William Dixon

For many years, the name Marantz has been connected with hi-fi. Saul Marantz founded the company in America, and it immediately gained a name for its valve amplifiers, among other things. The company has long been associated with the massive Philips corporation, but despite reaping significant benefits from that association, not least in recent years […]

The Marantz CD73 is probably not for you if you want all the bells and whistles a CD player can possibly have. The CD73, on the other hand, may be just what you’re searching for if you want faultless Compact Disc replication, superior error-correction capabilities, exceptional shock resistance, and a CD player that looks attractive

Talk of CD’s doom is a little premature, and Marantz has produced a new flagship to show it… It wasn’t the best of times. Most rational people were more worried with wrapping gifts and destroying the Bristol Cream two days before Christmas than with the latest CD technology. But we couldn’t resist the temptation, which

Despite the Marantz refinements and a bit of their design, this is a Philips machine that comes from their Hasselt, Belgium CD player facility. It makes use of a later version of Philips’ CDM4 plastics mechanism, which has progressed from its early flimsiness to become fairly respectable, with a solid metal hub for the disc

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… a firm called Marantz released the CD43, CD53, and CD63 line of CD players. They were arguably the best available at their respective price points at the time, or at least among the best available. And they enjoyed long and happy lives, spawning models

The ambassador from Marantz is treating us like royalty. Only the KI-Signature badges set the CD player and amplifier out from the rest. Not for individuals who simply listen to music in the background. Both the amplifier (left) and the CD player have substantial copper plating and beefed-up power supply, which are trademark Marantz/lshiwata features.

Experienced readers will be aware that Marantz is effectively owned by Philips, and that, while many Marantz equipment is imported from the Far East, its CD players, in particular, are based on Philips designs, despite their outward look. In actuality, Marantz is given a reasonable amount of leeway in deciding which models to target for

Marantz is one of the rare firms that has succeeded in the mainstream while also progressing along the audiophile route. Its ambitions appear to have risen steadily over the last few years, as additional refinements and advancements surface in its Reference range. The SC-5 preamplifier, for example, is available with a battery power supply (of

The Marantz CD-17 KI Signature is the epitome of the Marantz philosophy: always striving for that little bit more. Last year, I tested the CD-63 KI, the first in a small series of special uprated versions of established Marantz goods overseen by Ken -Ishiwata, Marantz’s design wizard. This entailed taking a simple machine, dismantling it,

When it comes to audiophiles’ critique of CD, Ken lshiwata of Marantz International gave his opinion at the end of the 1980s: “It will take some time for the digital medium to be regarded as an audiophile medium – given the shortcomings of the digital medium, I believe it will take around 5 years…” Back