The £700 SA8003 player incorporates lessons learnt during the development of the company's £5000 SA-7S1 model. It uses the new Marantz M1 solid metal chassis and M1 front panel design.
This is a rigid, dual-layer enforced design with a thick anodised aluminium front panel, an additional heavy bottom plate and a three-piece front panel made from thick aluminium and reinforced glass fibre resin. All of this is intended to minimise mechanical vibration, says Marantz.
New Zylan loading mechanism
What's more, the chassis and rear panel are copper plated to help reduce signal-degrading electromagnetic radiaton.
Under the skin the SA8003 uses a new Zylan loading mechanism, and a Cirrus Logic 24-bit/192kHz, CS4398 digital-to-analogue converter with DSD (Direct Stream Digital) support.
You'll also find bespoke thick film capacitors, Shottky diodes and Marantz's SA-2 Hyper Dynamic Amplifier Modules (HDAM).
A USB port allows users to connect lossless digital music files directly to the player's DAC for optimum quality replay.
Matching stereo amplifier
The matching PM8003 stereo amplifier delivers 200W and has at its heart an over-sized, bespoke toroidal transformer. This low impedance, wide-bandwidth power supply ensures a "massive reserve of energy with instantaneous current delivery capability, to drive even difficult speaker loads with ease", claims Marantz.
And the dual-mono circuit design – with short, direct and mirror imaged signal paths – is designed to provide improved stereo imaging by implementing separate, but identical, left and right channel circuits.
Completing the package is a current feedback MM (moving magnet) phono stage directly derived from the company's £2500 SC-11S1 Premium range preamp.
The Marantz SA8003 is available now, the PM8003 will follow in October.
Read Ketan Bharadia's blog about his recent visit to Marantz's Eindhoven HQ with Ken ishiwata.