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Marantz SA-10

I currently own a Modwright Marantz SA-8005. Its has some upgrades including a WyWires umbilical and SR Purple fuse. Its a great player but I'm considering some system upgrades and the Modwright outboard PS will be an issue. The plan was to move to either an Esoteric/Luxman unit but after doing some research another possible candidate might be a Marantz SA-10. Has anyone had a chance to compare the SA-10 with the Modwright SA-8005? Would the SA-10 be and upgrade or just a sideways move? As always your feedback is appreciated.

cmach

Showing 1 response by anwar

anwar
119 posts
 

I had Marantz SA-7003 which I don’t like. It uses similar D/A converter (CS4398) and output stage like the SA-8005. Now I have 2 units of Marantz SA-10 in different systems.

SA-10 is not SA-8005 with expensive case. There is no D/A converter from other makers. Instead, Marantz developed their own FC-PGA based Marantz Musical Mastering (MMM) which up samples all signals to DSD 4x and sent to analog output stage after passive filters. The designer, the late Ken Ishiwata, said DSD 4x is already an analog signal.

The SA-8005 Modwright mods do not change the D/A inside.

After having SA-10 for few months, I stopped using my analog rig which costs 4x of SA-10. SA-10 can also be used as a DAC. It’s XMOS-based USB audio interface implementation is very good and has USB ground galvanic isolation.

SA-10 can compete with much more expensive SACD players. SA-10 excels with SACD/DSD files. To the poster, I suggest you give a try. There is no need to modify the SA-10. However, please take note the SA-10 needs long time to break in.

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