Dipping a toe into the world of Hi-Fi

[Dartz]

"It sounds great, until someone convinces you it could sound 'better'. "

Or until it doesn't sound at all.

The SR7400 died. It looks like a power transistor fried. 20 years is a good life for a modern electronic device. The thing ran hot as fuck anyway.

After a few weeks of normal-fi we've managed to scrounge enough money to sale the seas of eBay and find a replacement. The hardest think was to find something functional that:
-Offered an analogue output that can drive a recording input into a tape deck
-Offered enough I/O to hook up a tape deck, an Xbox, a PC(as a blue-ray player) with 7.1ch discrete audio, a CD player and a record player
-Actually had HDMI hookups.
-Had enough power to drive 7 x 100 watt speakers

I found a nearly-new Marantz SR5006 from 2012 so. It's a bit tetchy to use - it relies on the telly screen for its control display but it works. And it doesn't run anywhere near as hot. But the thing self-calibrates to the room, it sounds alright and it does work right out of the box.

Also finally tracked down the cause of an intermittent humm from the record player. It hadn't forgotten the words - the was a bogey cable picking up mains. A new one is needed.

It cost me more than I would've liked, but came with all it's original accessories. The only problem was a slightly ruined remote. I could fix the most important contacts with foil tape - but not all of them

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It's also about 5 kilos lighter since it doesn't have as much discrete I/O to support. But it does have enough.