hi venkatcr -
i suppose the best way to settle this matter -
is for thekinge to get back to dubai -
listen to both players via cd input only
a post a composite report .
regds
suri
Dubai HFV (Mini) Meet & Marantz CD 6003 vs. Emotiva ERC-1 CD Player Shootout
- Thread starter thekinge
- Start date
hi venkatcr -
i suppose the best way to settle this matter -
is for thekinge to get back to dubai -
listen to both players via cd input only
a post a composite report .
regds
suri
Errr... No! Composite is bad remember? Component is better and hdmi even so...
Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk
Apologies Venkatcr, all,
Have been busy catching up on family affairs and logged on to HFV proper only today. Wow, the thread has grown with quite a few interesting responses!
I will write up and post my report tonight, which hopefully will answer most questions raised in this thread.
anm
Well-Known Member
^ but where are you these days?
spirovious
Well-Known Member
Well DAC is out,but still some processing done(by DSP)as prollogic2,Neo for 2 ch in.
That's why we used Pure Audio mode to bypass all additional processing. Please wait until I post the full review.
anm
Well-Known Member
ok have fun with family and don't waste time on hfv
harryanthony
New Member
Yes the Kinge *Dilip !
have fun and enjoy your time with your family, and thank you and Venkatc for your experiment with these lovely CD player...
as you may have guessed i have put my CD6003 plan on hold, i have the same set-up as your's..
once you post your detailed review of the A/B i will make up my mind...
Venkatc - like someone else had asked in an earlier post, want were the dowsides of the CD6003.
Best Regards,
have fun and enjoy your time with your family, and thank you and Venkatc for your experiment with these lovely CD player...
as you may have guessed i have put my CD6003 plan on hold, i have the same set-up as your's..
once you post your detailed review of the A/B i will make up my mind...
Venkatc - like someone else had asked in an earlier post, want were the dowsides of the CD6003.
Best Regards,
I think this has already been explained - the sound stage was restricted to between the speakers. And the sound did not jump out of the speakers.
Grrr! Why do you want everybody to repeat over and over how marantz is bad
Edit: Of course we want to know about body and separation (not union
) and harmonics and clarity and timing and musicality of emotiva vs marantz etc etc Cheers
harryanthony
New Member
Grrr! Why do you want everybody to repeat over and over how marantz is bad
Edit: Of course we want to know about body and separation (not union
Cheers
Gobble,
no offence, is there a harm in asking for details?
i dont see a reason for you to get mad....
Last edited:
harryanthony,
I think gobble meant it as a joke and not seriously, since he is already upset (pun intended) that the Emotiva beat Marantz. Both of you guys are in Bangalore - possibly a good thing for both of you to hit a pub and get to know each other
harryanthony,
I think gobble meant it as a joke and not seriously, since he is already upset (pun intended) that the Emotiva beat Marantz. Both of you guys are in Bangalore - possibly a good thing for both of you to hit a pub and get to know each other
Yes! Yes! We need to know each other (at an expensive pub) over a few beers sponsored by TheKinge!! Else we might end up fighting over who pays the bill as well
hyeah: Cheers
harryanthony
New Member
Yes! Yes! We need to know each other (at an expensive pub) over a few beers sponsored by TheKinge!! Else we might end up fighting over who pays the bill as well
Cheers
the kinge and gooble.. like you said i am also quite upset that the cd6003 failed the shoot out...:sad:
the pub is not such a bad idea after all, may be a few of us from bangalore should jam -up at a convenient place..
cheers
Harryanthony,
now you made both of them go mad "Thekinge" you said "the Kinge" and "Gobble" as "gooble" ......
hyeah: nothing serious adding more element of fun to this thread...
Kittu
lol,kittu 
!!!
ever since i saw the emotiva site,have thought their products have some uber-coolness to them.the shootout just validated my hunch,there's a lot of substance behind the sexiness as well
.thanks to venkat and thekinge,and in the more than imitable voice of the one..."thank you very much" .ha.how i wish i had some spare monies,...
!!!ever since i saw the emotiva site,have thought their products have some uber-coolness to them.the shootout just validated my hunch,there's a lot of substance behind the sexiness as well
.thanks to venkat and thekinge,and in the more than imitable voice of the one..."thank you very much" .ha.how i wish i had some spare monies,...The First International HFV Meeting In Dubai and Detailed Report Of The CD Player Comparison
Ever since I had become a member of Hifivision, I had watched with interest the member meetings that happened in Chennai and was a bit disappointed that I could not participate in them due to me living in Dubai. However, Venkatcr had mentioned a while back that he will be traveling to Dubai around the end of May / first week of June. Hence, the idea of a mini (or micro if you like it) HFV meeting in Dubai was born. Plans were confirmed for the meeting on 16th of June in my apartment. Since Venkatcr was here in Dubai on holiday, I did not want to hold him up longer hence we agreed to have a shorter meeting for a couple of hours.
The meeting venue was my apartment and the purpose of the meeting was to compare the performances of two CD players, the Marantz CD 6003 and the Emotiva ERC-1. I picked up Venkatcr from his sons nice villa in Mirdif (a new residential locality in Dubai) at around 5 PM and drove him back to my apartment. While driving to my apartment, I got to know that Venkatcr is also from IT industry and had run his own software company before getting full time into the A/V profession. When Venkatcr mentioned this, for some reason, I felt a ring of enlightenment light up behind my head probably my future path to professional nirvana.
We reached my apartment at around 5.30 PM and after settling down, the actual comparison began. The details of comparison are posted below in this thread. After the comparison was done, Venkatcr inspected my Wharfedale Diamond 10.7 speakers and was all praise for its sound & finish quality.
Afterwards, we went to a restaurant near my apartment for a quick snack. After the snack, it was time for me to drive Venkatcr back to his sons villa and drop him off. So came to an end the first international HFV meeting! I do hope that we will have more meetings in Dubai and in other cities outside of India! Heres a picture of Venkatcr & I:
During the course of my meeting with Venkatcr including the time spent in driving, comparing and eating, I fired a volley of possibly newbie questions to Venkatcr, who was patient enough to answer all of them. Personally for me, apart from the CD player comparison, the equally interesting part was clarifying my questions on Hi-Fi with Venkatcr and confirming that my interpretation of commonly used A/V terms was correct.
Test Setup & Connectivity
The Rig
The test setup consists of the following equipment I own and use every day:
Heres a picture of my setup:
The Diamond 10.7 speakers are bi-amped to the 876 using the Zone 2 speaker connection in 876. The speakers were level calibrated using Audyssey to 6dB. The speakers were slightly toed in to listening position. Subwoofer was not used during the comparison since I do not use subwoofers for stereo listening (at least till Suri builds a TL sub for me!) and the 876 disables subwoofer outputs in pure audio mode.
The size of my listening area is around 10 feet wide by 11 feet long and there are no special acoustic treatments. The only absorber of resonance and echo in the listening area is the 3 seater suede textured cloth sofa, which spreads fully across the listening area. All the equipment is placed in a normal TV stand and no form of vibration dampeners (cork, vibrapod, sorbothane et al) are used.
Connectivity
The Marantz CD 6003 was connected to analog RCA DVD input of the 876 and the Emotiva ERC-1 was connected to the analog RCA CD input of the 876. Both the CD players were connected using two separate BJC LC-1 interconnects.
Both the DVD & CD playback modes in the 876 were changed to Pure Audio. Now, a lot of posts have been made in this shoot-out thread questioning the validity of the test since the Marantz CD 6003 was connected to a DVD input and not a CD input. Let me answer them in this review.
Please see the following points on Pure Audio mode, taken from various sections of the Onkyo TX-SR876 owners manual:
Lastly, all video inputs in the 876 are handled by the HQV Reon processor, which is a separate circuit board by itself and all analog audio inputs are handled by a separate and common circuit board. I hope we can now agree that the 876 does not differentiate between the DVD & CD inputs.
Detailed Look At The CD Players
CD Player Specifications
The Looks
Personally I would consider the looks of Marantz CD6003 as European, classy and understated. It has gracious but ubiquitous presence similar to the Mercedes E class of yesteryears (not the 2010 models!). Though the color of my CD6003 is what Marantz calls Silver-Champagne, even other colors such as black and silver would mingle well with any setup and would be unnoticeable. The LCD display on the front panel is also plain however it is much larger than the Emotiva and displays track title, artist information etc for MP3 / WMA files and displays CD Text for audio CDs if the audio CDs support them. There are no flashy lights on the Marantz and the front panel on the Marantz does nothing to call your attention.
On the other hand, the Emotiva has a slightly brash look with sharp edges atypical of American design. It took a bit of time getting used to the looks of Emotiva, but then, the Emotiva looks prominent and imposing with the kind of attitude posed by modern era Cadillac CTS. The ERC-1 has brushed aluminum edges providing a nice contrast to the black body. The LCD panel on the Emotiva is very small and only displays track number and duration since the Emotiva does not support CD Text.
The lights on the Emotiva are another story. The CD loading slot and all the buttons in the front panel light up with a neon blue color when the player is switched on. During day time, the lights are unobtrusive and even good to look at. However, at night which is when I usually listen to music, when all other lights are switched off in the room, the front panel illumination of the Emotiva is enough to dimly light my entire living room like a night lamp! Hit the Dim button in the remote and the Emotiva switches off all the front panel lights except that of the LCD panel and the power button.
Now in the Dim mode, the Emotiva adds pleasance to the visual ambience of the room (when all lights are switched off) and goes along nicely with the blue led of my Onkyo 876 indicating Pure Audio mode.
Id risk calling the Emotiva ERC-1 as a better looking machine at least in my setup since its brushed aluminum edges provide a nice contrast to the black body, similar to the fronts of my Diamond 10.7s where the outer rings of the speakers are covered by brushed steel rings
The Remote Control
Comparing the looks of the Marantz CD6003 and Emotiva ERC-1 would not be complete without comparing their remote controls, simply because I have to say something about the Emotiva remote!
The Marantz CD 6003 remote is quite functional and like other remote controls is made of plastic. But then, who doesnt manufacture a functional remote in plastic?
The Emotiva on the other hand, has gone out of the way to design an all metal brushed aluminum remote control for its CD player that is quite heavy and is a pleasure to hold. The buttons are well laid out and well spaced out. Even those with larger fingers should have no problems using the Emotiva ERC-1 remote. If you notice, the remote also has brushed aluminum edges contrasting nicely with the black body very similar to the CD player itself. I have never seen a remote like this before and this is one remote that I am never going to program in to my Onkyo learning remote. I simply love holding this remote and love using it!
The only issue with the Emotiva remote is that to insert or replace batteries, one has to remove six (yes six!) screws to open the rear panel. I wish Emotiva bundled a Phillips head with the remote. And those who wear a lot of rings beware! The rings can scratch the beautiful brushed finish of the remote and make it look ugly!
The Emotiva ERC-1 remote is hands down a winner and one is unlikely to see such a remote control in any comparable CD players in the same price range.
The Test
Now comes the meaty part, the listening test. As mentioned before, both the players were connected in parallel to the Onkyo 876 and hence, the switching time, including changing of CDs was on an average less than 15 seconds.
[IMG2]http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/709/aomresized.jpg[/IMG2]
Always on my mind by Elvis Presley
This is one of my favorite Elvis songs and hence, we started out with this track. Its a decent track with a reasonable number of instruments being used. However, both Venkatcr & I found no discernable differences between the CD6003 and ERC-1 in this track. I was not quite sure why there was no difference at that time. However I was thinking about it after the meeting, and then it struck me. Few years back, I was creating a compilation audio CD of my favorite Elvis tracks and used Easy CD-DA extractor to first extract the songs from various CDs into the hard drive, sort them and then my favorite track back as audio CD. I was not familiar with FLAC file formats at the time and hence, I may have used a lossy format to extract the file and then wrote it back as audio CDs. Till date I have been using copies of that CD I "mastered" few years back and hence both the CD6003 & ERC-1 were trying to do their best to playback from a source which was of average quality.
However, one thing to note is that regardless of the track being average quality, the voice of Elvis was dead center in the Emotiva and one could feel the voice clearly emanating from the center of the soundstage. The voice in my opinion was much better separated from the instruments by the Emotiva.
[IMG2]http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/6060/yomresized.jpg[/IMG2]
Yesterday once more by Carpenters
This time, the CD used to playback the song was an exact copy of the original CD and hence there was no quality issue. This is a typical Carpenters number and the female vocal has a dreamy, airy quality about it. It is in this track that the differences between the Marantz and Emotiva became apparent. As Venkatcr described it, the Marantz was able to separate the instruments, but it could not place it as widely as the Emotiva did. To be fair to the Marantz, it did place the vocals in the center but compared to the Emotiva, it placed all the instruments in a closed soundstage, as Venkatcr described, the soundstage started and ended with the speakers.
The Emotiva on the other hand was able to create a wider soundstage, place each instrument in its space and placed the vocal dead in the center. And above all, thanks to the wider soundstage, you could feel the dreaminess in the singer's voice. We were convinced by the end of this song that the Marantz was no match for the Emotiva in playing this track. After the Emotiva finished playing the song, Venkatcr summed it all up in the best possible words: when I closed my eyes, the speakers and the walls just vanished. Couldnt agree with him more! At this time, I remarked to Venkatcr that after I purchased the Emotiva, many a times, I fall asleep enjoying listening to the music, especially when listening to soothing Piano tracks from Richard Clayderman?
[IMG2]http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8085/ylaaresized.jpg[/IMG2]
Santorini by Yanni from the album Live at Acropolis
After the Carpenters track, we decided to try a western instrumental track and I selected Santorini by Yanni. This was from the album Live At Acropolis so the CD track was recorded live. This is a complex track with percussion instruments playing for the first few minutes, followed by beautiful notes from Yannis acoustic piano and all the time accompanied in the background by the violinists from Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. This track was a good test of how well the CD players created such a complicated soundstage.
We played it first in the Marantz CD player and the player did an acceptable job of creating the soundstage. The entire track is accompanied by violinists in the background and the Marantz did create a soundstage where one could hear the violin accompaniment but the violin was in the same space as other instruments. This is a long track and at around 5 minutes, all the instruments will wind down with just a percussion instrument playing in the foreground accompanied by violinists playing in the background. When this winding down happens, there is a subtle but powerful note by the violinists. When this track was playing in the Marantz, we could hear the violin note but only barely.
When we played the same track on the Emotiva, the first thing that hit us was that the percussion instruments could be heard clearly and the violin accompaniment was placed further away from the percussion instruments, creating the illusion of the main instruments in the foreground and the violinists in the background. At around the five minute mark when the track starts winding down, the violin note was clearly heard in its own space with percussion in the foreground. After 30 seconds or so the track will pick up tempo and the Emotiva presents the tempo correctly and it hits you as it should. Its hard to explain, but the entire track was so wide and alive in the Emotiva. At the end of the track, the clapping of audience was also recorded. Interestingly, Venkatcr & I noted that the clapping was very subdued in the Marantz but in the Emotiva, you could feel that the audience were seated much wider, and beyond the boundaries of the speakers.
At this point, we pretty much concluded that the Emotiva beat the Marantz in this track.
[IMG2]http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/5241/feverresized.jpg[/IMG2]
Fever by Elvis Presley
Note: I tested this track alone after dropping off Venkatcr
This is another simple track from Elvis where vocals feature prominently with very simple instrument arrangements. The track consists of Elvis voice, a normal drum, a conga style drum and a few artists clicking their fingers. This is a good track to test the ability of a CD player to convey the roll-off and decay as they are recorded. In this song, at some points the drum rolls from the normal drum to the conga style drum all the time accompanied by the clicking of fingers. The Marantz did create this soundstage well and played the track ok.
But unfortunately for the Marantz, the Emotiva just performed this track much better. When the drum starts rolling, the Emotiva conveyed the notes precisely and there was no time wasted in moving from one drum beat to another. It was that precise. When the drum switches to conga style drum, the decay of the previous drum beat was natural. And this is the track where I had that experience so commonly mentioned by many an audiophile: I could hear the singer breathing Thanks to the wide soundstage, the voice of Elvis was so much more lively and at times, you could hear him breathing into the mike especially when he says Fever on a high pitch!
And The Winner Is...
Before I state the obvious conclusion, I have to add a disclaimer. This was a very subjective test, and the conclusions are drawn from the hearing abilities of two individuals: Venkatcr & I. There are some members who would rather like a much scientific method of testing. They are not wrong. But as much as we would have liked to conduct this test scientifically, neither do I have the equipment (voltmeter, multimeter, amp meter et al) nor am I going to purchase them to perform any form of scientific testing. Most of us here including myself would rather let our ears decide what is good music & what is not and this shoot-out has also been done based on what two sets of ears liked.
Needless to say, both Venkatcr & I agreed that the winner clearly was the Emotiva ERC-1.
Concluding Notes
Thanks to Venkatcr for taking time out of his vacation to meet up with me and perform the shoot-out.
And thanks everyone for reading this rather lengthy review!
-thekinge
Ever since I had become a member of Hifivision, I had watched with interest the member meetings that happened in Chennai and was a bit disappointed that I could not participate in them due to me living in Dubai. However, Venkatcr had mentioned a while back that he will be traveling to Dubai around the end of May / first week of June. Hence, the idea of a mini (or micro if you like it) HFV meeting in Dubai was born. Plans were confirmed for the meeting on 16th of June in my apartment. Since Venkatcr was here in Dubai on holiday, I did not want to hold him up longer hence we agreed to have a shorter meeting for a couple of hours.
The meeting venue was my apartment and the purpose of the meeting was to compare the performances of two CD players, the Marantz CD 6003 and the Emotiva ERC-1. I picked up Venkatcr from his sons nice villa in Mirdif (a new residential locality in Dubai) at around 5 PM and drove him back to my apartment. While driving to my apartment, I got to know that Venkatcr is also from IT industry and had run his own software company before getting full time into the A/V profession. When Venkatcr mentioned this, for some reason, I felt a ring of enlightenment light up behind my head probably my future path to professional nirvana
. We reached my apartment at around 5.30 PM and after settling down, the actual comparison began. The details of comparison are posted below in this thread. After the comparison was done, Venkatcr inspected my Wharfedale Diamond 10.7 speakers and was all praise for its sound & finish quality.
Afterwards, we went to a restaurant near my apartment for a quick snack. After the snack, it was time for me to drive Venkatcr back to his sons villa and drop him off. So came to an end the first international HFV meeting! I do hope that we will have more meetings in Dubai and in other cities outside of India! Heres a picture of Venkatcr & I:
During the course of my meeting with Venkatcr including the time spent in driving, comparing and eating, I fired a volley of possibly newbie questions to Venkatcr, who was patient enough to answer all of them. Personally for me, apart from the CD player comparison, the equally interesting part was clarifying my questions on Hi-Fi with Venkatcr and confirming that my interpretation of commonly used A/V terms was correct.
Test Setup & Connectivity
The Rig
The test setup consists of the following equipment I own and use every day:
Heres a picture of my setup:
The Diamond 10.7 speakers are bi-amped to the 876 using the Zone 2 speaker connection in 876. The speakers were level calibrated using Audyssey to 6dB. The speakers were slightly toed in to listening position. Subwoofer was not used during the comparison since I do not use subwoofers for stereo listening (at least till Suri builds a TL sub for me!) and the 876 disables subwoofer outputs in pure audio mode.
The size of my listening area is around 10 feet wide by 11 feet long and there are no special acoustic treatments. The only absorber of resonance and echo in the listening area is the 3 seater suede textured cloth sofa, which spreads fully across the listening area. All the equipment is placed in a normal TV stand and no form of vibration dampeners (cork, vibrapod, sorbothane et al) are used.
Connectivity
The Marantz CD 6003 was connected to analog RCA DVD input of the 876 and the Emotiva ERC-1 was connected to the analog RCA CD input of the 876. Both the CD players were connected using two separate BJC LC-1 interconnects.
Both the DVD & CD playback modes in the 876 were changed to Pure Audio. Now, a lot of posts have been made in this shoot-out thread questioning the validity of the test since the Marantz CD 6003 was connected to a DVD input and not a CD input. Let me answer them in this review.
Please see the following points on Pure Audio mode, taken from various sections of the Onkyo TX-SR876 owners manual:
- Page 72, Basic Operations, Topic Adjusting Bass & Treble: You can adjust the bass and treble for the front speakers, except when the Direct, Pure Audio or THX listening mode is selected
- Page 81, Using The Listening Modes, Topic Selecting on the AV Receiver: [PURE AUDIO] This button selects the Pure Audio listening mode. When this mode is selected, the AV receivers display is turned off and only video signals input through HDMI IN can be output
- Page 103, Advanced Operations, Topic Equalizer Settings: When the listening mode is set to Direct or Pure Audio, no effect will be produced
- Page 106, Advanced Operations, Topic Tone Control Settings: The tone control circuits are bypassed when the Direct, Pure Audio or THX listening mode is selected.
- Page 108, Advanced Operations, Topic Music Optimizer: The Music Optimizer is disabled when the Pure Audio or Direct listening mode is selected.
- Page 110, Advanced Operations, Topic DVD A/V Sync: A/V Sync cannot be set when the Pure Audio listening mode is selected, or when the Direct listening mode is used with an analog input source.
Lastly, all video inputs in the 876 are handled by the HQV Reon processor, which is a separate circuit board by itself and all analog audio inputs are handled by a separate and common circuit board. I hope we can now agree that the 876 does not differentiate between the DVD & CD inputs.
Detailed Look At The CD Players
CD Player Specifications
The Looks
Personally I would consider the looks of Marantz CD6003 as European, classy and understated. It has gracious but ubiquitous presence similar to the Mercedes E class of yesteryears (not the 2010 models!). Though the color of my CD6003 is what Marantz calls Silver-Champagne, even other colors such as black and silver would mingle well with any setup and would be unnoticeable. The LCD display on the front panel is also plain however it is much larger than the Emotiva and displays track title, artist information etc for MP3 / WMA files and displays CD Text for audio CDs if the audio CDs support them. There are no flashy lights on the Marantz and the front panel on the Marantz does nothing to call your attention.
On the other hand, the Emotiva has a slightly brash look with sharp edges atypical of American design. It took a bit of time getting used to the looks of Emotiva, but then, the Emotiva looks prominent and imposing with the kind of attitude posed by modern era Cadillac CTS. The ERC-1 has brushed aluminum edges providing a nice contrast to the black body. The LCD panel on the Emotiva is very small and only displays track number and duration since the Emotiva does not support CD Text.
The lights on the Emotiva are another story. The CD loading slot and all the buttons in the front panel light up with a neon blue color when the player is switched on. During day time, the lights are unobtrusive and even good to look at. However, at night which is when I usually listen to music, when all other lights are switched off in the room, the front panel illumination of the Emotiva is enough to dimly light my entire living room like a night lamp! Hit the Dim button in the remote and the Emotiva switches off all the front panel lights except that of the LCD panel and the power button.
Now in the Dim mode, the Emotiva adds pleasance to the visual ambience of the room (when all lights are switched off) and goes along nicely with the blue led of my Onkyo 876 indicating Pure Audio mode.
Id risk calling the Emotiva ERC-1 as a better looking machine at least in my setup since its brushed aluminum edges provide a nice contrast to the black body, similar to the fronts of my Diamond 10.7s where the outer rings of the speakers are covered by brushed steel rings
The Remote Control
Comparing the looks of the Marantz CD6003 and Emotiva ERC-1 would not be complete without comparing their remote controls, simply because I have to say something about the Emotiva remote!
The Marantz CD 6003 remote is quite functional and like other remote controls is made of plastic. But then, who doesnt manufacture a functional remote in plastic?
The Emotiva on the other hand, has gone out of the way to design an all metal brushed aluminum remote control for its CD player that is quite heavy and is a pleasure to hold. The buttons are well laid out and well spaced out. Even those with larger fingers should have no problems using the Emotiva ERC-1 remote. If you notice, the remote also has brushed aluminum edges contrasting nicely with the black body very similar to the CD player itself. I have never seen a remote like this before and this is one remote that I am never going to program in to my Onkyo learning remote. I simply love holding this remote and love using it!
The only issue with the Emotiva remote is that to insert or replace batteries, one has to remove six (yes six!) screws to open the rear panel. I wish Emotiva bundled a Phillips head with the remote. And those who wear a lot of rings beware! The rings can scratch the beautiful brushed finish of the remote and make it look ugly!
The Emotiva ERC-1 remote is hands down a winner and one is unlikely to see such a remote control in any comparable CD players in the same price range.
The Test
Now comes the meaty part, the listening test. As mentioned before, both the players were connected in parallel to the Onkyo 876 and hence, the switching time, including changing of CDs was on an average less than 15 seconds.
[IMG2]http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/709/aomresized.jpg[/IMG2]
Always on my mind by Elvis Presley
This is one of my favorite Elvis songs and hence, we started out with this track. Its a decent track with a reasonable number of instruments being used. However, both Venkatcr & I found no discernable differences between the CD6003 and ERC-1 in this track. I was not quite sure why there was no difference at that time. However I was thinking about it after the meeting, and then it struck me. Few years back, I was creating a compilation audio CD of my favorite Elvis tracks and used Easy CD-DA extractor to first extract the songs from various CDs into the hard drive, sort them and then my favorite track back as audio CD. I was not familiar with FLAC file formats at the time and hence, I may have used a lossy format to extract the file and then wrote it back as audio CDs. Till date I have been using copies of that CD I "mastered" few years back and hence both the CD6003 & ERC-1 were trying to do their best to playback from a source which was of average quality.
However, one thing to note is that regardless of the track being average quality, the voice of Elvis was dead center in the Emotiva and one could feel the voice clearly emanating from the center of the soundstage. The voice in my opinion was much better separated from the instruments by the Emotiva.
[IMG2]http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/6060/yomresized.jpg[/IMG2]
Yesterday once more by Carpenters
This time, the CD used to playback the song was an exact copy of the original CD and hence there was no quality issue. This is a typical Carpenters number and the female vocal has a dreamy, airy quality about it. It is in this track that the differences between the Marantz and Emotiva became apparent. As Venkatcr described it, the Marantz was able to separate the instruments, but it could not place it as widely as the Emotiva did. To be fair to the Marantz, it did place the vocals in the center but compared to the Emotiva, it placed all the instruments in a closed soundstage, as Venkatcr described, the soundstage started and ended with the speakers.
The Emotiva on the other hand was able to create a wider soundstage, place each instrument in its space and placed the vocal dead in the center. And above all, thanks to the wider soundstage, you could feel the dreaminess in the singer's voice. We were convinced by the end of this song that the Marantz was no match for the Emotiva in playing this track. After the Emotiva finished playing the song, Venkatcr summed it all up in the best possible words: when I closed my eyes, the speakers and the walls just vanished. Couldnt agree with him more! At this time, I remarked to Venkatcr that after I purchased the Emotiva, many a times, I fall asleep enjoying listening to the music, especially when listening to soothing Piano tracks from Richard Clayderman?
[IMG2]http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8085/ylaaresized.jpg[/IMG2]
Santorini by Yanni from the album Live at Acropolis
After the Carpenters track, we decided to try a western instrumental track and I selected Santorini by Yanni. This was from the album Live At Acropolis so the CD track was recorded live. This is a complex track with percussion instruments playing for the first few minutes, followed by beautiful notes from Yannis acoustic piano and all the time accompanied in the background by the violinists from Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. This track was a good test of how well the CD players created such a complicated soundstage.
We played it first in the Marantz CD player and the player did an acceptable job of creating the soundstage. The entire track is accompanied by violinists in the background and the Marantz did create a soundstage where one could hear the violin accompaniment but the violin was in the same space as other instruments. This is a long track and at around 5 minutes, all the instruments will wind down with just a percussion instrument playing in the foreground accompanied by violinists playing in the background. When this winding down happens, there is a subtle but powerful note by the violinists. When this track was playing in the Marantz, we could hear the violin note but only barely.
When we played the same track on the Emotiva, the first thing that hit us was that the percussion instruments could be heard clearly and the violin accompaniment was placed further away from the percussion instruments, creating the illusion of the main instruments in the foreground and the violinists in the background. At around the five minute mark when the track starts winding down, the violin note was clearly heard in its own space with percussion in the foreground. After 30 seconds or so the track will pick up tempo and the Emotiva presents the tempo correctly and it hits you as it should. Its hard to explain, but the entire track was so wide and alive in the Emotiva. At the end of the track, the clapping of audience was also recorded. Interestingly, Venkatcr & I noted that the clapping was very subdued in the Marantz but in the Emotiva, you could feel that the audience were seated much wider, and beyond the boundaries of the speakers.
At this point, we pretty much concluded that the Emotiva beat the Marantz in this track.
[IMG2]http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/5241/feverresized.jpg[/IMG2]
Fever by Elvis Presley
Note: I tested this track alone after dropping off Venkatcr
This is another simple track from Elvis where vocals feature prominently with very simple instrument arrangements. The track consists of Elvis voice, a normal drum, a conga style drum and a few artists clicking their fingers. This is a good track to test the ability of a CD player to convey the roll-off and decay as they are recorded. In this song, at some points the drum rolls from the normal drum to the conga style drum all the time accompanied by the clicking of fingers. The Marantz did create this soundstage well and played the track ok.
But unfortunately for the Marantz, the Emotiva just performed this track much better. When the drum starts rolling, the Emotiva conveyed the notes precisely and there was no time wasted in moving from one drum beat to another. It was that precise. When the drum switches to conga style drum, the decay of the previous drum beat was natural. And this is the track where I had that experience so commonly mentioned by many an audiophile: I could hear the singer breathing
Thanks to the wide soundstage, the voice of Elvis was so much more lively and at times, you could hear him breathing into the mike especially when he says Fever on a high pitch!And The Winner Is...
Before I state the obvious conclusion, I have to add a disclaimer. This was a very subjective test, and the conclusions are drawn from the hearing abilities of two individuals: Venkatcr & I. There are some members who would rather like a much scientific method of testing. They are not wrong. But as much as we would have liked to conduct this test scientifically, neither do I have the equipment (voltmeter, multimeter, amp meter et al) nor am I going to purchase them to perform any form of scientific testing. Most of us here including myself would rather let our ears decide what is good music & what is not and this shoot-out has also been done based on what two sets of ears liked.
Needless to say, both Venkatcr & I agreed that the winner clearly was the Emotiva ERC-1.
Concluding Notes
Thanks to Venkatcr for taking time out of his vacation to meet up with me and perform the shoot-out.
And thanks everyone for reading this rather lengthy review!
-thekinge
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I would like to add that in Santorini by Yanni, the drums when played by the Emotiva died very quickly, something I like a lot. In something like Orchestral music, percussion and instrumental decay goes a long way in removing the merging of sound and the capability to hear complex and rapid shift from one instrument to another.
For a long time I used to think that percussion decay was the sole responsibility of speakers. If you remember I had talked about this a lot in my review of the Audire speakers. The Emotiva was clearly able to control the decay precisely, while the Marantz let it slide in the exact places that Dhilip mentioned in his post.
Both Santorini and the Yesterday Once More are songs I am very familiar with.
I am not fond of live numbers. But well recorded live numbers do provide one thing - a huge audience clapping. The capability of a system of recreating the large soundstage with hundreds of hands clapping is overwhelming, irrespective of the amplitude used. Usually the clapping starts small, rolls in like a thunder, reaches a crescendo, and then dies away. At the end, depending upon the recording, you can hear a few individual hands continuing to clap. The Marantz just could not match the Emotiva in this.
Excellent review, Dhilip. A job well done, I must say.
Cheers
For a long time I used to think that percussion decay was the sole responsibility of speakers. If you remember I had talked about this a lot in my review of the Audire speakers. The Emotiva was clearly able to control the decay precisely, while the Marantz let it slide in the exact places that Dhilip mentioned in his post.
Both Santorini and the Yesterday Once More are songs I am very familiar with.
I am not fond of live numbers. But well recorded live numbers do provide one thing - a huge audience clapping. The capability of a system of recreating the large soundstage with hundreds of hands clapping is overwhelming, irrespective of the amplitude used. Usually the clapping starts small, rolls in like a thunder, reaches a crescendo, and then dies away. At the end, depending upon the recording, you can hear a few individual hands continuing to clap. The Marantz just could not match the Emotiva in this.
Excellent review, Dhilip. A job well done, I must say.
Cheers
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srinisundar
Well-Known Member
Nice review and good to record an hifi abroad meet...
For excellent sound that won't break the bank, the 5 Star Award Winning Wharfedale Diamond 12.1 Bookshelf Speakers is the one to consider!
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