Secrets

Marantz AV7005 7.1 A/V Processor

Chris Heinonen

In 2009 I got to review the Marantz AV8003 processor and amp, and they helped to convince me of the benefits of separates over a receiver, and with how important it is overall to the performance of your whole system. In this review, we take a look at the AV7005 7.1 A/V Surround Sound Processor (SSP), which has an excellent feature set, including fully balanced analog audio XLR outputs for all channels.

Processors

Wyred4Sound DAC-2 AND STI-500 Integrated Stereo Amplifier

Secrets

Recently the external DAC has made a bit of a comeback in popularity. While they were once most commonly paired with a digital transport, now you're more likely to see them hooked up as part of a home media server. With disk space now cheap enough that anyone can keep their entire collection archived in a lossless format, and even keep a backup copy of it around, people are using their PC to serve up their audio collection. However, getting the most out of that lossless archive has been a challenge for many as most computer sound cards left much to be desired in the audio quality realm. In this review, we cover the Wyred4Sound DAC-2 and STI-500 Integrated Stereo Amplifier.

DACs

Sony SCD-XA5400ES SACD Player

Secrets

Sony originally came out with the SACD format in 1999. Unfortunately for those of us that invested in the format, mass market support never really came around, though in the audiophile community the format still thrives. The SCD-XA5400ES is one of Sony's latest iterations, and is their current reference model.

SACD Players