28 Australian

ON TEST

that many of the hi-res audio tracks available for sale actually deliver no more resolution than the same music on CD (check out the hi-res music reviews in Sound & Image Magazine, which prove that the trickery in the hi-res music supply chain exposed in Hi-Fi News, June 2001 (a précis of which can be found here: www.tinyurl.com/itrax-HD) is still going on, while other tests have shown that even when a hi-res track is truly high-res—in that it’s been recorded at a higher sampling rate and/or bit-depth than CD (which is 16-bit/44.1kHz)—very few people can pick the difference between the music on the high-res format and the same music on CD… not to mention that some of the people who can pick the difference actually prefer the CD version.

However, the other thing going for the CD format is not only its high quality, but also that almost every piece of music ever recorded is available on CD. That fact alone will guarantee not only the CD’s longevity as a format, but also its continued popularity. Trust me, despite all the hype of myriad vested interests that say all music will be on-line, the CD isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and, if it is finally displaced, it’s most likely to be by a similar disc format: High Fidelity Pure Audio, which is currently being

Wow! While I wasn’t looking Marantz not only decided to outfit one of its lowest-priced CD player with features pre-

viously reserved for its high-end models, but also decided to build in a high-performance DAC to guarantee state-of-the-art sound qual-ity. And it’s all packaged in one of Marantz’s trademark ‘gold’ chassis, so the CD5004 looks so good in the flesh that I figure that if any of your friends ever asks how much you paid for it, you could tell them almost anything you like… and they’d believe you.

The equipmenTAs a CD player, the Marantz CD5004 is more than just a CD player, because it will also play CD-R and CD-RW discs you’ve burned yourself, either with standard ‘Red Book’ files, or with MP3 or WMA files. So if you can’t be bothered changing discs every hour or so during a dinner party, or while you’re listen-ing to background music, you could burn a disc full of MP3 files and, once you’ve started playback, you wouldn’t have to change discs for nearly 6 hours.

However, the beauty of the CD format is that it’s a high-quality audio format (unlike either WMA or MP3). Indeed despite all the publicity about hi-res audio files, the fact is

championed by Universal Music. [See story here: www.tinyurl.com/pure-audio]

When you’re playing back a CD on the CD5004, Marantz has given you lots of playback options. You can play back tracks in the order the artist intended them to be played, or you can program tracks for playback in any order you like. You can have a track repeat over and over, or a disc repeat over and over, or you can choose for just some tracks on a disc to be played repeatedly. The Marantz CD5004 even has Automatic Music Scanning (AMS), which will play the first few seconds of each track in turn. Unlike earlier AMS implementations, which didn’t allow you to specify how much of a track would be played, the version on the CD5004 lets you select between 10, 20 and 30 seconds of playback time.

You can also choose A–B repeat mode, which allows you to play a small section within a track over and over. It’s most often used by musicians wishing to learn a particular riff or motif, or even a complete musical phrase. In short, it’s an incredibly useful mode for anyone who’s learning any type of musical instrument. And speaking of learning a musical instrument, if you’re using the A–B mode to learn a piece (or you want to play along with an entire CD),

cd player

Marantz CD5004

29avhub.com.au

Marantz cd5004 cd player ON TEST

playing. Whereas I would have expected the automatic off mode to be the default mode, it isn’t. If you want to be ‘green’ and save power (and extend the operating life of the CD player itself) you need to select the ‘Auto Standby’ mode manually.

Rather puzzlingly, Marantz has included a whole lot of functions aimed at allowing you to make analogue recordings (a peak level search function, timer functions so you can pause CD playback once one side of a cassette tape has been filled… and so on. I guess you can guess why I was puzzled. Who uses cassettes these days? In fact, who uses any type of analogue recording devices these days? As a result, I can only hazard a guess that these are ‘legacy’ features that would have been more expensive to take out than leave in, or there are some countries in the world that still have need of these functions. (Needless to say, if you personally still make analogue recordings from CD, the Marantz CD5004 obviously has your name written all over it, and I apologise for disparaging you!)

The Marantz CD5004 is also capable of displaying CD-Text. You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of CD-Text, because although this facility was built into the CD format when it was first developed back in the late 70s, very (and I mean very) few record companies ever bothered to include any CD-Text data on their CDs. Then, after 20 years, when CD sales started to slow down and some companies finally thought it might be a good idea to include some ‘added value’ with their releases, if only to compete with iTunes, these same companies started to include CD-Text on their discs, but failed to properly publicise the discs that had the CD-Text included. As you’ve probably already guessed, you already know what CD-Text is: it’s basically the ability to see, when playing any particular track, the title of the album it’s on, the title of the track itself, the name of the artist performing it, the name of the lyricist, the name of the composer and, if appropriate, the name of the arranger. I can almost (and note that I said ‘almost’) forgive record companies for not including this information on CDs back in the 80s, when CD was the only game in town so they had no competition, but the fact that so few companies are including CD-Text on modern CDs frankly beggars belief. Anyway, enough of this particular rant. The point is that if you have CDs in your collection that contain CD-Text information (and I bet that you do), the CD5004 will display this information on its front-panel display: there’s no need for a separate computer monitor of any sort.

Internally, the CD5004 uses a Cirrus Logic CS4392 DAC which is

Marantz CD5004 CD Player

Brand: MarantzModel: CD5004Category: CD PlayerrrP: $490Warranty: Three yearsDistributor: Qualifi Pty ltdaddress: 24 lionel road Mt Waverley VIC 3149

1800 242 426 (03) 8542 1111 info@qualifi.com.au www.qualifi.com.au

readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the Marantz CD5004 CD Player should continue on and read the laBOraTOry rePOrT published on page 32. readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/or displayed using graphs

and/or photographs should be construed as applying only to the specific sample tested.

Lab Report on page 32

• Feature-packed• Brilliant sound quality• Multi-format

playback

• lacks digital input• Noisy disc drawer• No variable output

laB rePOrT

Marantz has fitted the CD5004 with a pitch control, so that instead of having to re-tune your instrument every time you play along with a CD (pretty difficult if your preferred instrument is a piano!) you can instead use the CD5004’s pitch control to match the pitch of the CD to that of your instrument. (You can’t use the pitch control with WMA or MP3 files though.)

In yet another boon for people learning a musical instrument, there’s a ‘Quick Replay’ mode that can be set anywhere between 5 and 60 seconds. Once set, pressing the track skip mode will force the music to skip back the preset number of seconds and then start play again. I would have loved this to be linked to a footswitch but since there isn’t this facility, the closest you can get to ‘remote’ operation is by using the infra-red remote control.

I couldn’t leave my discussion of programming modes available on the CD5004 without telling you that it has one of my favourites, which is the ‘track skip’ programming sometimes known as ‘delete program playback’. This mode allows you to specify tracks on a CD that you do not want to play. So in this mode, if you don’t like track 5 on a CD, you can just program the CD5004 to skip it entirely. Why ‘delete programming’ is so good is that it saves so much time and effort: If you try to accomplish the same end result by using ‘program play’ you’d have to specify all the tracks you wanted—maybe up to 12 or 14—which would take 14 or 15 times as long to do. However, if you want to use delete programming, you will have to decipher how to do it yourself, because the instructions in the manual (on page 13) don’t exactly make it clear, thanks to a ‘cut and paste’ error!

I was initially frustrated in my attempts to use the pitch control. It was only after I read the manual that I learned the Marantz CD5004 has three different ‘Sound Modes’, or what Marantz calls ‘EX’ modes, presumably for EXcellent sound. Out of the box, the CD5004 defaults to EX1 mode, in which the pitch control is disabled. No wonder I couldn’t get it to work! The pitch control is also disabled in the EX2 mode, in which the digital output is also disabled, along with the front-panel display (though the display does switch on briefly if you touch a front-panel button, or the ‘Display’ button itself). If you haven’t already guessed, EX2 mode gives the highest-quality sound.

So to make the pitch control operational, I had to select ‘Audio EX Off’ mode. And speaking of automatic modes, the Marantz CD5004 has an ‘automatic off’ mode that will switch the player to ‘Standby’ mode 30 minutes after a CD has stopped

a 24-bit/192kHz integrated stereo type that has digital interpolation, fifth-order delta-sigma D/A conversion, digital de-emphasis, volume control, channel mixing and analog filtering on board, though these need not be implemented, depending on requirements. The particular DAC architecture used means there can be no distortion due to resistor matching errors, and no linearity drifts caused by temperature fluctuations—internal or external. Although the CS4392 offers designers a selection of digital filters, it appears that only one is used in the CD5004. It’s not Cirrus’s best—or even newest—DAC, but it’s certainly an excellent design nonetheless. Elsewhere on the PCB the standard electronic components (resistors, capacitors, semiconductors) are all high-quality and include Elna Silmic and Cerafine series audio grade capacitors, one per cent

30 Australian

ON TEST Marantz cd5004 cd player

laB repOrT ON paGe 32

metal film resistors and Marantz HDAM-SA2s.The Marantz is ‘standard’ size, though

hi-fi components now come in so many different shapes and sizes that I doubt there’s actually a ‘standard’ any more, in that it measures 440mm wide, stands 105mm high and is 340mm deep. It weighs 5.1kg. As I said in the introduction, it’s a very attractive-looking component, but if you want to make it look even smarter, Marantz sells optional wooden side panels that can make it look even classier. These are easily attached using just two screws.

in use and LisTening sessionsAlthough it seemed to me to much better built (i.e., stronger and more rigid) than most disc drawers on CD and Universal players, and it proved to be 100 per cent reliable dur-ing the review, I thought that the drawer fit-ted to my review sample CD5004 was rather noisy when it was loading and unloading discs, kind of ‘rumbling’ as it moved inwards or outwards. However, once the drawer closed, and disc playback commenced, I couldn’t hear any motor noise at all, and that’s far more important. Track access times are blindingly fast, with the CD5004 taking less than one second to find a track on a standard music CD and less than two seconds to access any track on a 99-track CD.

The display wasn’t my favourite kind either, as the letters and numerals it displays have a fairly ‘blocky’ appearance. However, this certainly made them easy to read, which is the critical thing after all, and most particularly because of the CD-Text feature, which means you’ll be using the display more than you would on a CD player that doesn’t have this feature. The ‘scroll’ function is outstandingly good and looks very classy in operation.

Sound quality was outstanding. With the exception of a few discs loaded with MP3 and WMA files, which I played just to check the player’s operational and display capabilities with these file types, I played exclusively either shop-bought CDs or home-brew ‘Red Book’ CDs burned with musical performances of friends, family and a local a cappella group. I didn’t have any problems playing back either MP3 or WMA files except that

the Marantz plays back folders and files in specific orders based around alphanumerics, so if you want tracks to play back in a specific order on the CD5004, you’ll have to name them appropriately before you burn them to disc.

I used my Pierre Verany test disc to check the Marantz’ ability to cope with damaged discs and found it was excellent, with perfect replay up to Track 34. My pink noise test disc sounded exactly like pink noise and my recording of a chromatic scale played on a piano was also perfect in terms of both playback level and tonality for each note.

Whilst I was reviewing the CD5004, J. J. Cale died (of a heart attack) so I was inspired to pull out the only two CDs of his that I own, ‘Naturally’ and ‘Troubadour’, neither of which I’d played for ages. Listening to them ‘afresh’, I couldn’t quite believe how laid back Cale sounded: I really hadn’t remembered him as being quite so laid back, but as I listened I was also reminded of Neil Young’s opinion of Cale’s ability on the electric guitar. Young ranked him up there with Jimi Hendrix. Having been raised listening to Eric Clapton and B. B. King I wouldn’t agree, but re-hearing these two albums after a long period of abstinence made me realise why he’d say it. (Incidentally, when I asked for opinions on best guitarist around the office, Keith Richards’ name came up quite often and I realised that although I’d never actually rated ‘Keef’ as a guitarist, when I thought about my favourite guitar riffs, the first ones that came to mind were nearly all his, and most particularly Start Me Up, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Satisfaction… and he was certainly responsible for Sympathy for the Devil, one of my all-time favourite Stones songs… but I digress). If you’re going to buy any J. J. Cale albums, I personally think the two I have contain not only almost all his best songs but also his best versions of them: Cocaine, Crazy Mama, After Midnight, Call the Doctor, Magnolia… (which is not to say you can’t find

better versions of his songs covered by other artists, notably Clapton, who famously made After Midnight and Cocaine his own, despite crediting J. J. Cale, who was a long-time friend.) [Historic musical trivia: J. J. Cale was an early proponent of the drum machine, because he wanted to (and did) play all the instruments as well as sing his own back-up on his albums, and he couldn’t play drums… hence he needed a drum machine.] It seems bittersweet that the very last track on J. J. Cale’s very last album was Bring down the Curtain. When I used the Marantz CD5004 to listen to J. J. Cale, most of my thoughts were about Cale and his music, rather than the CD5004 but, hey, isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?

Once I did start listening critically to the sound of the CD5004, I didn’t anything about it that I could criticise: the sound was essentially flawless, with ample dynamic range, precision timing, wonderful balance and extended, beautiful-sounding high frequencies. Bass was tight and solid, with no ‘wooliness’ whatsoever. Stereo imaging was nigh-on perfect and the sound staging exactly reflected the quality of the recordings being played: spacious when recorded well and less so with studio or poorly recorded CDs. Frankly, I had to pinch myself as a constant reminder that I was listening to one of Marantz’s budget machines. Sure you can pay ten times more for a CD player than Marantz is asking for this CD5004, but are you getting ten times better sound? I’d say not… and the CD5004 has a host of very useful features that you just won’t find on any high-end CD player, not matter what its price!

ConCLusionThe Marantz CD5004 is an excellent CD player, capable of extracting all the fidelity encoded on your CDs, so you’ll hear them exactly as the performers intended. It’s so good that I’m amazed Marantz can deliver this kind of performance at the price. But the CD5004 is more than just a CD player, because it’s also a tool for musicians. If you’re learning an instrument (or thinking of learn-ing one), you’ll find the features it has built in—pitch control, quick replay, and A–B repeat— absolutely indispensible.

greg borrowman

I’m amazed Marantz can deliver this kind of performance at the price...

32 Australian

LAB REPORT Marantz cd5004 cd playercONTINUed FrOM paGe 30

the Cirrus Logic CS4392 DAC’s architecture, registering 180° for 1–20kHz as against just 2.95° for 20–1kHz. Although technically intriguing, I doubt it would be audible with program material (aka music). Marantz has implemented the de-emphasis circuitry in the DAC, so it will correctly play back CDs recorded with pre-emphasis (many CDs were recorded this way in the 80s). This is a plus for the Marantz if you own old CDs, because most modern CD players do not include

de-emphasis circuitry, and so cannot correct replay old CDs.

The Marantz CD5004 tested as being very quiet, returning a signal-to-noise ratio of 101dB A-weighted referred to 0dB recorded level. Even the weighted figure was an excellent 91dB. You can see by looking at the graphs accompanying this review that the small noise levels that were present in the output were all confined to lower frequencies: above a few hundred hertz the noise floor is mostly down at around –130dB, essentially meaning that your amplifier will

LaboraTory TesT resuLTsThe Marantz CD5004’s performance on Newport Test Labs’ test bench was outstanding in every respect. One result that stands out is the channel balance which, at 0dB, was perfect: the first time any CD player, at any price, has ever achieved this result, which it did by producing exactly the same voltage (for a 0dB test signal) at both the left and right output terminals: exactly 2.245 volts. Not that you’ll ever need this level of preci-sion, but it’s a technical tour de force. Also per-fect was the eye-narrowing result at the zero crossing point. Again, no other CD player has ever managed this level of performance. The actual output voltage is a little higher than most other players (around 1.4dB higher, in fact) so if you’re A–B’ing with another player, make sure you compensate listening levels.

Frequency response was typical of the CD format, with the response absolutely ruler-flat up to 2kHz, with a very slow ‘roll-off’ to be just 0.15dB down at 20kHz. Normalised, this means the frequency response of the Marantz CD5004 was measured as 20Hz to 20kHz ±0.07dB. Channel separation exceeded 100dB at all three test frequencies, as you can see from the tabulated results, and was thus far in excess of what will ever be required when listening to music, guaranteeing both ideal channel separation and maximal stereo imaging. Group delay showed a peculiarity of

Marantz CD5004 CD Player — test resultsanalogue Section result Units/Comment

Output Voltage 2.245 / 2.245 volts (left Ch/ right Ch)

Frequency response See Graph dB (20Hz – 20kHz)

Channel Separation 117 / 116 / 102 dB at 16Hz / 1kHz / 20kHz

THD+N 0.0006% @ 1kHz @ 0dBFS

Channel Balance 0.0dB @ 1kHz @ 0dBFS

Channel Phase 0.02 / 0.03 / 0.53 degrees at 16Hz / 1kHz / 20kHz

Group Delay +180.0 / –2.95 degrees (1–20kHz / 20–1kHz)

Signal-to-Noise ratio (No Pre-emph) 91 / 101 dB (unweighted/weighted)

De-emphasis error 0.05 / 0.03 / 0.02 at 1kHz / 4kHz / 16kHz

linearity error @ –60.00dB / –70.00dB 0.01 / 0.07 dB (Test Signal Not Dithered)

linearity error @ –80.59dB / –85.24dB 0.01 / 0.02 dB (Test Signal Not Dithered)

linearity error @ –89.46dB / –91.24dB 0.04 / 0.11 dB (Test Signal Not Dithered)

linearity error @ –80.70dB / –90.31dB 0.03 / 0.13 dB (Test Signal Dithered)

Power Consumption 1.00 / 14.18 watts (Standby / On)

Mains Voltage During Testing 240 – 247 volts (Minimum – Maximum)

Digital Section result Units/Comment

Digital Carrier amplitude 83mV audioband

Digital Carrier amplitude 1.11V / 850mV Differential / Common Mode

audioband Jitter 1.0 / 0.006 nS (p–p) / UI (p–p)

Data Jitter 1.9 / 0.01 nS (p–p) / UI (p–p)

Deviation +16.2 ppm

Frame rate 44100.714

eye-Narrowing (Zero Cross) 00.0 / 00.0 nS (p–p) / UI (p–p)

eye-Narrowing (200mV) 3.9 / 0.023 nS (p–p) / UI (p–p)

absolute Phase Normal Normal / Inverted

Bit activity at Digital O/P 16 Where Fitted

contribute more noise to the music than will the CD5004.

Distortion at maximum output was very low, as you can see from Graph 1, which shows a 2nd harmonic at –112dB (0.00025%) a 3rd harmonic at –113dB (0.00022%), a 5th harmonic at –117dB (0.00014%) and a 7th harmonic at –120dB (0.0001%) As you’d expect, this meant that total THD+N was measured by Newport Test Labs at just 0.0006%. All the individual harmonic distortion components dropped as recorded level dropped save the 3rd harmonic, which remained at 113dB until the recorded level reached –20dB, at which the third was at –120dB (0.001%), which you can see in Graph 6. By the time recorded level was –40dB (Graph 7) all harmonic distortion components disappeared below the noise floor of the CD5004. (Editor’s Note: For reasons of space, we have not been able to publish all 34 graphs that were supplied to Steve by Newport Test Labs, so rather than re-number the graphs and adjust Steve’s copy, we have retained the original graph numbering. When this review is published on Australian Hi-Fi’s website, we will include all 34 graphs).

The effect of dither on the Marantz’s performance is shown in Graphs 9 and 10, which show distortion at –80.59dB (without dither) and –80.70dB (with dither).

Channel balance was perfect: the first time any CD player, at any price, has ever achieved this...

34 Australian

Marantz cd5004 cd playerLAB REPORT

0.00 Hz 4000.00 8000.00 12000.00 16000.00 20000.00

-140.00

-120.00

-100.00

-80.00

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0.00dBFS

Graph 6. THD @ 1kHz @ –20dB recorded level. [Marantz CD5004 CD Player]

Newport Test Labs

0.00 Hz 4000.00 8000.00 12000.00 16000.00 20000.00

-140.00

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Graph 1. THD @ 1kHz @ 0dB recorded level. [Marantz CD5004 CD Player]

Newport Test Labs

0.00 Hz 4000.00 8000.00 12000.00 16000.00 20000.00

-140.00

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Graph 8. THD @ 1kHz @ –60dB recorded level. [Marantz CD5004 CD Player]

Newport Test Labs

0.00 Hz 4000.00 8000.00 12000.00 16000.00 20000.00

-140.00

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Graph 12. THD @ 1kHz @ –90.31dB recorded level. (With dither) [Marantz CD5004 CDP]

Newport Test Labs

0.00 Hz 4000.00 8000.00 12000.00 16000.00 20000.00

-140.00

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Newport Test Labs

Graph 10. THD @ 1kHz @ –80.70dB recorded level. (With dither) [Marantz CD5004 CDP]

0.00 Hz 4000.00 8000.00 12000.00 16000.00 20000.00

-140.00

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Graph 9. THD @ 1kHz @ –80.59dB recorded level. (No dither) [Marantz CD5004 Player]

Newport Test Labs

0.00 Hz 8000.00 16000.00 24000.00 32000.00 40000.00

-140.00

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Graph 16. Impulse Train. (One maximum amplitude positive sample every 70 samples (630 pulses per second). [Marantz CD5004 CD Player]

Newport Test Labs

0.00 Hz 9000.00 18000.00 27000.00 36000.00 45000.00

-140.00

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Graph 14. CCIF Distortion (Twin-Tone Intermodulation) @ 1kHz @ 0dB using 19kHz and 20kHz test signals in 1:1 ratio. [Marantz CD5004 CD Player]

Newport Test Labs

0.00 Hz 4000.00 8000.00 12000.00 16000.00 20000.00

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Graph 13. THD @ 1kHz @ –91.24dB recorded level. (No dither) [Marantz CD5004 CDP]

Newport Test Labs

20.56 Hz 100.00 1000.00 10000.00

-0.40

-0.20

0.00

0.20

0.40

dBFS

Graph 17. Frequency Response at @ 0dB recorded level. [Marantz CD5004 CD Player]

Newport Test Labs

You can see that without dither, more harmonic and enharmonic distortions are present, but the noise floor is at –140dB whereas once dither is applied to the test signal, all the distortion disappears, but the noise floor level lifts to around –125dB. At the extreme left of the graph you can see the power-supply noise-related signals that resulted in the overall weighted S/N ratio of 101dB noted previously. Dither effects are again illustrated in Graph 12 and Graph 13. Remember that ALL commercially recorded music CDs have dither applied, so it’s the ‘with dither’ graphs that best show the performance of the CD5004 with these signals.

CCIF-IMD (intermodulation distortion) performance is shown in Graph 14. The two test tones at 19kHz and 20kHz have hardly any sidebands, and the regenerated signal at 1kHz is more than 110dB down (0.00031%). There are some sampling-related artefacts visible around 27kHz that are 100dB down (0.001%) plus a few more up around 44.1kHz, but these are once again low and are far above the upper limit of human hearing (20kHz ideally, but more like 16kHz if you’re aged over 30). The rising noise floor at high-

frequencies is typical of delta-sigma digital-to-analogue conversion. This rising noise floor is also visible in Graph 16, but the point of this particular graph is to show the steep output filter above 20kHz, so signals are attenuated more than 100dB between 20kHz and 24kHz.

The oscillograms of a 1kHz square wave and an impulse show atypical behaviour for an oversampling filter, with less pre-ringing than I’d expect. Also, the shape of the square wave is unusual. However, they serve to show that either Cirrus Logic or Marantz is doing something slightly different with the digital filter circuitry, neither of which is unusual

these days. The pulse itself shows that the player’s output is non-inverting, so polarity is ‘normal’ and you won’t have to re-wire your speakers to preserve absolute polarity as you do with some CD players.

Performance of the digital output of the Marantz CD5004 was excellent, as is evident from the tabulated results, but the performance of the CD5004’s own DAC is so good that I doubt you would experience any audible improvement from using an external DAC. Indeed the internal DAC is so good I wonder why Marantz did not fit the CD5004 with a digital input, so it could decode digital data streams from other devices.

Power consumption was moderate, at just under 15-watts when the CD player is operating, so you could leave it on all the time with no ill-effect on the player itself, or seeing any real increase in your utility charges. However, given that it draws only 1-watt on standby, and it switches to standby automatically when it’s not being used, this level of power consumption is negligible.

In short, absolutely superb measured performance. Marantz’s engineers should take a well-deserved bow. Steve Holding

35avhub.com.au

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