Unbeatable performance, why buy separates?

Need separate amps to hear EX/ THX, The remote is in the dumpster, so is the manual

Awesome in every way. Sounds as good as most of the separates out there. The only better component system i can think of are the Lexicon MC-1 and the Pastlabs x5. Otherwise, this is an unbeatable bargain. I am lazy and want the convenience of an AV receiver. I listen to movies more than music, and the details and clarity of everything in the soundtrack is unbelievable. Soundstaging in 2 channel is something i dont listen to very often, but the soundstaging and experience even in 2 channel mode is awesome. the sweet spot is widely dispersed and you can hear every water drop and clink in U 571 as well as every single fan in the stands screaming for blood in gladiator. Does it make any sense to go to the movies after you've heard this receiver?
Only one thing, do yourself a favor and buy the phillips pronto or the RC5000i remote and some nice speakers to harness the beauty of this beast.
my speakers are composed of M&K 150's with the 350 sub.

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ALL of them, including separates

power,clarity,imaging,remote,multi room,and beyond all this it's the most reliable reciever i have ever used

if it has any i don't know about them

I timber matched with all paridigm referance LCR450 & 8 fifteens,running two 3b brystons.This is the only a/v receiver I have found to keep up, while still having unmatchable clarity,overall I think the marantz SR18 is untouchable for price and power. People who think that the marantz SR18 isn't what it's cracked up to be obviously have not heard or owned one.

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kenwood,onkyo,denon

Where do I start........

does not come with CR5000i <--dreaming here hehehehe sorry does not count

So far fantastic, and certainly has that "something special" that the SR-19 was lacking. Though bolth units are amazing, this one just has the magic.

Just upgraded from SR-19 so I will let you all know my thoughts on this one in the comming weeks.

5*****'s for Quality, and at $2700.00 CDN 5*****'s for overall value and Kicking Performance.

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does not bake bread....gives terrible backrubs =]

Ok I have now matched the system with speakers as follows, Snell Acoustics J/II, Energy RVSS rear Dipole,s Mission 77ci center, Big Energy sub, had it for a while.

I have a small room so the RVSS work great, they are soft dome and timbre match nicely with the Snells, the center channel speaks for itself, very nice indeed, and also soft dome tweeter equiped. The system just rocks. This is modest compared to most of you but this reciever matched with the Marantz DV-18 and the RC5000i make for a sweet system I can be very proud of.

My Brother and Nephew left the other day shaking their heads muttering to them selves that they now KNOW what they have to do....kinda makes me proud. DTS is fabulous, and channel seperation is fabulous even with the radiating dipoles in the corners of the room. I decided on Dipoles because my couch is against the back wall, in this situation they are perfect, and with this system do a fabulous job of putting information behind the seating area, not an easy thing to do.

The matrix is amazing, again clear crisp LOUD, every detail comes alive with nuance and clearity. This amp has warmed up as it has broken in and has made for a very pleasing experience, it is not assulting, though it can be if it needs to be. in some ways the amp is overkill for the size of this room, but the sound....it's perfect. I wish I could be scientific, but I can't, it's just right for my setup. As I get more info I will pass it on, as well as a more critical review of what this thing does to movies...

I have gotten alot of email about pricing and where I picked this unit up. If you are interested in this product and live anywhere in Canada....and for you american folks <
Have a great day folks, and I will try to post a better review soon.

It is not the BEST in existence, but I compare it only to what I know, so I will give it 5 stars for being just gorgeous in pretty much every way.

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PLEASE SEPARATE THE MARANTZ RECEVIER MODELS WITH THEIR OWN LISTINGS. YOU HAVE THE SR-18,THE-SR18ex and the SR-14ex all together. No wonder it took me months to wonder why I couldn't find them. You have the SR-18ex and SR-14ex cleverly hidden in the SR-18 reviews. THANK-YOU.

Power, Remote, Beautiful styling, Not a bunch of useless DSP modes like Yamaha.

None so far. But packaging the rc-5000 remote instead would have been sweet.

Compared to the Yamaha, the SR-18 blows it away. Not even close. Yamaha puts too much into useless surround modes no one will ever use. My son and wife both noticed a tremendous difference immediately when I put the DVD for "End of Days". The surround sound in 5.1 is amazing, hard to describe. "End of Days" was the first DVD we watched on the SR-18, and we knew right-a-way we made a major improvement with this purchase. The DTS music sounds wonderful too and the Dolby Digital mode rocks. I have yet to hear anything close to the quality of this unit. Also I can not say enough great things about the build quality and the superb remote (however I still would prefer the rc-5000).

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Yamaha dsp-a3090

I'll keep this to the point, I LOVE this receiver! Incredibly clean power with deep reserves. Beautifully styled with a wonderfully clean straightforward design that finally hides all the clutter and still makes it usable, a GREAT remote that finally let's me get rid of all that clutter!), but above all else I love the sound this unit produces!

Programming the remote is tedious, but once done you can't
live without it and wonder how you ever did without it. On/Off switch (see below)

I was NOT orginally looking at the SR-18 when I began looking for a replacement for my separates. I was looking
very intently at a new Pioneer Elite 29 or a Denon unit and
was within a whisker of putting down my money on a Denon
replacement when the salesman put me in charge of the
switching system so I could spend some time alone listening to CD's I had brought with me (compared on similar speakers of course). I was was switching between a DENON and two Pioneer Elites when I decided to see what the lone Marantz and other "lesser" units sounded like. To
keep it simple, the Marantz was so dynamic with clear open
highs and a transparency so outstanding that I simply could not believe what my ears were telling me! I COULDN'T STOP SMILING IT WAS SO GOOD!!! I push the Marantz through the Pachelbel Canon, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, R&B with Ray
Charles Georgia & Stevie Ray Vaughn's best, and then for final measure a test cd for good measure. WOW is all I could say! - That and charge it!

As for gripes they are very minor. The manual stinks, but is usable. The remote eats batteries fairly quickly in my opinion, but to be fair it's probably my fault as I have the sound on and the illumination turned all the way up (buy two sets of rechargeable batteries and all is well). I wish I had an extra digitial and component input/output set for future expansion. Also I wish the unit had a button on the faceplate that lets me turn it off without losing the ability to turn it back on again with the remote. THAT'S IT!

In the end you buy this unit for the sound - and does it ever deliver!!!

(One addtional gripe. Buying this unit will results a deeper hit to the wallet than is obvious at first - now I have to get a pair of 803's with a Sunfire subwoofer to do this receiver justice!)

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Pioneer Elite (Replaced by the SR-18), Denon, Sony ES

Clean, clear bass. Exceptional stereo imaging. Strong power, drives ESL's with ease. Able to configure any Digital, or Analog connector to Any of the 8 "devices" in it.

Remote.

What can I say? Most of it has been said below. I can only add to, and correct a couple of things.

Myth #1: If you set the main speakers to large and the amp to 2 channel mode, it disables the subwoofer out.

The subout is NOT turned off when setting the main speakers to large in 2 channel mode. The manual makes a fuzzy reference to what happens when you set the mains to large. What it says is that THX mode is no longer used in that situation. Which means that the full signal is sent to the fronts, instead of chopping it at 80Hz, like the THX encoding does. It does not turn off the subout. How do I know this? I have a Velodyne F1800XR, with the power set to automatically come on when it is fed a signal. And with the mains set to large, and the amp in 2-channel mode, the Velodyne powers on and produces the same sweet, strong bass as it does in any other mode. Read the manual and understand it. The manual says, on any speaker that is set to large, it disables the THX "spec" on that speaker. THX calls for any sound 80Hz or below to be fed to the subwoofer, not the other speakers. So if the speaker is set to large it gets fed the whole signal, not the chopped up THX signal.

The stereo imaging, and transparent/musical sound is second to none, as far as solidstate amps go. It is very smooth, and doesn't even balk in the least at driving 5 ESL speakers.

I can't stress how useful it is to be able to select which input goes with which device. In the past I have had some problems, because other amps decided that CD players would only have a TOS digital out, and mine had Coax, and vice versa. On the SR-18, there is a very easy to understand setup menu where you can select which input(s) go with each device. You can have both analog and digital connectors assigned to the same input device, and then switch between those with a simple button push. Very Nice feature.

For some real enjoyment, if you are an eagles fan, I highly recommend the DTS Hell Freezes Over DVD. The incredible sound and filmography are beautiful, and the extra bonus track where they basically took a speaker per a band member and have them singing all around you, each from their own speaker was fantastic. At this point I was glad I didn't skimp on the surround speakers. Having all the speakers the same quality makes it that much more engrossing.

Based on my in home testing of the Dennon AVR-5700, and Pioneer Elite series, the Marantz was the best one out of that group, to drive the ESL's and produce the cleanest, smoothest sound in all applications.

As mentioned below, it has a VERY low noise floor. Very dynamic, changes from the quiet floor to loud passages and back. DTS/AC-3 movies are incredible. This amp is able to drive the ESL's and sub, with much greater authority then the others. I don't quite know how, but the subwoofer has cleaner, harder punching lows.

Just try playing "In Gods Hands", with the HUGE waves breaking over you. If you don't feel the "crunch" as the waves break, then you don't know what you are missing.

Bad point: The Remote.
Try as I might I can't get it to program my DVD/CD/TV/CABLE remote signals into itself. I am sure it is possible, I may just not understand the simple steps in the manual about it. I have followed the manual to the letter and still no go. However I have relabeled the amp and tuner stuff and reconfigured those settings to the max. It was easy and straight forward. Macro setup at least turns on the amp and switches to DVD, sets it to DTS, so it is a two button press to movies, not quite the one button I wanted, but still useable by the wife and kid.

My setup:

Amp: Marantz SR-18 Gold. (What can I say, it matches the 300-DC's really well.

Power Amp: Marantz 300-DC pre-out to the mains.

DVD/CD: Toshiba 5109 to be replaced with Marantz DV-18mk2 when they release it.

Speakers:
Front Left/Right, Surround Left/Right: Martin Logan Aerius I's
Center: Martin Logan Logos.

SubWoofer: Velodyne F1800XR

InterConnects and Speaker wires: MonsterCable Z300i/Z2 reference series

Television: Sony KV36XBR250

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Dennon, Pioneer

everything

nothing

I can't believe some person would write two lines and say this is a bad receiver. Obviously they are doing that because they are jealous of the quality of this receiver.

Imagine if this site could get real reviews instead of those ones that are sued just to drop the score down.

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none

Everything

nothing really

Oh yeah, this receiver is just so horrible. Give me a break.

Anyone who gives this receiver 1 star (remeber that is a 20% overall ranking) is on crack. This is a beautiful receiver and is easily one of the top out there.

While they aren't the be-all, end-all for reviews, I find it funny tha pro audio reviewers have basically loved this receiver putting it at the top of its class yet that guy Rob says it is horrible and sounds bad. Seems like he must know more than everyone else. Oh but wait...I for got he is a so-called "audiophile" so he msut know more than everyone.

Anyway, people, this is great receiver. While it might not have the new EX decoding and stuff, it still sounds fantastic with music and movies.

I am very thankful I bought this puppy, especially for the price I paid in December. That was cheap.