I haven’t heard the Theta but do own an OPPO BP 103 I bought in 2014 and purchased the Marantz 7706 last year. I love the Marantz for tone/room control. I used the Audyssey but ended up using manual adjustments (there are two presets so can use both). The Audyssey told me I had a speaker out of phase (I didn’t) AND wanted to set the crossovers at 120hz for my monoblocked tower speakers! Ummm…no! That aside, the settings are very flexible. Distance measured in .1ft vs OPPO at .5ft. dB level settings +/-10 dB and crossover setting in 10hz increments from 40hz-120hz. Also, what’s really great is level adjustments for ALL channels on independent sources which solved the problem I had of my Amazon Fire always sounding lower than the OPPO or other sources! I primarily got the Marantz for ATMOS and am not disappointed.
Marantz vs. Oppo or Theta
Hi everyone,
Sorry for the weird comparisons. I'm thinking of getting a Marantz 7706 because of the manual EQ features (that's right, not looking for room correction).
My biggest issues with processors and HT receivers in the past is that some of them just sounded like garbage. Really really thin, like AM radios. Several Japanese brands and Emotiva were brands I could not really listen to for long.
My question is how the Marantz compares say to the Oppo BD players, which were excellent, or say a Theta from a decade ago. I'm not looking for perfection, but robust and transparent.
Thank you,
Erik
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One more thing about the Marantz and OPPO. I have a large collections of SACD’s and DVD-A’s as I enjoy multichannel music. The main reason I kept the OPPO is it plays all these formats with ease and with the OPPO can send either the native DSD over HDMI or can convert it to PCM first. The Marantz will take either stream via HDMI. The Marantz is just so super versatile. You can feed it any digital stream (DSD, FLAC, etc.) whether from your own device (like the OPPO or your PC) or from any high-rez streaming service and it will play it. |
@jmeyers I wasn't trying to offend your brand loyalty. I just have experienced that there are some HT processors which are at least enjoyable to listen to and some that are just really not. I thought maybe someone with experience listening to the same gear I have could give me a recommendation in the range I could afford. Clearly that wasn't something you felt comfortable doing. |
I have the Oppo 205, love it, does practically everything, use it as a dac preamp direct to my power amp. Run a subwoofer and separate surround channels from it. Not sure how it compares to others mentioned BUT I am not aware of any other universal components that can do as much as the Oppo 205, unfortunately not made anymore. |
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