Marantz SA8004 is fundamentally musical

hi smargo:
i am tube oriented and have never found a solid state dac or player that, to my ears was not bested by a device containing onr or more tubes.

so let me ask you, does the marantz have any characteristics of a classic tube sound, or is it "listenable solid state".

in my own system, i use a tube cd player connected to the ps audio pwd. it is the interconnect from the dac that enables me to tolerate the dac. i use the fusion audio romance. it has pure gold wire.

First i dont understand why mr tennis continues to post on threads that have nothing to do with him or his taste. What is the point of being negative all the time??
I like the Marantz sa8004.
I recently went from Focal 918/Sony 5400 combo to
Merlin TSM-MMM/Marantz sa8004

It sounds like night and day....better...for my taste. Much better balance. No fatigue. Vocals spot on.

Mcpherson,
Well, that is his favorite thing. Check out other threads, where people talk about Solid State amps and CDPs and he comes in and says how crappy they are and tubes are the way to go. So people who like to stay with solid state components just ignore him.
Can you please tell us more on the sound of the SA8004 compared to the Sony? The Marantz's digital inputs are interesting. I hope when I upgrade a year later, I am able to pick up the SA11-S3.

Milpai
As I stated I went from the Sony 5400/ Focal 918 Profile speakers...to the Marantz sa-8004 / Merlin TSM-MMM

It had really gotten to a point that I was only listening to a handful of cds. Those few cds sounded great. As for the rest which included most rock, anything LIVE, and basicly any recording that was not mellow in presentation...i had stopped listening to them.
The cd playback versus sacd on the Sony was very different. sacd was hyper-detailed...very impressive to show off but not exactly my cup of tea for extended listening. I found myself listening to sounds, not music.:)
With the Marantz there is less gap between cd/sacd IMO
The Marantz/Merlin combo for me is great. Very smooth and refined to my ears. Vocals are spot on. No brightness at all. This holds true to the recordings I could not tolerate with the Sony/Focal.
I have used the ipod playback and it is not bad. A little more digital sounding than cd but not a problem. I use it for extended background music... i love just hitting shuffle and let it roll. You can control ipod with marantz remote if need be.
I feel that the Marantz/Merlin combo is surely "MUSICAL" :)
Let me clarify that i have nothing against the sony5400 and i still would love to hear one Modded...but with the Focals it did not match well for me.

As a side note I asked Modwright about Modding the Marantz sa-8004 and he said in a round about way that if there were enough people interested in it...it could be a possibility.

Good to hear the Marantz vs Sony comments. I have heard a lot of good things about the Sony. I love the Marantz I have which is actually the weakest link in my system currently. I would like to have a SACD player with XLR out.
I was not aware that you could control the iPods connected to the Marantz player through the remote. That is a convenience. I am just hoping to pick a nice digital front end in a year or so.