AV receivers
The market for AV receivers has dropped in recent years, paralleling the rise of the soundbar, and yet the receivers themselves have become ever more powerful, more versatile, and much easier to use since the innovation of app control. The addition of networking has brought all the wonders of music streaming, and even for the receivers in our under-$2000 category, a full list of their functions would fill this page and more.
There is one commonality among AV receivers, which is their size — big double-height units to fit in all the amplifiers and all the rear socketry. But one company, Marantz, has long been offering an alternative in its line of ‘slimline’ (or more correctly ‘short-arsed’) receivers, this latest NR1606 being a more home-friendly 105mm tall (including feet but not including the two antennas). It also has Marantz’s curved fascia, making it a far prettier unit than is the norm, yet there seem remarkably few compromises required for this to be achieved.
Perhaps the only marked variation from the norm in a receiver in this price category are the headline power measurements. The NR1606 is rated at 50W continuous for each of its seven channels of power, measured with two channels driven, and with just 0.08% THD into eight ohms across the full audio bandwidth. So that’s a hi-fi specification, not a crazy plucked-from-the-air power figure, and Marantz is an expert at power delivery; no surprise, then, that we found this receiver to deliver superb transparency and control. What’s more it was sumptuous with music as well as slamming out the movie excitement — and of course there are many ways to access your music. We used the receiver itself as a Digital Media Renderer (audio only, of course), controlling it with an Android app, feeding music to it from our network server — it also supports Bluetooth and AirPlay streaming, Whether FLAC at standard CD resolution, or high resolution (up to 192kHz), or Direct Stream Digital at both 2.8MHz and 5.6MHz bitstreams, the music was gorgeous, rich and, dare we say it, analogue.
The results were equally impressive with multichannel — with seven channels available we ran it in conventional 5.1 plus two height channels for Dolby Atmos soundtracks, for which it includes the required processing. The two overhead channels ‘lifted’ the general sense of envelopment both for native Atmos soundtracks and with Dolby Surround processing, which cleverly heightens content that would be located within the listening area towards the ceiling, where it generally belongs.
Video handling was strong, with decent automatic deinterlacing.
We wouldn’t recommend it to drive a huge room of low-sensitivity speakers, but we reckon the $1280 NR1606 will fit into many homes, with more than sufficient power, and a big boost in aesthetics. More info:
www.qualifi.com.au