Marantz 7001 or cambridge 840A ?

I have the Marantz 7002 and love it. It has all the features and also produces a rich warm sound! Have it hooked up to my set-up now for a week after going through several other receivers! You have already heard the Mrantz and thought it was a very nice set-up, why spend an extra $300 on something you haven't.

Marantz

I am always to quick to jump on the Marantz bandwagon just because I have a lot of their gear, and it's great.

Marantz pm7001 is pushing 100W into 4 ohms which is the impedance of the LSi 15's you are talking about. I suspect it would drive them nicely since Marantz is usually very conservative on their ratings, although most will tell you to look for at least 200 watts to drive the LSi line so you are potentially borderline.

http://us.marantz.com/Products/1647.asp

I can tell you that Marantz has great equipment and tech support. You can hit their website with an email and get a same day response if you have any question.

If you are talking about that 840A Cambridge for only a few hundred more it may be worth it. I love Marantz, but on paper that 840 looks like a lot more clean watts which will definitely help drive your 15's. It does look like the newer version is much more highly rated in reviews.

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/series.php?SID=35&Title=840+Stereo

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/assets/documents/Hi-FiChoiceNov06840Alicensedreprint840A-conc.pdf

I would also look at Audiogon and see what price your opportunity is vs. what the market is bringing. Maybe a solution is to buy them both and sell one for a small profit to finance the other.

Cambridge actually has great technical support as well, and the 840A is an excellent integrated amp. I've got a chance to pick up an 840A/840C combo soon, and might do it just for the fun of it. For the price, I don't think you would go wrong with the C.A. Of course, I am a little biased.....

BTW, the Marantz is no slouch either.

I just looked at the specs again.

The Marantz weighs 23 lbs.
The Cambridge Audio weighs 33lbs.
The Denon weighs 52 lbs.

Although the much more expensive Krell integrated only weighs 33 lbs.

Oh well, it's your choice. But I still think 23 lbs is a bit too light weight for heavy duty use.

now that would be reccomending. I have CA640 its a lovely piece of equipment te 840 could only be sweeter i my books. Demo and see which sound u like better. If you go the cheaper route ou at least can take the wifey out for a nice dinner with the extra 300 bucks...then everyone's happy

Where did you get it for that cheap?

furball, i'll second on the denon, more like a 200 watt amp. i owned this amp for a while, compared it at the time to a krell 300il and sunfire reference(250 watts) amp, preferred the denon. try a tube preamp with it as this is it's weak spot and it will blow you away. i used it with the dodd entry level preamp, replaced mine with a $2500 amp and $3000 tube pre.

polkseller wrote: »

the denon pma-2000 is very expensive and hard to find.

I saw under the pioneer vsx-9120 14 big mosfet-like devices ( mz sap 17 , 7002) fixed by copper screws to heatsink and a very big 650VA transformer with two Nichicon 15000nf caps. Good power for RTI speakers.

what are those mosfet like devices anyway ? 2 per channel only ?

This is pretty typical of most receivers. Which is fine for plenty of people, but is really pretty small in the world of class A/B amplifiers. The Adcom GFA-5300 is only rated at 80wpc 8ohms, and 125wpc at 4ohms. Thats a total of 250watts at 4ohms with 40,000uf, and a slightly smaller transformer. Now the receiver is using it to put out 770 total watts with roughly the same power supply capability. The 6ohm specs are rated at 1% thd at 1khz, and a total of 1050watts. I didn't count this spec do to its overly forgiving frequency/distortion specs. The picture I painted isn't as ugly as it appears, because all channels aren't driven at the same time. I just wanted to share what I have learned in my audio travels, and studying amps.