What settings for a Marantz SA-10?
An old post, but I wanted to reply to phillyb and his comment about turning down he headphone gain on the SA10. I gave that a try and the sound really did benefit. As if some noise had been filtered out. Going through the manual, Marantz actually suggests turning the headphone output off for best sound. Page 26. "The headphones circuit operation can be stopped to minimize noise from the headphones circuit which could interfere with the analog audio output signal." Thanks for catching that. |
I’ve owned a mega priced units and this newer Marantz. The SA-10S1 is a steal for the price and sound reproduction. My last player was the older Esoteric K-01, the Marantz was in no way below it, except for massive dynamics that really threw the music at you, the Marantz is more gentle and real sounding. The setting once burned and I played a lot with them was Dither Off, Noise shaping 3-1, all other non-used functions like headphones off, depending on your system and gear polarity could be normal or reversed, my system normal. BUT here is a big one to try, in my system by chance I turned the headphone gain from medium to low, and the sonics improved so much that I could not believe this, and why I do not know, so I changed them perhaps 20 times from high, med, and low and every time I heard the difference, my wife downstairs said whatever you did that sound s better. On the low setting, the music has more body, dynamics, and bottom end, and blackest background. I don’t know if Marantz caught this in the design but the settings do impact the sound big time. So give it a try, I fell upon it by luck, just wanting to change it to the low setting hit play again and my jaw dropped. MQA was dead on arrival. We philes are 0.5% of the market, like SACD there just not enough mass interest to make it important for consumers to buy. Not saying it’s bad but just the facts philes cannot make another new format and go, it’s a small niche. My kids love portable music, earbuds, etc, they find my system boring to sit and listen to music and a whole LP to boot, that is another fact. Billions of downloads and streaming, compared to millions of CD and then below CD vinyl in sales, both physical formations don’t come near streaming when combined. That is the main market nowadays. When boomers die-off that is the end to high-end, we grew up with it and made it happen like owning hot-rods and muscle cars. |
Yes, I do the majority of my listening that way. I think that CD format through the marantz is slightly better than streaming but it is very close, hard to tell. I'm perfectly happy with the Lumin > USB > Marantz using Roon and Tidal. I enjoy the Lumin streaming the hi-rez MQA formats (labels like 2L are very impressive), and in other standard formats the Lumin offers a little more high end detail perhaps, given the Marantz converts everything to DSD. |
Funny, I found the exact same settings as Phillyb to sound best in my system. I too have had mine for about 4 months, and break in has been long. How do I know I hear a difference? I bought a Lumin T2 at about the same time and have A/B'd them ever since. When I first got them they were hard to tell apart. Now the Marantz is ever so smooth, detailed, and has a much different presentation in soundstage compared to the other. The Lumin is excellent in its own right. I prefer the Marantz however, especially with DSD/SACD material. |
@phillyb...……………….. You have a great SACD player, enjoy it for many years to come. I know exactly what you mean regarding the agonizingly long break in process. It took close to six months to fully break in my Esoteric SACD player. I had the Isotek System Enhancer CD on repeat for almost 5 months, running 18 hours a day. It still took another month or so for the player to really come into it's own and I am most likely. as happy as you are. I have had my player for 7+ years now and I have no desire to change it. Enjoy your new toy. |
I've had mine for 4 months and it finally broke in thank god that was a long time!. Using many types of music, the best I've heard was dither off, Filter 1 and noise shaping 3-1. This gave the most transparent, dynamic and superb balanced sound. I used piano, stand up bass, Trumpets, and Vocals. Some all by themselves. These settings were the ones that made it feel like the players were right in the room with the correct tones, weight, and dynamics, natural. Dither 1 rounds things off and warms things up but in a bright system or unnatural like many systems today that would be a good choice for the dither 1 or 2 which might bring the weight and soul back to the music. After break-in, the SA-10 is outstanding in CD and SACD and USB flash drive files. Burning some music for compilations in WAV and even MP3 playback great and musical, WAV outstanding of course. Great value and worth looking into grabbing one, my past players have been Esoteric -X1, K-01, Marantz Sa7, Sony SCD1 and others that I had but had nothing but problems, some big boutique names who use OEM parts and some caused issues with other sections of the player, like overheating and shutting down and not reading discs. Stick with the Players that are built and designed from the ground up like Sony's, Marantz, Esoteric and a few others. |
https://www.avsa.co.za/marantz-sa-10-digital-upper-class/ Was it this review? I found it yesterday after posting this. |
I thought in one of the professional reviews, the reviewer discussed what he heard with each filter and also when using dithering. I believe the preferences were stated. I don't remember where I read the review online but I know it is out there. On my old Sony Sacd player, there were 4 filter options. I liked the default the best (sharp rolloff) as it sounded the most natural, Good luck. |
