importance of the preamp at your own risk. Your Marantz is a CD/SACD player, streamer, preamp, and headphone amp all in one, and you could easily pay $3k for each one of those as separate components, which is to say to do all those things for $3k means significant compromises need to be made. After all the other functions the 30N performs are accounted for, how much does that leave for a quality preamplifier? Not much, and the critical and more expensive parts like the power supply, volume control, etc. are unfortunately the prime candidates for cost cutting. Combine this with that the low-level signal the preamp handles is very susceptible to noise and here is housed with inherently noisy digital processing components, and you can start to see why using the 30N as a preamp is not optimal in a system at the level you are building. Sorry to drone on here but hope this helps explain a little more about why I said using your Marantz as a preamp will likely be a significant bottleneck in the context of your future system. |
With the level of speakers you’re looking at you should really consider either a separate preamp or a better integrated amp if the Rotel isn’t giving you enough. The preamp is a critical piece in the audio chain, and using the preamp section of a $3k CD player will likely be a significant bottleneck to performance so worth considering for the future. Just my $0.02 FWIW. |