Audio Video News

Marantz today unveiled the Premium 10 Series featuring “technology designed to deliver the best possible sound from high-resolution audio formats and CD alike.”

The series comprises two flagship models slated for delivery in January 2017: the SA-10 SACD/CD player/DAC ($6,999) and PM-10 amplifier ($7,999).

Marantz describes the SA-10 as the first player/USB-DAC that doesn’t actually have a DAC: It replaces the conventional digital-to-audio converter (DAC) with a proprietary two-stage conversion process.

Hailed as “the best integrated amplifier Marantz has ever produced,” the 2 x 400-watt PM-10 is an all-analog purist design featuring dual-mono construction, a balanced signal path, and a discrete phono stage for moving coil and moving magnet cartridges.

Marantz tells the story behind the SA-10:

The idea for the Marantz SA-10 was simple: build the best disc player/DAC the company has ever made. And that meant going back to basics in every area. From the disc transport itself to the way the digital signals are processed, as well as ensuring the design was entirely future-proof by providing an asynchronous USB-B input for the connection of a computer, this model is advanced.

To play SACD, CD, DVD-R/RW, and CD-R/RW discs, the Marantz team avoided the usual route taken in players of this kind, using an ‘off-the-shelf’ DVD-ROM drive of the kind commonly found in computers. Instead, and in their quest for ultimate sound quality, they built their own: the new SACD-M3, the latest in an acclaimed range of disc mechanisms built for Marantz players, is unique to the SA-10, and can play not just CDs and SACDs, but also high-resolution audio stored on either CD or DVD recordable media…

The digital-to-analog conversion process, available to both discs and external sources connected to the player’s digital inputs (which include asynchronous USB for the connection of a computer), is equally innovative. Rather than down-converting ultra-high-resolution files to suit a conventional digital to analog converter, as happens in some rival designs, the SA-10 upconverts everything to DSD256, in a process known as Marantz Musical Mastering-Conversion.

Two dedicated master clocks are used to ensure all digital signals are upsampled directly to DSD 256&mcash;or four times the SACD standard—without any need for sample rate conversion. And there’s a choice of two filter settings to allow the listener to shape the sound.

But why do this? Well, the other half of the Marantz Musical Mastering package—MMM-Stream—is what prepares this DSD256 signal for analog output to an amplifier. Based on technology going back to early days of Bitstream conversion, this enables an ultra-simple conversion process.

Senior Electronics Engineer Rainer Finck has been working on Marantz Reference CD players for two decades, and was central to the SA-10 project. According to Rainer, “As I was one of the Philips engineers way back in the late 80s, and worked on the company’s Bitstream converters—the last one was the DAC-7—we could draw on all this knowledge to build our own bitstream converter for the SA-10.”

The output from the MMM-Conversion process is, in effect, already an analog signal, being a very high-frequency stream of single pulses. With all the hard digital work done, this stream needs nothing more than a very high-quality low-pass filter to deliver the purest possible analog audio output. For all its apparent complexity, this is actually a very simple, very elegant solution to digital processing—and it’s unique to the Marantz SA-10. That’s why Marantz says it’s the first player/USB converter without a DAC—it doesn’t need one.

Marantz tells the story behind the PM-10:

Marantz started as an amplifier company with its famous original Audio Consolette pre-amplifier back in the 1950s. Since then it has made many classic products, from the Model 7/8 preamp/power amp all the way through to the massive Project T1 valve amplifiers of the 1990s. It was only fitting that the amplifier in this New Reference line should be something very special—the Marantz PM-10.

Effectively a preamplifier and a pair of monobloc power amps in a single unit, the PM-10 uses switching power amplification to deliver huge power—200 watts per channel into 8 ohms, and 400Wpc into 4 ohms. This ensures it can drive a wide range of speakers, and instant high-current power supplies to deliver the dynamics of even the most demanding music.

In terms of power supplies, the PM-10 has separate supplies for the preamplifier and each of the power amplifier channels. Thus enabling the delicate signals passing through the preamp aren’t affected by the demands of the high power output stages. There’s also a dedicated supply for the microprocessor controlling volume adjustment, input selection and other components, ensuring no noise from the control section finds its way in to the audio path.

The layout is fully balanced, from the input section all the way through to the final power amplifier section. It has two sets of balanced inputs, and also conventional unbalanced line-level inputs (plus a high-quality phono stage); the signal from these inputs being converted to balanced working before being passed through the amplifier. This ensures optimal signal purity and rejection of interference.

The preamp uses the famous Marantz Hyper-Dynamic Amplifier Modules (or HDAMs). These are tiny amplifiers in miniature, built from discrete components for the best possible sound quality, rather than using the ‘chip-amps’ found in rival designs.

To make the most of that purity of design, the PM-10 is designed with the option of working in ‘Purest Mode’: when engaged, this deactivates any superfluous circuits, giving the signal the cleanest possible path through the amplifier. There’s also a Power Amp Direct input, taking the signal straight from the input section to the power stage to allow the PM-10 to work as a pure power amplifier.

The SA-10 and PM-10 are constructed with a double-layered copper-plated chassis to reject mechanical and electrical interference and casework made of non-magnetic aluminum panels with custom-made die-cast aluminum feet. The PM-10’s speaker terminals are also made of high-purity solid copper.

For more information, visit us.marantz.com.