I have a Onkyo TX8050 and wanted to upgrade to a Audiophile Grade Streamer.
So I went ahead and got the Marantz NA7004.
NA7004 Is Great Sounding but is full of Basic Functionality Issues and software bugs.
I don't know Why What*HiFi gave it 5 Stars. I guess someone should tell them what a Streamer should really do in terms of functionality.
From my experience with it, One Star is actually too generous.
Onkyo TX8050 is a million times better in terms of setup, playback from
Network over DLNA or from USB Drives (Thumb and HDD).
First The Good.
When you get it to play something eventually, It sounds really great.
The bad, Really Bad.
1) The first time you switch it on It asks you to update the Device,
It allows only update over the Internet and it takes over 30 mins to
update.
During the Update the Messages that appear on the screen have
nothing to do with what is actually happening and it takes a long time.
I assumed that the Box had Hung When it stayed on "Authenticating" for a long time,
So I kept restarting the Box. I assumed authentication is sending my Mac/Serial
number to the server and should take no more than a few seconds.
I Prefer Onkyo Firmware Update Over the USB, there you download the
firmware and copy it to USB and use this to update the device.
This way, the slow Update Process is not hindered by dropped connections unavailable server etc.
2) It takes at-least a minute (1:12 to be exact) to discover the DLNA Server.
I am using foobar2000 on a XP machine.
It goes thru 4 steps,
1) Initializing ,
2) Connecting,
3) Checking Info
4) Waiting for reply.
3) It takes very long to discover the USB media also.
Most of the Times it come up With Empty List Error
I tried with FAT32 8GB HP Flash Thumb drive.
I even tried a Fat32 2GB Trancend Thumb drive, No luck.
The funny thing is that it goes thru same 4 steps for USB also
1) Initializing , Ok ...
2) Connecting, Well ok ...
3) Checking Info
4) Waiting for reply. eh ???
Their own Manual says
"This function is activated arrould 1 or 2 minutes sfter the power is turned on"
4) I am yet to get songs to Play from the USB.
Update: I got it to play, You should have only One partition in the thumb drive for the device to list the files.
5) Does not support NTFS USB thumb drives / hard-disks.
Only supports FAT and FAT32, who has their FLAC collection on FAT16 Thumbdrive ?
No Support for USB Harddisks/ NTFS either.
6) Only the First Partion in the USB Device will show up. ( WHAT ?????? )
7) Only MP3 files can play from USB (According to the manual). I could not test FLAC
since I could not get the USB to work in the first place.
Update: FLAC Also works from USB.
8) Marantz's own Android Remote App does not discover it. You need to use a third party app called AVR-Remote. If AVR-Remote can discover and control it, why cant Marantz's own software do it. I use the Onkyo remote app to send playlists from my server to the Streamer. Its much easier to locate and navigate thru a big collection on a server using a touch device. Actually Onlyo remote app only loads a few items at once which is pretty irritating when you have a lot of files, but atleast it works.
I guess I can use this as plain DAC with a PC. This way I can bypass all the software issues.
The funny thing is that I had read a lot of complaints about the software issues with Cambridge Stream Magic 6 , So I went with Marantz. I guess these audiophile hardware guys are yet to get their act together on software.
We all assume that Audiophile Grade hardware vendors have very stringent quality procedures that make their hardware so much more expensive than consumer class devices. With the software issues like this on a shipped product, I wonder what kind of Actual Internal Quality control procedures do they really have for other things like hardware, parts etc ?
So I went ahead and got the Marantz NA7004.
NA7004 Is Great Sounding but is full of Basic Functionality Issues and software bugs.
I don't know Why What*HiFi gave it 5 Stars. I guess someone should tell them what a Streamer should really do in terms of functionality.
From my experience with it, One Star is actually too generous.
Onkyo TX8050 is a million times better in terms of setup, playback from
Network over DLNA or from USB Drives (Thumb and HDD).
First The Good.
When you get it to play something eventually, It sounds really great.
The bad, Really Bad.
1) The first time you switch it on It asks you to update the Device,
It allows only update over the Internet and it takes over 30 mins to
update.
During the Update the Messages that appear on the screen have
nothing to do with what is actually happening and it takes a long time.
I assumed that the Box had Hung When it stayed on "Authenticating" for a long time,
So I kept restarting the Box. I assumed authentication is sending my Mac/Serial
number to the server and should take no more than a few seconds.
I Prefer Onkyo Firmware Update Over the USB, there you download the
firmware and copy it to USB and use this to update the device.
This way, the slow Update Process is not hindered by dropped connections unavailable server etc.
2) It takes at-least a minute (1:12 to be exact) to discover the DLNA Server.
I am using foobar2000 on a XP machine.
It goes thru 4 steps,
1) Initializing ,
2) Connecting,
3) Checking Info
4) Waiting for reply.
3) It takes very long to discover the USB media also.
Most of the Times it come up With Empty List Error
I tried with FAT32 8GB HP Flash Thumb drive.
I even tried a Fat32 2GB Trancend Thumb drive, No luck.
The funny thing is that it goes thru same 4 steps for USB also
1) Initializing , Ok ...
2) Connecting, Well ok ...
3) Checking Info
4) Waiting for reply. eh ???
Their own Manual says
"This function is activated arrould 1 or 2 minutes sfter the power is turned on"
4) I am yet to get songs to Play from the USB.
Update: I got it to play, You should have only One partition in the thumb drive for the device to list the files.
5) Does not support NTFS USB thumb drives / hard-disks.
Only supports FAT and FAT32, who has their FLAC collection on FAT16 Thumbdrive ?
No Support for USB Harddisks/ NTFS either.
6) Only the First Partion in the USB Device will show up. ( WHAT ?????? )
7) Only MP3 files can play from USB (According to the manual). I could not test FLAC
since I could not get the USB to work in the first place.
Update: FLAC Also works from USB.
8) Marantz's own Android Remote App does not discover it. You need to use a third party app called AVR-Remote. If AVR-Remote can discover and control it, why cant Marantz's own software do it. I use the Onkyo remote app to send playlists from my server to the Streamer. Its much easier to locate and navigate thru a big collection on a server using a touch device. Actually Onlyo remote app only loads a few items at once which is pretty irritating when you have a lot of files, but atleast it works.
I guess I can use this as plain DAC with a PC. This way I can bypass all the software issues.
The funny thing is that I had read a lot of complaints about the software issues with Cambridge Stream Magic 6 , So I went with Marantz. I guess these audiophile hardware guys are yet to get their act together on software.
We all assume that Audiophile Grade hardware vendors have very stringent quality procedures that make their hardware so much more expensive than consumer class devices. With the software issues like this on a shipped product, I wonder what kind of Actual Internal Quality control procedures do they really have for other things like hardware, parts etc ?
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