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Marantz Owners and Cabling

Posted by Chris K. (A) on January 29, 2023 at 08:28:24

I've become friends online with a fellow music enthusiast after he wrote a letter to Stereophile mostly dismissing the significance of cables. He owns Marantz gear (integrated amp and SACD player, each in the $3,000 range)) and is a bit critical of me for my choices (Parasound amp, SST Thoebes II preamp, NuPrime transport, etc.). He loves Marantz, thinks I should get it and be done, and suggests I forget about cabling as being important. I did try a lower priced Marantz universal player a few years ago, but found it overly warm and veiled. At the time I owned a TEAC CD-1000 and when I hooked it up again, there was no comparison; the TEAC was clearly superior.

As I suggested to my friend, my unscientific hypothesis is that Marantz owners either don't care much about cabling and/or that Marantz gear simply may not highlight differences as much in cabling as other equipment does. So, I did a quick search among our inmate systems here using "Marantz" as one search term and "Parasound" as the keyword in a separate search in order to see what the dominant types of cabling are in various setups. To be fair, I looked just at the top 25 results.

First, I categorized two ways: 1. Systems using predominantly Monster, generic, DIY, or other basic non-audiophile brands available at Best Buy, Walmart, etc. 2. Systems using primarily audiophile brands (Audioquest, Kimber, Cardas, Straightwire, MIT, Analysis Plus, Wireworld, Acoustic Zen, Shunyata, Morrow, Audience, and numerous other names we all recognize).

Results I found are this: One inmate had a system with both Parasound and Marantz. Out of the 24 remaining Parasound systems, 21/24 had a majority or all of their wires being audiophile brands. I then looked at 24 Marantz systems and found only 9/24 using audiophile brand cabling primarily. In fact, a couple of the Marantz systems didn't list a brand, but simply described it as "copper" or "cheap" in addition to the DIY ones, etc.

So, and I'd love owners of Marantz gear especially to chime in, do Marantz owners simply not care that much about cables or does Marantz equipment not call attention to cable quality or types as much as other brands might?

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