Review by Andrew Philip for Marantz NR1501 Slim Line Home Theater Receiver
Rating:
The Marantz NR1501 slim line model is only about 4″ tall and really an excellent overall receiver. I bought this to replace a Sony STRG810. It was a toss up between a Denon, Yamaha or Marantz. The Sony STRG810 was a great receiver for movies but it was lacking sound quality in the music department (too much reverb). When comparing similar models, Yamaha was brighter then Denon, and Marantz was warmer then Denon, so I went with Marantz. I compared the Marantz NR1501 model to a Marantz SR6004 ($1300) side by side, and the audio quality was almost the same except the SR6004 was a bit more full at 110 watts per channel. I also compared the Marantz NR1501 to a Harmon Kardon AVR254 and the Marantz NR1501 sounded much better. The Harmon Kardon sounded too digital and tinny where the Marantz sounded true to its source. I am very pleased with how warm and clear the sound quality is while listening to music or watching movies.

The 50 watt NR1501 is more then enough wattage to power my reference series Klipsch speakers in a 13′ x 17′ living room. You may think that 50 watts is too low, but Marantz rates their receivers lower then what they are capable of. For example, Sony rates their receivers by putting a meter in the center of a testing room and increasing the volume as loud as it can go – distortion and all; they mark down what the wattage output is. Marantz does the same procedure except once they get to distortion, they back the knob off a little and mark down the wattage rating. That is why you will notice a lot of Marantz receivers are rated at 50,70, or 90 watts which is a lot lower then some of the 100,110 watt competition.

I usually set all the parameters (crossover frequency, speaker distance, db level etc.) by ear as I have with every receiver I have purchased. I wanted to see how well this receiver does with auto calibration, so I ran it. The receiver comes with a microphone so I put it on a camera tripod, put it up to the listening position, and ran the auto cal procedure. It lasted about 3 minutes and played a series of test tones. When it was done, all of the levels were adjusted to the listening position. I manually went through these levels to see how well it did. The only one I had to adjust was the crossover frequency. It set my center channel frequency to 170hz and my front and surround speaker channels to 90hz. Let me break this down, so you can see why I changed it:

My center channel speaker’s frequency response is 67Hz-23kHz ± 3dB. Meaning anything below 67Hz ± 3dB is not produced well from the center channel speaker; so I set the center channel crossover frequency to 70Hz. Therefore, everything below 70Hz will be sent to my subwoofer. Also, my front channel speaker’s frequency response is 90Hz-20kHz ± 3dB, so I set my front channel crossover frequency to 100hz. Finally, my rear channel speaker’s frequency response is 52Hz-23kHz ± 3dB so I set the crossover frequency to 60hz. There was a noticeable improvement in sound quality after this was adjusted properly.

Review by S. Crow for Marantz NR1501 Slim Line Home Theater Receiver
Rating:
Purchased this receiver after spending a considerable amount of time putting together a home theatre system. Listened many receivers and actually purchased a Harman Kardon 255 from Amazon. For the price the Marantz NR 1501 blew all of these away – it has a great feature set and works very reliably. My main criteria for home theatre was to listen to music and then movies second. Musically it is awesome with a warm detailed sound – the HK 255 sounded like listening to music in a metal pipe – even my wife noticed how bad the HK 255 sounded. For other comparisons I would say it is just a notch below the sound quality of my previous amp a NAD 302 – which was built just for music and is truly awesome. For movies, which we watch a lot of, it doesn’t disappoint with plenty of power to fill our family room/ kitchen area (14 x 28 ft). Volume goes from 1 – 100 and listening to movies in the 50 – 60 range is pretty loud and that is from the Playstation PS3 which is a little on the low side when it comes to volume output. I have it matched to B&W M1s up front and a pair of Orb Audios in the rear with a REL T2 sub.

Features wise it is excellent with enough HDMI inputs for my setup. HDMI video is passed through nicely with no loss of video quality from my PS3 as far as I can tell. The setup onscreen display (OSD) is fairly basic but has all you need without a lot of features you don’t really need. OSD is basic text on the TV (no overlaying here like fancier models) but really that is not important as once you have everything set up you rarely need to go back into the OSD – remember this is an audio device to create great sound not a video device. On the whole the OSD is comparable to the HK 255 and it allows you to name each input however you are limited to only 8 characters. HD audio works great from the PS3 using 5.1 channel PCM streams over HDMI – I don’t have a dedicated Blu-Ray player so I can’t comment on bitstreamed versions DTS and Dolby True HD – but through the PS3 HD audio worked and sounded fantastic. I often like to just listen to streamed radio through the PS3 and unfortunately when the audio goes through HDMI the TV has to be on otherwise it does not work. The only other alternative is to send the sound from the PS3 via Digital Optical but this format does not support HD Audio. Not sure if this shortcoming is due to the HDMI specifications or just a particular quirk of the NR 1501.

Setup is fairly straight forward with the included microphone. I ended up tweaking all the values manually in the end to get the balance just where I wanted it. All the usual crossover frequencies, volumes and distances as you would expect. I think there is also a feature where you can have more than one setup and switch between the two (say for Movies and Music) however don’t quote me on that. I am sure Marantz publishes the manual online somewhere so you can read up on it.

The remote is OK and I like the feel of it. A big plus is that there is just about a button for every feature you would likely change on a day to day basis. Such as lip-sync, fake surround mode when there is just a stereo signal (receiver supports the latest Dolby and NEO fake surround modes which actually work very well – say when listening to 2 channel TV). The receiver will default to playing in the best surround mode possible – if it only receives a 2 channel signal then it will the pick whatever mode you selected for that input in the setup (such as Neo Movie or simply 2 channel etc). The biggest shortfall of the remote was that the built in presets for controlling other equipment were somewhat lacking (or out of date) it could not control our 2008 Samsung LCD at all (which means 2 remotes – argh!). I solved this by buying a SR 5003/4 remote on eBay which has true learning capability – problem solved – it could learn any function of our other remotes and for the most part has the same buttons / layout as the 1501 remote.

The feature I would have liked in this receiver would be Dolby Volume or the equivalent Audyssey Dynamic Volume found on the SR-5004. So if you want a bit more power and have space in your wallet and house definitely consider the SR – 5004 as well. Finally I picked up my NR-1501 at a local store in So.California – Ken Cranes – for $500 including tax which was a great deal and what you should expect to pay for this unit.

Review by Bill Patterson for Marantz NR1501 Slim Line Home Theater Receiver
Rating:
I’m replacing a Pioneer VSX-919ah that never really worked well for me. This marantz receiver has it beat in every respect. It’s smaller, so it fits in my entertainment center. The auto setup identified specifically where each speaker cut off and set the crossover frequency individually. The result is that each speaker is used to it’s fullest. On the Pioneer, you either picked “large” and got all bass, or you picked “small” and the sub-woofer did all the bass work. With this Marantz, the audio is so much richer and full sounding. It’s very simple to setup yet sounds so much better. It’s much easier to understand conversations in movies, where on the pioneer, I was always raising the volume to understand dialog. This has more componant connections, more hdmi connections, more of everything. Liking it so far.