Marantz SR6004 A/V Receiver Introduction

Marantz has been going at it for over 50 years producing audio equipment.  Like any company that's been bought and sold over the years, they've had their share of up and down cycles.  Lately it seems Marantz is back on the up cycle, releasing a series of high performance receivers that have the critical features everyone wants while packing the punch necessary to drive a full surround system to theatrical levels.  I was interested in checking out their middle-of-the-road product, the SR6004, which retails for $1,249.  At this price manufacturers must choose the right balance of performance and features.  My job was to see how well Marantz executed this delicate balance while holding true to their strong audio-focused heritage.

Design Overview

The SR6004 is what I call a midsized receiver.  It doesn't take a forklift to move, yet it has a solid feel to it which implies a decent sized power supply to amply drive a full 5.1 or 7.1 speaker configuration.  The SR6004 employs a class A/B power amplifier design and is rated for 110wpc x 7.  I always pop the top off of any receiver I review prior to hooking it up as I like to know what's under the hood.  The EI core transformer appeared to be quite sizable for a receiver of this price class, but those power capacitors I saw near the transformer looked puny.  They were 20,000uF but only rated for 16V.  The minimum voltage caps that should be used to produce the rated 110wpc should be at least 50V.  At first glance I thought I found a major design error in this receiver until Marantz engineering pointed out that the actual power supply caps were hidden underneath the HDMI board and were in fact 10,000uf, 63V rated. 

Marantz SR6004 Power Supply Capacitors

 Marantz engineering also informed me that all of their SR series receivers (including the SR6004) were designed to maintain 70% (77wpc) power output under a 5 channel load and 50% (55wpc) power output under 7 channels driven against its two-channel driven spec.  Of course I planned on validating this claim which you will see in the measurements portion of this review.

Marantz SR6004 Back panel View

 The SR6004 back panel is laid out quite nicely.  It's not a cluster of connections like you find on many other receivers these days partly due to the absence of S-video connections.  There are binding post connections on all 9 pairs of speaker terminals, 4 HDMI inputs and dual HDMI outputs.  The SR6004 has a two-prong detachable power cord, one switched and one unswitched outlet and 7.1 preamp inputs and outputs to allow for future format expansion and external amplifier, respectively. 

Marantz SR6004 Front panel View

 The SR6004 doesn't have the typical boxy feel you get with most receivers.  Instead it sports some sexy curves given it the feeling of a high end gear not dissimilar to their beautifully crafted two-channel reference gear.  The front panel has an array of buttons and inputs.  Oddly, there is an S-video connection which in my opinion would have been better to be an HDMI connector instead.  The front panel also includes a phono input, USB connector for use with flash drives, or music streaming devices such as an iPod, analog audio and composite video and Toslink for digital music sources.

Product Features

The Marantz SR6004 certainly isn't the most feature driven receiver in its price class, but it has the most important ones expected in today's market such as full Dolby TrueHD / DTS HD decoding and Pro Logic IIz post processing for front height channels.  Unfortunately you can't simultaneously use back channels and height channels even with external amplification for a full 9.1 setup like some of the higher end competitor models provision for.  You can however bi-amp your front channels or power a second zone with two of the internal amplifiers in the SR6004 should you only be using 5.1 for the main zone.  

 The Yamaha and Onkyo receivers have one huge advantage over the Marantz.  Unlike the Marantz, they are both networking receivers which allows music streaming from sources such as Rhapsody and Pandora (Onkyo only).  The Onkyo is also much more massive than both of the other receivers making me ponder how they could offer so much more receiver for the money, but will save that thought for a dedicated review when I acquire a sample.  The Marantz does however have one unique feature.  It has the ability to link up with its Bluetooth receiver to stream music from any capable Bluetooth device provided that it's within line of sight and a distance of 30ft.