Thank you!

Thanks for the suggestion, I did look at the Wharfedale ELYSIAN and I almost pulled the trigger on a Rotel separates, but I decided to try the Marantz and fell in love with their detailed, yet ever so slightly warm sound. The DAC in the Marantz CD50n is no slouch either. I bought an Eversolo DCM A6 Master Edition streamer and hooked its analog outputs up to the Model 30 amp inputs. It sounded pretty good, but then I connected the Eversolo's optical digital output and fed that into the CD50n letting the DAC in the CD player handle the Digital to Analog conversion...Much better sounding than the DAC in the Eversolo. In fact my iPad connected to the CD50n via USB sounds better than the Eversolo's built in DAC. I'm boxing up the Eversolo today and sending it back. Speaker wise, a friend has a $50K+ system with all PS Audio gear, including a pair of Aspen FR 20 speakers. Once he's done with his main system (he just bought a $2,000 pair so speaker wires) he's going to buy a pair of Aspen FR 5 stand mount speakers for his second listening room. He said he'll let me borrow the FR 5 speakers so I'm holding off on new speakers until I can take his speakers for a spin.

Marantz definitely took a quirky approach to this entire line of products. Normally the higher models have more features and more inputs and that's sorta true of the CD players, but the amps are another story. The Model 40n is the middle amp in the lineup, but it's the only amp in this product line with Bluetooth, Network input, USB A thumb drive input, optical input, digital input, HDMI input, Apple Airplay, Apple Airplay 2 and HEOS. The CD60 does have an internal DAC for CD playback, but does not have any digital inputs, it's a CD player only with digital outputs. The CD50n and CD30 support Network streaming, Digital inputs, digital and analog outputs, and are very similar except the CD30 supports SACD. Personally I could not justify an extra $1,000 for SACD playback since I don't own any SACDs anyway. Be careful mixing and matching amps and CD players in this product line so you don't end up with unnecessary duplication of features or worse yet omitting inputs or outputs that are important to you.

@@Koolbob2 CD60 has a DAC, is not a transport, it has the ESS ES9016K2M DAC. 50n has the ESS 9038 DAC. I have a lot SACDs but already have a SACD dedicated player. Also model 30s are made in Japan, 50s and 60 CD are made in Vietnam. Thanks.

@@JohnSmith-zl8rz I misspoke, the CD60 it has a DAC for CD playback, but does not have any digital inputs.

@@Koolbob2 oh yes.

A great review and thanks for taking the time. One thing you got wrong though is the difference between the 50n and Model30n. The dac in the Model 30n uses mmm technology and very different HDAM's which sounds like marketing hype, but actually makes the 30n significantly better. That's where the extra money goes. It's the implementation of dac chips that make a difference, not the chips themselves