BrianZ
Active Member
Some have already read my other thread about setting it up, but I wanted to dedicate a thread to my experience so far.
I'm coming from a long history of exclusively 2 channel, older receivers for all my media in a 2.1 system. It was only in the last few years I finally got the sub, but I just couldn't get anything resembling a reasonably flat low end response with just the crossover on the sub (my Harman Kardon receiver didn't have bass management). The spikes I was getting in the 60-100Hz range were so profound that I had to keep the sub at a rather low level, thus cutting out much of the lowest end thump, while also accentuating the valleys (some bass notes would simply disappear!). It was a bummer and I finally had enough, so I bit the bullet and decided to upgrade to a modern AVR with bass management.
Bottom line is: it's amazing. The improvement in nearly all frequencies is noticeable. Warm, detailed and much flatter in the lows. Yes I still have peaks & valleys here and there due to room issues, and so I'm still deciding where exactly the crossover should be. But this is just tweaking an already great sound. One of these days I'm gonna break out the Radio Shack meter and run some Room EQ Wizard analyses to get a better picture of what's happening. I have a set of bass port plugs for my mains that might even come into play. We'll see.
Also want to mention that a very nice surprise is the SR6009's headphone jack. This is a major improvement over the HK 3490, which had a relatively noisy and harsh headphone circuit. But the Marantz's headphone amp sounds every bit as sweet and silent as the primary amp. Late night movies and tv are much more satisfying. I had no idea what I was tolerating.
So that's it! A great unit and an amazing deal from Accessories4less even ($500 factory refurbished, looks mint new). No issues at all so far.
Here's the whole audio system:
Sources: PS3 (bluray & cd's), FiiO X3 DAP (digital music via analog line out), Amazon Fire TV (streaming video), Verizon FiOS cable
Main speakers: PSB Synchrony One B (large bookshelf)
Sub: Dayton Audio Titanic 10" kit
Marantz SR6009, with current favorite crossover of 100 Hz, but definitely subject to change
I'm coming from a long history of exclusively 2 channel, older receivers for all my media in a 2.1 system. It was only in the last few years I finally got the sub, but I just couldn't get anything resembling a reasonably flat low end response with just the crossover on the sub (my Harman Kardon receiver didn't have bass management). The spikes I was getting in the 60-100Hz range were so profound that I had to keep the sub at a rather low level, thus cutting out much of the lowest end thump, while also accentuating the valleys (some bass notes would simply disappear!). It was a bummer and I finally had enough, so I bit the bullet and decided to upgrade to a modern AVR with bass management.
Bottom line is: it's amazing. The improvement in nearly all frequencies is noticeable. Warm, detailed and much flatter in the lows. Yes I still have peaks & valleys here and there due to room issues, and so I'm still deciding where exactly the crossover should be. But this is just tweaking an already great sound. One of these days I'm gonna break out the Radio Shack meter and run some Room EQ Wizard analyses to get a better picture of what's happening. I have a set of bass port plugs for my mains that might even come into play. We'll see.
Also want to mention that a very nice surprise is the SR6009's headphone jack. This is a major improvement over the HK 3490, which had a relatively noisy and harsh headphone circuit. But the Marantz's headphone amp sounds every bit as sweet and silent as the primary amp. Late night movies and tv are much more satisfying. I had no idea what I was tolerating.
So that's it! A great unit and an amazing deal from Accessories4less even ($500 factory refurbished, looks mint new). No issues at all so far.
Here's the whole audio system:
Sources: PS3 (bluray & cd's), FiiO X3 DAP (digital music via analog line out), Amazon Fire TV (streaming video), Verizon FiOS cable
Main speakers: PSB Synchrony One B (large bookshelf)
Sub: Dayton Audio Titanic 10" kit
Marantz SR6009, with current favorite crossover of 100 Hz, but definitely subject to change
