Australia's First Marantz AV8805 Surround Pre-Amplifier

agent_kith

Sat, 26/05/2018 - 01:40

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 ;D.

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!

Unlike my Marantz 11 series (SC-11S1, SM-11S1 and SA-11S2), this Marantz is not double boxed. Unfortunately somebody punched a hole on the side of the carton (not pictured). I am guessing whoever did this done this to make it easier to handle the box. I am not sure I like that as some audiophiles may want to have the box in pristine condition. And also they may have done some real damage to the electronics:crazy:!

Nice little box:

The world has certainly created more logos in a decade. Honestly been a decade since I last purchased a HT equipment I am ashamed to say I have no idea what some of these are.

'Made for iPod, iPhone, iPad'. No Android references anywhere. This will bite me somehow, I can just feel it 🙄.

Here's the first thing I see after opening the box. I see some:

Light reading material
Remote control
AAA Batteries
Australian power cable
Audyssey Microphone

The Audyssey microphone box. For best results, please mount on a tripod. Good grief, now I have to go hunt for a tripod.

And here we have the Audyssey microphone unboxed. It feels alright I guess. Yet to dig up my old Denon microphone calibration microphone, but I would have sworn the Denon has the better build quality here.

And here is the companion remote control. It is a familiar layout but not of the build and finishing of the remotes on my Marantz 11 series.

After opening three Marantz premium series equipment. I have to say the experience feels lessor. It is what it is, this is a 4 digit model (8805) after all. One probably have to go the single (7 series) or double digit (11 series or the new 10 series) gear is where you'd get the premium opening experience. Not sure if Marantz is planning any premium edition for the home theatre.

I am not that into home theatre, so this is not something I yearn for honestly.

OK I take it back. Do not have to dig out my tripod any more. Nice touch Marantz, nice touch! With the microphone up top, this looks like a rocket ready to launch.

Some cable labels and WIFI antenna. Wonder if I will get a second set of labels if I go with their MM8077 power amplifier?

Two tiny WIFI antennas.

Tell me you do not see the face of a robot there. This picture is beyond cute.

The pre-amplifier weights 13.6 Kg. The packing cannot weigh anything more than that. A single person can carry the carton easily. My shelving is heavier than this at 15 Kg. But it's curious how our brain works. The carton feels so light that I can carry it with one hand.

However, when lifting the unit out from the box, 13.6 Kg suddenly feels pretty heavy and solid.

And here's the Marantz undressed. The sticker on the bottom right is hideous. That and the Spotify sticker will be gone once everything is setup. This Marantz is too big for me to take photos in my usual style. Do not have a dark back drop or table big enough to get the shot I want. And honestly, I do not want to wait any longer than I have to set this up. So this photo will do.

Cannot resist trying out the volume dial even when it's powered off. It just does not have the same feedback compared to my Marantz SC-11S1 stereo pre-amplifier. In fact it feels worse than the Denon 3808. Not that big a deal as I never used the volume dial on a home theatre pre-amplifier anyway.

The small circle under the volume dial looks like a IR receiver. This may be another small issue in my setup as where this new pre-amplifier is going to be placed, sending IR codes to it may be a problem. Hopefully my Harmony remote has a wide enough beam, or I can get home automation to work well so I can do away with IR altogether.

Overall I like the good clean looks of the Marantz (after I have removed the stickers of course). A hard power off button will be nice but I doubt the AV8805 will consume > 1 W on standby.

The back of the Marantz is a thing of beauty. Sporting seven HDMI inputs at the back and 3 HDMI outputs. I finally have the flexibility of perhaps doing a proper multi-room setup should I have the need to do so in the future.

The USB power supply is a rather nice touch. I can use that to power a small fan if necessary to cool the unit. Or power a future Snakeoil OS running on a Raspberry Pi.

The back looks really really good. The Marantz engineers have placed some emphasis on getting this right. Curiously the component inputs is spaced pretty far from the analogue inputs. This is a problem for my Nintendo Wii so it looks like I either have to find new extension cables for the Wii, or retire it from my home theatre and get something newer (Switch?!)

Sub-woofer inputs.

All XLR connectors are 2-hot. So far I did not see any way to switch the polarity (it could be hidden in the menus). If you are considering getting or already using XLR power amplifiers, make sure you set the amps to 2-hot.

Audyssey will complain if your speakers are wired out of phase.

I'm used to thick manuals. My Denon 3808A, my Marantz 11 Series all shipped with thick manuals. The Marantz 8805 do not have one. There is only a quick start guide.

I was initially disappointed by this. However after loading up their manual I realised Marantz has did the sensible thing. Their electronic guide is good and works best on a tablet. So far I only managed to find the US Edition at time of this writing (Will update here once I find the Australian one).

Here's the electronic manual. The top tabs and bottom buttons are all clickable, bringing you to the sections instantly.

Click the 'Rear' button brings you to this page instantly. Flick to the next pages to find out what they are.

This also means I no longer have to read the entire manual back to back. Search and I find the information I need straight away. After a ten year hiatus, this is a game changer for me. Why are the Japanese always this cutting edge?

Remember to charge up your tablet and load the manual before you setup your Marantz 8805.

Here's my rack with all the legacy gear removed. The last time I cleaned these shelves was a good eleven years ago at least.

The orange cables you see above are RCA cables. I had a lot of difficulty removing these cables from the Denon 3808A. The contacts have fused to the RCA socket after a decade and at times I had to use quick a fair bit of force to rip them out. This sets my mind up to move on to XLR power amps. If anybody in Perth is looking for a high quality 7 channel RCA power amplifier, contact me!

As mentioned earlier I blew up the video board on the Denon 3808. Hence this time round I took a lot of care and precautions. It took an exhausting five hours just to get to this stage. No genies have been released from their circuitry. That's a huge relief.

As you would have noticed there is no 4K blu ray source yet. Unfortunately Oppo decided to exit the AV industry and I have to seek alternative arrangements. The RCA cables are a real pain in the arse to use. I am definitely lookinto into a XLR power amp in the future.

Because I only have a 7 channel amplifier, I am dropping it down to a 5.1.2 setup. Here's a sample of standard Blu Ray material. It works.

Of all things Marantz decides to adopt a 0-100 scale where 0 is full attenuation while 100 is full volume. This goes against everything I stood for and will take me a while (if not a lifetime) to adjust.

The second thing I was afraid of was firmware updates. In anticipation of integrating this into my smart home it is critical for this unit to be on the WIFI network. And it was pouring cats and dogs at the time. Who knows if it's going to work?

But worked it did.

The firmware update happened twice. The second presumably is for Aura3D (see pic in pg 10) but I'm not too sure at this stage. Will find out what the changelog is later.

On first listen without calibration. It is obvious my two fronts are not positioned optimally for imaging. Never noticed this before back with Denon 3808A with Audyssey DSP applied so I expect this to go away after a quick calibration.

Otherwise the sound is surprisingly good. A tad on the bright side at this stage, but based on my experience with the 11 series, I know the HDAM modules will sound sublime once I placed enough hours into them. This is looking very promising indeed!

And that's it for this post. The Audyssey information will be detailed in future article.

The rest of this article is the GUI screenshots of the setup process.

You can probably setup the 8805 using the portal alone. I configured mine by looking at the GUI on the TV.

The quick start guide told me to connect everything first before powering the unit. This wizard is telling me to setup my speakers as I go through the wizard?