Marantz SA8004 Super Audio CD/CD Player (Black)

I wanted a source that would be the heart of my digital music world, and I was very impressed with this player's predecessor, the SA8003, except that with the older player you could only control your ipod via the player, and as everyone knows, controlling an iAnything with another product is a step backwards in usability.

So I waited for an updated player to be released, and when the SA8004 was announced I first read the online manual to make sure the engineering matched the marketing, then bought this player as soon as it was available.

I've had this CD player for almost a year, and I've been thrilled with it from the start. I connect my iPod, iPhone or iPad to the front USB port, laptop to the rear USB port and desktop to the optical digital in. I typically listen to FLAC files on my computers or Apple Lossless files on my iPod, and I cannot tell a difference at all in the sound from the various inputs. At the very least, the loudness is the same among...Read more

I've been in the "HI FI" industry for 30 years and when my Rega Planet started acting up I replaced it with a Pioneer Elite universal player, which was good, but only lasted 2 years. So when I saw the review in TAS"(The Absolute Sound I kept it in mind, it later won a "Golden Ears" award. This is a great sounding unit. It has the "Slam" of the Pioneer and the Analog sound of the Rega, throw in a USB DAC at this price and how can you lose..... you can't. To say I'm happy with The SA8004 is a under statement. BTW the SA8400 has also won The Absolute Sound 2011 Digital Source of The Year award in the Jan 2012 issue # 219

I purchased Marantz SA8004 as a replacement for Marantz SA8003 since the new model has optical and coaxial inputs and also has a USB input to connect to PC. It also has a headphones output (I use it with Sennheiser HD800, not sure how it works with other headphones). It makes the player almost universal device. I use it in several regimes periodically switching between the modes:
1)As a SACD/CD player. The sound is great (and better than SA8003). The device is absolutely quiet (no any mechanical sound while playing).
2)To play music/DVD movies on a computer. When SA8004 connected to a computer via USB cable, PC installed drivers automatically. By some reason the default settings give no sound when DVD movies are played (using Windows Media Player). However it is can be corrected easily: in the Control Panel->Sound-> SPDIF Interface->Advanced please deselect the "Exclusive Mode" options.
3)As an intermediate device between a (cheap) blu ray player and headphones (blu...Read more