Marantz SACD 30N

Are you just playing discs on it, or also using it as a streamer and/or DAC?
  I had a terrible experience with Marantz first streamer/DAC, which only worked as a DAC and then wouldn’t work at all after a year, had a terrible app, and Marantz stopped supporting it after 2 years.  That was several years ago, and they may have gotten their act together, but I swore I would never buy Marantz again.
  Here is hoping that you are enjoying your unit and that it remains hassle free

The only real difficulty is streaming DSD. I hate Jriver , but thats a minor issue , I can go usb and it sounds great . I am playing discs and it’s a slight improvement when compared to streaming . I did ask Marantz directly about Qoboz and they responded blountly we don’t support , so i believe they are bought out by the Tidal company . (MQA) . even though they don’t support MQA!!.
Audirvana plays Qoboz anyway . the App HEOS is decent after a couple hours of figuring out what works and what does not .
the overall +’s and -’s are in favor of this well built amazing sounding unit.
I don’t think i really need app support as Audirvana is working great .
I also think for the foreseeable future my digital obsessions are under control .
now i can concentrate on Amps , speakers for any upgrades.
the question is , what compares to this unit ? it plays SACDs , streams HI REZ and is only 3k . hard to find an equivalent . 

Hello to all,

I have a perhaps strange, perhaps normal question.

I have a Marantz SACD-30n CD/SACD player.   I like its sound pretty much, and I like what it does (i.e. receives internet radio, can use the DAC portion for streaming from my iPad).  It’s a nice Swiss army knife of a player. 

But I keep wondering:  would a separate DAC improve things, to help digital to sound more realistic/natural/musical?  (I do tend to prefer my TT analogue set-up.) 

I’ve been looking at various R2R DACs or tube-based DACs. 

I guess the entry-point question is how much would I have to spend to notice much of a difference that is truly better? 
 

 

 

Thanks for any responses. 

@hoodjem  So as you say the 30n is a Jack of all trades, but the flip side of that is that it’s a master of nothing.  It’s a transport, DAC, streamer, Bluetooth player, and preamplifier for $3k, and how much of that do you think goes into the DAC?  The streamer?  The answer is not a lot so there’s a lot of room for improvement in both, and they’re both critically important for better sound.  I started steaming from my iPad to my DAC and thought it was fine until I got a budget $400 iFi Zen Stream streamer (with their $100 iPowerX power supply) and the sound quality went to a higher level entirely.  Bottom line — using the iPad as a streamer sucks and streamers matter a lot.  If I was you my minimum entry level would be a Bluesound Node streamer with an external linear power supply and something like a Musician Pegasus II R2R DAC ($1100 through Amazon you can return) or better yet a Denafrips Pontus 15th ($2100).  So to answer your question directly, I’d budget $2k -$3k for a streamer and DAC to get a truly significant and noticeable improvement.  Just my $0.02 and experience FWIW and hope it’s somewhat helpful.