Marantz UD8004 receives the AV2D Recommended Buy label
In any healthy company development is done top-down. You start with a statement, a design where all possible technology is used to get to the ultimate performance. No compromises. At Marantz this starting point is the UD9004. Not everybody has €5.499 available to buy the absolute top model. What alternative do you have? You want reference level performance, but with a lower budget and in a less impressive casing. At Marantz you end up just one step below, with the smaller big brother UD8004. This player costs less than half of the UD9004. Main question is if this means that the UD8004 gets only half of the performance? The answer to this is clear: no. It's a law that the improvements giving that 100% are most of the times not linearly connected to the price. An improvement of a few percent often costs a whole lot more. The UD9004 is built like a tank, has 32-bit DACS and houses the ultimate video processor, double HDMI outputs,... The UD9004 is there for the pure audio- and video lovers who accept only the very best, while the UD8004 is a fantastic compromise for the informed consumer that wants performance at reference level, in a more modest casing and with a much more democratic price tag. In short: the UD9004 is a reference player, the UD8004 a player with reference performance. For this reason the UD8004 deserves a Recommended Buy-label.
Read the full review at:http://www.audiovideo2day.eu/en/article/7698/Marantz-UD8004-disc-player-review
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