Bargain spotted

I was window shopping in Manchester today and happened to visit one of the sales ona HIFI shop on Bridge Street, they had Marantz PM6010KI for £200 and the 6000OSE LE for just £200. I was a bit annoyed as I paid £150 for my 6010OSE at christmas thinking I got a bargain. I am also in the market for a 6000 OSE LE as well but currently I do not have £200 for it.

Its sods law, if I wanted a new CDP they would not have them at price.

 

Seriously what do all these numbers mean? how many products are there in the marantz line up?

Isn't marantz just another japcrap company?

 

Marantz is probably one of the better Japcrap companies, it was owned by the Dutch under philips for a few years but its now owned by a new company which also owns Denon.

I wouldn't call the Marantz CD17KI which cost £1500 crap.

But basicaly the budget range of marnatz amp is as follows although these are due to be replaced soon.

PM4200 - The entry level amp, good for £150
PM6010OSE - Now not much more expensive that the PM4200 has less features but sounds much better
PM6010KI- This retailed for £400 when it first came out in 2000, it has all the usual Ken Ishiwasha tweaks, I also heared that they are tweaked in the UK.
PM7200 - This seems to be new marantz best selling amp has it has class A mode, I never heared one though.

Marantz also make a lot of higher end amps and stuff but I have near heared them.

 

I posted on the classifieds thread about Hyperfi advertising some Marantz gear at dirt cheap prices. The 6000ki for a bargain!

Marantz are one of the names that should be on MOst budget audition lists IMO. Especialy with places like Richers knocking them down in price even further. This isn't just for hifi, their av amps seem to be well respected in the budget end too.

The higher end stuff is built like a tank!

 

Yep the shop I saw it was at Practical HIFI, in my expereince is this shop always has good stocks too. Richers seem to be quite expensive for the Marantz century line atm. My 6010OSE is built very well indeed, in even says in the instruction manual that the facia will last for ever if treated correctly. Now you don't get that from your plastic Sony's.

 

Marantz make some very well regarded CD players and some excellent budget gear as MO! said. They used to be owned by Philips (since the 1980s - originally a US company but had some Japanese ownership along the way) but it's now owned by D&M Holdings which is a holding company for Denon and Marantz.

Their 80s and 90s CDPs were often just warmed over Philips products but they did make some excellent products that were more Marantz than Philips.

My first ever CD player was a Marantz CD50SE I bought in 1990 for £350 and I'm still using it (albeit modified ) as the transport in my system and very good it is too.

I also have a Marantz SR4200 AV receiver which, for the £200 I paid at Richers is an outstanding bargain and does the job more than adequately with DVDs.

Some of their top-end gear has a pretty good reputation, especially the CD17MkII. They're not a JapCrap company in the traditional sense, and even japcrap companies make some pretty good stuff - Sony SCD-1 anyone?

Michael.

EDIT: to add, I don't particularly like the term "japcrap" btw, there's just as much euro-crap out there (Philips, B&O, Thomson etc) and probably just as much US crap aswell. The UK would have it aswell if they hadn't totally killed off all manufacturing industry so that all that's left is small, cottage, players like Naim who inevitably produce better stuff at a higher price in smaller volumes.

 

I don't mind the term JapCrap as it seems to sum up most of the HIFI reaching the UK shores, although I do understand they have high quality kit as well.

What I don't understand with stuff like this mentioned above is in essence its all the same, Marantz owned by another, held by another all releasing stuff under different names. Any business worth its salt will have put all the good bits in one barrel then releaased it all under different names, i.e the same.

Nad do this with the AMC range, if you look closely its exactly the same stuff.

VW do the same with the Skoda range of cars.

Theres no harm in it persay, but in the same breath as marantz is great quality, is the fact Richer sounds are chucking it out at £150 quid.

The two don't add up.

I.E. if Ricvher were selling some pioneer stuff at the same price you might plumb for the marantz but in effect you are buying the same Pioneer or whatever.

Tell me I am wrong?

Its just you could get a pioneer for like 100 quid or whatever.

 

On the otherhand Marantz don't make cheap £100 mini systems unlike Sony and Pioneer. This is what seperates the likes of Denon and Marantz from Sony, JVC, etc.

 

eh?

 

Can't say I agree here. It makes poor business sense to sell your best quality technology via different brands at a variety of prices. The VW/Skoda analogy illustrates this quite well. Skodas are made to the same standard as VWs but with some lower quality materials. ie the plastic moldings are done as accurately, but the plastic is less dense.

What makes good economic sense is to broaden the range of products a manufacturer can sell without cheapening the brand. Audi - VW - Skoda. Drive all three and you'll see there is a difference.

Economic reality - if goods pile up unsold then it ties up capital in both stock and storage. It is better for a manufacturer to take the pain and dispose of the product quickly than allow it to sit clogging up the retail channel. A fact that Richer Sounds has exploited very well.

 

oh dear...it seems garyi has fallen into the if its cheap it must be crap...
...this is not necessarily the case in hifi, if you really knew what you were paying for..a prime candidate to get robbed methinks...
there is little correlation between cost and sound quality...you pay for power in amps, and this means more transistors in the output and a bigger power supply, you also pay for the name and the snob value...

who says the marantz cd7 is crap, there are plenty of hi end stuff in japan that we don't hear about...
..jap stuff is very reliable and very well designed, in fact they tend to overengineer, which is why I think they are less 'musical' in general than british hifi, which is more simple, in general.

 

I believe the last point you mention is where I am coming from, lots of cheap JapCrap that needs selling.

This differs little from say purchasing a pioneer from Kays Catalouge, its all the same, Japanese mass produced cheap CDPs being sold, well cheaply.

The fact they sell more expensive items backs up your understanding of the VW Skoda range. They do sell good CDP but the stuff lower down is not as good, mass produced and sold cheaply.

So at the top of this post we have a lot of marantz with extreamly long numbers on the end. At the end of the day what are the differences?

 

Unfortunately, the jap philosophy works, good quality, flood the market, loads of gizmos and flashing lights, change it quickly.....and we buy it in droves, the easterners even more love this sort of thing...just look at tokyo or hong kong.
there is plenty of crap all around us...you have to move a lot of dirt to find a diamond....

 

My Marantz amp has 3 lights on it, a switch for the input selector, its design is a simple semi dual mono arangement. And the leds are only used to indicate if the power, and which recording source is on. So most the time only one LED is one. Marantz is no Naim, MF or Wilson but it offers good quality goods for the masses. We can't all afford £1000 on a preamp. NAD also produce the same kind of price level stuff as Marantz, so are they britcrap or chineesecrap?

As somebody said on the HFC forum, to some people a £100 aiwa mini system is good.

 

At least most budget gear is reasonably honestly priced due to the strong competition and price being a major factor at that level.

Is a Naim NAC552 pre-amp really worth £12K? I seriously doubt it. There's no way that either the parts, labour, R&D effort or anything else adds up to anything remotely close to £12K. Even the dealer margin on silly money products like that is likely to be around 40% and it's no wonder that not long after it's launched multi-thousand pound gear is often going second hand for half it's RRP or less.

Marantz products may have long numbers in their names but Arcam do exactly the same thing. Just take CDPs - you have the CD62, CD72, CD82, CD92 and finally the FMJ CD33 - five CD players! How can they possibly be differentiated? The same goes for Arcam amps (5 in the range).

Marantz (and Arcam) should at least be congratulated for keeping budget hifi alive (or trying to). When 90% are happy with a £200 mini system then what's the point in selling cheap hifi separates any more? HiFi is gradually becoming a high-end only business

Michael.

 

Michael you are working in two entirly different markets.

The Jap stuff as mentioned is mass produced mostly by machines and therefore is dirt cheap and there are millions of them.

The naims stuff is specialist market, hand built, from boards to box by one person and sold in very small numbers, and of course as I am sure you are aware naim don't take the 12k there are specilist hifi dealers who want to make a profit. Also small manfactuers won't have all the facilities such as the heavy machinery and cutting for the cases which for instance don't happen at naim, they have to pay someone who wants to make a profit.

Its just something that is only comparable by the final application.

I ain't sticking up for naim, I think the cynic in me would prefer to look at Linn nower days and compare that to far easten manfactuer, after all, their speakers are now produced there, but 25k for a speaker is a silly profit margin for something that in effect has nothing to do with linn apart from the name.

which brings me back to my point, Marantz is a mass produced Japanese product probably built in the same factoris as its parent company, therefore what are the differences that justify the price differences, or are there any price differences?

 

I know there is a younger generation of people that are mainly into hifi seperates as they have bought a lot of cheap mini sytstems and have heared mine and others mates cheapeash £400 seperate systems and realise there is no contest in terms of sound quality. I think its this market that Marantz, Sony, Nad, excel in, also Arcam seem to be getting into this market now as you can buy an Arcam amp for £200 now.

Denon are also a company that deserves credit for making a £300 mini system that sounds almost good. I've heared them systyems in the shops I am like wow is that really a mini system. Also I am pleased to see that both Denon and Marantz products seem very different despite owned by the same company, they have not done the VW/SEAT/SKODA trick here.

 

I reply to Garyi, I didn't see that thread, also the new BMW 750i is made my machines that costs £50k does that mean its a load of crap? If a product as a purpose then it cannot not be crap, as it is useful, so if a £100 mini system last 10 years and the owner is happy with the sound quality then its good. I have a 14" daweoo TV, but its fine my purposes there for its not crap.

 

I take your point about Naim - and I wasn't having a go at Naim specifically - just anyone who makes ludicrously expensive stuff (Dynaudio Evidence Master speakers at £85K?, AudioNote DAC5 for £18K?).

As for Marantz - I don't think they have a parent company that makes hifi. It's just Denon and Marantz together.

Michael.

 

AHA! I was right - I THOUGHT that tuner on your system pic from way back looked familiar Gary - looks a bit similar to the NAD 401 or a bit like my NAD 4225...

Didn't AMC bring out a valve amp for silly money back in about 1992 - it was about 300 quid? I did wander at the time how much like NAD it looked...