Company History

This article is on the new Marantz Stereo 70S which promises not only excellent two-channel sound but comes packed with a wealth of features we normally see on home theater receivers.

Ever since the early days when Saul Marantz founded the company, they have been all about producing a very natural sound that is true to the music. His other goal was to make products that would last a very long time. You can certainly tell Saul Marantz delivered on both of these as most of the early Marantz products from separates to stereo receivers command very high used prices, still work well, and have that natural Marantz sound.

Marantz is so serious about keeping that natural sound that they train engineers to be what they call a Sound Master. It's a highly revered position if you qualify as your job will now be listening to individual parts and prototype units to make sure they deliver the sound that has made Marantz famous.

Design & Build Quality

A few years ago Marantz did a redesign on some of their units with the introduction of their Model 30 integrated amp and SACD 30n disc player and network streamer. These had a new faceplate with the classic Marantz porthole display front and center. The new Stereo 70S follows in this tradition with the same look as those great units but in a slimline chassis meaning it is only 4.1 inches tall. It now looks much more like a nice two-channel piece of gear with the omission of all the little buttons and knobs.

We think this is a big step up in design over the NR1200 unit the Stereo 70S replaces. And funny enough, it was 70 years ago, and 1953 when Saul Marantz founded the company so the name is very fitting.

Marantz has taken what was already a nice unit in the NR1200 and really upped the game from a video standpoint.

The NR1200 came about as Marantz was observing a new type of music lover emerging who was primarily interested in good sound, but also wanted to have their TV in the same room as their stereo system. This new listener does not really care about surround sound but does want better audio from their TV experience and the best possible audio for the money with stereo listening.

With their history of making amazing sounding two-channel components and home theater products with some of the best features and sound on the market, they came up with the idea of combining those two technologies into a compact unit that had natural Marantz sound with some useful video switching plus convenience features and options usually only found in full-fledged surround AVRs. The NR1200 was the result and the Stereo 70S is an even better follow-up to its success.

The Stereo 70S is pretty compact in size at about 4 ½” tall, roughly 15” deep, and the standard audio component width of 17”. What is interesting, is it weighs more than a lot of 5 and 7-channel home theater receivers at 18.5 pounds, mostly due to the large power transformer which helps give it that warm, natural sound. Keeping the compact height while maintaining great sound was really important to their engineers as they wanted the Stereo 70S to be able to sit on top of a credenza and not look out of place.

Marantz also does not mess around with the power ratings and tries to make you think it has more power than it really does. You’ll find it rated with both channels driven at .08% distortion across the full audio band of 20-20,000 hz at 75 watts per channel. Had they used the spec many brands use of just measuring at 1000 Hz and higher distortion, it would deliver 100 watts per channel. Its very beefy power amp section should be more than plenty for almost any speaker that would make sense to pair with the Stereo 70S, especially things like the Bowers & Wilkens 600 series, which would make a great match.

The elegant front panel looks similar to their latest releases with the look of carbon fiber on the sides and a raised section containing a few key controls. On the Stereo 70S you’ll get a larger input knob with smaller ones for a speaker selector for the two possible pairs, balance, bass, treble, and then another larger one for volume. The power button on the left is symmetrically placed with the dedicated ¼” headphone jack on the right. The Marantz porthole which gives you a view of what you are controlling is in the center. Ever since the early days of the classic Marantz integrated amps, their front panels have kept this great simple, but totally balanced look.

When we tested the NR1200 back in 2019, we felt the volume knob was a little flimsy. Marantz must have listened as the Stereo 70S volume knob feels very solid and tight.

Features & Technology

From a feature standpoint, the Stereo 70S is very similar to their better home theater receivers with just two-channels.

You’ll find 6 video inputs, 3 of which are capable of 8K, and one output which also serves as an Audio Return Channel connection for TVs that have this. New for this year is the ability to upscale any 1080P or 4K signal to 8K, which you can select in the very intuitive setup menu. Speaking of the menu, this is a good one. It has a wizard to walk you through everything which is nice, but if you take a deeper dive, it has great on-screen explanations for every single choice helping you get the best from your new Stereo 70S.

All of the video inputs support the formats you expect in a nice home theater receiver with HDR, HLG, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and Dynamic HDR. ALLM or Auto Low Latency is there too and it has a pass-through for gaming where you can select the pass-through input you desire in the setup menu. They all also support VRR or Variable Refresh Rate.

The input setup menu is very flexible and allows you to select an analog or digital source to go along with your video signal for those of us who like to listen to the local announcer on the built-in FM tuner or included Tune In internet radio while we watch the national video feed.

On the audio side are 3 analog inputs, a coax and toslink digital input, and a USB A host input. Vinyl lovers will appreciate the nice moving magnet phono input. This uses the same phono preamp as their more expensive receivers have.

The speaker connections are all gold plated with the ability to use either bare wire or banana plugs. These are a little nicer than you normally see in the price range and should allow you to torque down the bare wire pretty well and the bananas had a nice tight fit.

There is a main preamp out and a zone two one which would let you add more power and/or another amp to power a second zone. While the preamp outs are always active, in the menu, you can select a preamp only mode which disconnects the loudspeaker outputs thereby creating a lower distortion and higher max voltage out. This feature means customers can find a sensible upgrade path should they eventually desire more power or an even higher quality amplifier.

You’ll find a subwoofer one and subwoofer two connections on the rear, but bear in mind they are in parallel and not discrete. But for what is a two-channel receiver, you get far more control over the subwoofer than you do in most. You can select the crossover frequency in 10Hz increments up to 120hz, then it jumps in bigger steps. There are adjustments for the main speakers' distance and the sub, along with level controls for each.

There is also a neat feature called Smart Select on the remote with four buttons. These let you take 4 sources and do all kinds of configurations you can pull up with these buttons.

Finally, the rear has wifi antenna connections, a Bluetooth antenna connection, an ethernet connection, and the normal Marantz control ports which let you talk to other Marantz products.

Like all Marantz products, their streaming Heos system is included. This will give you a world of access to many Hi-Res streaming music services. You also have Airplay 2 and Bluetooth. Voice control lovers will appreciate the updates this year with Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, and Josh AI all being choices you could use. But we have to say, for basic listening, the remote control is pretty elegant too and easy to read and use. The remote includes a backlight.

Another neat feature is a Marantz technology called M-DAX. This will improve the sound of low-res audio, which would come in very handy for Pandora streaming lovers. And you can easily defeat it for your true high-fidelity sources. It's also easy to put the Stereo 70S in different modes from the remote. The listening modes are “Stereo”, which will include M-DAX if it is on and the tone controls; “Direct” which will bypass M-DAX and the tone controls, and finally “Pure Direct” which turns off the display circuitry to give you that last bit of noise reduction.

Ok, that is a lot of features, so now let's talk about what Marantz used to make this new receiver sound so good.

The DAC’s inside the Stereo 70S can handle Hi-Res Audio up to 24/192 and DSD up to 5.6 megahertz. The power amp portion is very similar to what they use in their more expensive audio-only integrated amps. The power amp section is a fully discrete Class A/B design just like what you find in high-performance separate power amplifiers.

But the real magic came in with the addition of HDAM. Marantz developed HDAM or High Dynamic Amplifier Modules back in 1992. They consist of fully discrete circuitry with hand-selected components to give you the quietest possible signal path in the preamp stage of their products. This is the first time HDAM has shown up in a Marantz slimline 2 channel receiver. Units we have heard with HDAM have an almost completely silent background which helps allow all of those tiny details in your music to come to life.

Performance Testing

We connected the Stereo 70S up to a pair of Bowers & Wilkins Anniversary Edition 606S2 on their dedicated stands and plugged in their entry-level but very good ASW608 subwoofer. We loved the way we could use the Marantz menu to really dial in the subwoofer just like on a nice home theater receiver. In our space, we wound up with the crossover set at 80hz, but it was great to be able to experiment quickly using the remote and a TV we had connected. It makes integrating a sub into a 2 channel system super simple. For those of you new to integrating subs, you might want to check out our video on how to integrate a subwoofer.

We then used Tidal with Heos to stream a few of our favorite test tracks, then we used a Pro-Ject EVO turntable to check out the phono preamp.

I have to say, this is one heck of a great-sounding unit for its cost. HDAM is just dead silent so your music seems to come from a completely black background with excellent imaging. With the sub engaged, we could rock out in our fairly large room with never a sense of strain. We did later try it without the sub and found the bass could get a little out of control if we really pushed it, but for what this unit is, it did a great job. We can’t expect it to sound like the bigger Marantz units that cost 2-3 times as much. And the best part is, even after our fairly long listening session, there was zero sense of strain. The Stereo 70S captures that pure and natural Marantz sound people have loved for 70 years.

Overall Recommendation

Marantz has done a wonderful job of integrating a host of great features into a unit that can really hold its own in the two-channel world.

If you are someone with a soundbar or have a basic streaming speaker and are ready to move into the fun world of separate audio components, the Marantz Stereo 70S and a modest pair of bookshelf speakers will blow your mind at how much better it sounds. You’ll have all of the video switching you need for TV viewing and have something that your vinyl friends will be very impressed with when they hear it on your turntable. It will look great, is easy to use, can grow with you, and sounds fantastic for its price. While you probably can find a pure analog only two-channel integrated amp at about this price that might sound better, you will not find anything we know of with all this nice connectivity that sounds this good. Highly recommended.