Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsA solid 7.1 receiver for small to medium sized spaces
Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2023
I considered a Pioneer 5.1 receiver, a marantz 5.1 receiver and this 7.1 receiver as well as its more expensive cousin, the cinema 50. I decided to go for this unit.
Minor Cons:
First of all, the remote is IR which is a bit of a disappointment. Having an iOS app makes up for this. Second of all, the menus are a bit confusing, but some time spent scouring the manual and online forum posts allowed me to turn off the most annoying feature of this unit. For some reason, stereo is only played through the front left and front right speakers by default. I have had other receivers that defaulted to "all channel stereo" and I was baffled why marantz chose to make this option relatively hard to find. I was also baffled as to why the sub did not come on for stereo content unless I turned on "all channel stereo." The HEOS user interface is a bit confusing, but it works well enough. The user interface on the TV is somewhat simplistic, but perhaps that's a good thing.
Pros:
I have used this unit with FM tuner and with internet radio, including amazon music, sirius xm and several local fm stations that stream their content. I can press one of the preset buttons on the remote and the receiver wakes up and starts streaming internet radio. If I select the receiver as a source on my tv, the receiver wakes up, and I can control the receiver with my LG TV remote. The display on the front of the unit is easy to read from across the room if the TV isn't on to display the user interface there. The remote works well from 15 feet away at about a 45 degree angle from the unit which is better than what is claimed in the documentation.
One thing I have not dealt with yet is watching dolby atmos movies streamed from my apple tv. I will cross this bridge later and I'm confident I will find a way to make it work to my satisfaction. I don't mind that the unit is only 50 watts/channel as this is enough for me to enjoy music and movies in my 300-ish square foot family room. I will be getting larger main speakers and moving my present FL and FR speakers to the ceiling as atmos front height speakers.
I have not run the speaker calibration yet, but I will do it once I have all the speakers where I want them. This receiver comes with speaker wire labels which is a nice touch. I already have all my speaker wires labeled, but I appreciate having labels included with the receiver. I also like having binding posts that accept banana jacks for all channels and two available subwoofer low level outputs for powered subs. I'm only using one at the moment, but I like the option of adding another sub if I choose to. I like being able to find answers to questions online either on marantz's web site or in forums. I do have a vinyl collection and a turntable (somewhere) so I like that this unit has a phono input. I used a flat TV antenna as an FM antenna and found it to be more reliable than the bit of wire supplied with the receiver. I have not bothered with AM, though I will eventually set on AM station so I can listen to Detroit Tigers baseball.
In the first photo, the nr1711 sits beneath an old Tivo box that is soon to be discarded and atop an old bluray player that will probably meet the same fate. There are a few particles of plaster on top from when I was installing the front height left speaker near the ceiling above the nr1711. In the second photo, I have made all the 7 channel speaker connections using Lowes' banana plugs.
I gave the unit 5 stars overall. I only gave 4 stars for value as there are a lot of 7.1 units available for less, but alas they are much larger. I only gave 4 stars for the remote because the buttons do not light up, it is IR and these old man eyes have a hard time reading the buttons in low light.
I plan to do Audyssey speaker calibration with the included microphone in the next week or so and if I'm able to, I will update this review once I've done that.
