PLAYBACK 23: Parasound P7 Multichannel Preamp & Marantz AV8003 A/V Pre-Tuner

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RonLev (not verified) -- Thu, 09/03/2009 - 11:52

It is interesting--and telling--that the audio quality of well-made mid-market electronics (Marantz) is now equaling the higher-priced "purist" high-end products (Parasound)--and you get a lot more flexibility to boot.   The idiosyncratic sound of the Audio Research is very troubling--if it sounds "different", I doubt that it can be better, since the principle of high fidelity performance is that all the competition should be sounding more similar the more accurate they become.    If this trend continues (better quality mid-market products, escalating prices of high-end products), it simply won't be cost-effective to buy high-end products anymore except for the snob appeal. 
 
Ron Levine
Philadelphia

The name you used belongs to a registered user. (not verified) -- Thu, 09/03/2009 - 13:37

Your comparisons echo the comments I made about the AV8003 on Amazon's web site yesterday. A friend of mine, after reading my comments, questioned whether or not I was being completely objective in my opinion that the analog section of the AV8003 is as good as those on some very high end 2-channel preamps that I've auditioned.  I told him that absolute objectivity is difficult (as I own an AV8003) and that I might be justifiying my purchase in my own mind but that I felt I was being honest in my evaluation. Your article lends some credibility to my earlier assertion. I can hardly wait to hear his reaction to it.
I'm not sure how your unit was configured, but I've discovered that CD playback using the analogue out from either my Marantz DV9600 or Oppo BD83 and selecting Pure Direct mode on the AV8300 produces a sound that is hard to beat in my book.
Theoretically, a preamp should do nothing to the original signal other than possibly add some gain before sending it on to the amplifier so one would expect more similarities than differences amongst the various designs. Apparently, there is not a lot of differences in gain stages of preamps? The real differences in controllers become more apparent when they are performing D to A conversions, as there seems to be detectable differences in the various chipsets and implementations.
As a side note, I prefer the audio from theMarantz player over the Oppo in the described configuration although they both sound very good.

Rip (not verified) -- Thu, 09/03/2009 - 15:05

 

 
This is probably just my personal perception but when there is a review of something like a pre-amp it would seem nice to mention the amps that compliment or have been used to define these products along with any other equipment in the chain between the source and the listener?  Did I miss this?

xyz (not verified) -- Thu, 09/03/2009 - 22:05

I wound up retunring two different P7s becasue they had an identical hashy noise coming from one channel from balanced outputs. Yes, I was careful to isolate it to the P7 by changing channel connectors from the sources and also to the amp. They were several hundred apart in serial number, so I wonder if this is some kind of weird problem they have. Was not present from the unbalanced outputs. Was quite evident from my high efficeincy Genesis speakers, but lower efficiency Soundlabs did not suffer to anywhere near the same degree.

music guy (not verified) -- Fri, 09/11/2009 - 01:32

I've owned the P7 for about 2 months, and have had the AV8003 for almost a week, with lots of listening hours on both.  No conclusions yet, but did want to share that I initially heard the same sibilance referred to in the article ("emphasized the leading edge of treble sounds") in the P7.  It was especially noticeable on the front edge of brass notes.  All that said, it went away about a week or two.  As an orchestral musical, I'm very fussy about accurate tonal quality, and I would have sent the unit right back had it not resolved.

If there’s interest, will post more after reaching conclusions.

rtayl765 (not verified) -- Fri, 09/25/2009 - 16:15

This review was informative,but will there be a full review as a Surround sound processor?

Leslie Ann Jones (not verified) -- Thu, 10/01/2009 - 15:13

I noticed the P7 has a phono preamp and the Marantz does not. Might make a difference to some.

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