I am a firm believer that while money cannot buy happiness, spending money can sometimes take some pain away. And spend money I did. Pre-ordered this baby back in early March, and here it is almost 3 months later, the latest Marantz 2018 Surround Pre-Amplifier - the AV8805!
This is actually the first unit in Australia at time of writing this blog! Kudos to QualiFi and Tasso for bestowing this honour upon me 
.
I love this disclaimer:
THIS CARTON HAS BEEN OPENED FOR QUALITY CONTROL TO ENSURE THE PRODUCT MEETS AUSTRALIAN STANDARDS
QualiFi
Translation: they have removed UK cables and replaced it with Australian ones? This will just be a quick preview of the unit as I have been out of the HT game for nearly a decade so it will take me some time to get everything setup and running. This is going to replace a Denon 3808A that’s acting as my AV pre-amplifier until late last night.
Funnily enough The Denon 3808A was also purchased on the first day of release (Late November 2007). I know the date well because it was 2007 Christmas Eve when I blew up the Denon video circuit board
! That’s a story for another day perhaps. It was this experience that taught me to be extra vigilant in setting this up. Hopefully not going to repeat the same mistake twice (*touchwood*)
I digress, on with the Marantz AVP Show!
Pages: 1· 2· 3· 4· 5· 6· 7· 8· 9· 10· 11· 12· 13· 14· 15· 16· 17· 18· 19· 20
I mentioned something about my primary DAC in a previous blog article (UpTone JS-2). This article describes in more detail how this unique, one-of-a-kind DAC come to be - an origin story! The KillerDAC is an old school DAC:
- DAC chip is a 16 bit TDA1541A S2 double crown (Taiwan) chip
- Tube rectifier (1x 5U4G)
- Valve output stage (2x 6DJ8/ECC88)
- I2S and S/PDIF inputs
The KillerDAC cannot decode DSD, nor can it play anything higher than 96 kHz/24 bits. This is old school red book DAC, and it sounds amazing to my ears. A device with no fancy marketing gimmicks, and it’s role is to solely playback beautiful music that can touch my soul.
Here it is in it’s current form:And to my eyes it looks stunning in the looks department too. But it didn’t start off like this.
This is the JS-2 Linear Power Supply from UpTone Audio, recommended retail price (if buying direct) is $925 USD.
Hands down the JS-2 is my most expensive power supply. It makes the 95th percentile when it comes to expensive toys in terms of cost. Why do I spend so much money on power? Some says “bits are just bits"! For me, this is less of “a fool and his money are soon parted", but more a case of “shut up and take my money".
The JS-2 is that good!
Placed an order immediately after listening to a modified unit at a local audiophile’s place. There was a wait time as only a limited number of JS-2s are made every month. But once it was shipped, it got here quickly - sent via FedEx on Thursday (California, USA) and delivered the following Monday (Perth, Australia).
A more in-depth review will be posted later as I don’t have my primary DAC to audition this. My intention is to run this baby in for a week before I even listen to it.
This is just a quick unboxing for now, a beautiful unit indeed.