My new old Marantz: The joys of analog audio

On a recent trip back to my parents’ house, I went home with my father’s old stereo: a Marantz 3200 stereo preamp console and a Marantz 140 power amplifier (pictured), purchased around 1975.

That stereo — fairly high end in that era — always sounded great. However, it had been gathering dust for years, literally, since he bought a cute little bookshelf stereo with digital receiver and CD changer.

Thus, the components came home with me.

I’ve been listening to music through this system in my office, instead of a much newer (and very nice) Pioneer VSX-D409 audio/video receiver we bought in 2002. The difference is astounding. The sound is so sweet and smooth coming from the 30-year-old all-analog Marantz gear — even when the input source is just an iPod.

Sure, the Marantz gear has limitations. No remote. No 5.1 Dolby surround. No DTS decode. No built-in tuner. It only works with my Yamaha subwoofer by letting the subwoofer’s circuitry do all the high pass/low pass filtering.

The old Marantz rig only has 75 watts x 2 channels, compared to the Pioneer’s 100 watts x 5 channels. Who cares: It sounds better. Ahhh….. that’s what listening to music is all about.