Despite Marantz sharing the same corporate roof as Denon, there still appears to be very little technological crossover between the two. Marantz has made a name for itself with state-of-the-art projectors including the VP-12S3 and VP-12S4 (AVTech Aug 05) while Denon is making a real impact with its ground-shaking AV receivers. Both companies do produce its own top-end universal DVD players but there's little or no commonality between Denon's £2500 DVD-A1XV (AVTech May 05), for example, and the £1500 Marantz DV9500 featured here. If anything, there's just a hint of Pioneer technology within the DV9500, in the form of an LSI used for scaling the digital video prior to the Silicon Image Sil9190 chip which drives its HDMI output. Rather like Pioneer's DV-868AVi, in fact (AVTech Feb 04). There's a big Sony decoder implemented for multichannel SACD but, otherwise, everything about the DV9500 is Marantz through-and-through. In keeping with its audiophile roots, Marantz has specified a comprehensive analogue board, comprising three, two-channel 24bit/192kHz DACs feeding individual HDAM op-amps for each channel. This discrete circuitry replaces the more common integrated op-amps used elsewhere and gives Marantz far greater control over the final sound of its player regardless of whether there's a CD, an SACD, DVD-A or DVD-V disc in the drawer.
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