Marantz SR7200 Surround Receiver
January 2001Marantz SR7200 Surround Receiver
Bringing Music and Movies to Life
By Grant Clauser
What's not to like about a home theater product that includes all the newest features, is easy to use, makes the rest of your system virtually glow and looks good as well? I'm talking about Marantz's new SR7200 surround sound receiver which bustles with 105 watts of get-up-and-go poured into 6.1 channels (that's six, not five) plus support for the new Dolby Pro Logic II processing and multi-zone capability.
Marantz is a name that has drawn much respect from audio lovers ever since Saul Marantz first built the Model 1 in the 1950s. Since then of course the company has moved into the digital and home theater realms. While not the company's flagship product, the SR7200 demonstrates that Marantz still has a firm command of audio processing.
At 32 pounds, the SR7200 is a weighty product, but not the monolith some receivers these days have become, so it will fit nicely into most users' racks or cabinets. Strictly from a feature standpoint, the SR7200 wins my applause. As a Dolby Digital and DTS receiver, it can handle 5.1 audio as well as the less common 6.1 channel formats. In addition to the aforementioned Dolby Pro Logic II processing, it includes SRS Labs stereo-to-multi-channel mode, Circle Surround. It does component video switching (two sets), in addition to the standard composite and S-Video. Digital audio inputs include two optical and three coaxial; there's also a full set of analog audio inputs, making the product fully compatible for DVD-Audio (DVD-A) and SACD (Super Audio CD) players.
The SR7200 comes with a real charmer of a remote. Not only is it a programmable universal remote, but it's learning-capable and sports an LCD panel. The LCD panel is not a touch screen like the Marantz RC500i remote, but it gives you info about what mode or device you're controlling at the time. The remote can be a bit intimidating to master, but the instructions do a good job of guiding you through the learning process. Backlit buttons would have been nice, otherwise it's superior to many remotes for receivers in this class. Finding a full learning remote in a receiver priced under a grand is a treat, considering such remotes cost $200 and up by themselves.
Setting up the receiver was fairly straightforward. The first menu walks you through system set up for your signal sources and speakers. The product includes TV Auto On/Off which will turn the receiver off after one to five minutes of detecting no video signal. This is handy, but if you plug your video sources directly into your display then make sure you have this feature turned off or else the receiver will keep shutting off whenever you have it set to TV. I set the speakers to small, identified the inputs for the different sources and balanced all the speakers with test tones and a sound level meter.
