Marantz NR1602 AV Receiver
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #46296 in Receiver or Amplifier
- Brand: Marantz
- Model: NR1602
- Dimensions: 4.20" h x
17.38" w x
14.50" l,
22.70 pounds
Features
- Streaming online music capability Rhapsody, Napster, Pandora, Flickr plus internet radio
- Support HDMI ver 1.4a 3D, ARC and content type, 4 inputs, 1 output
- Bluetooth wireless audio transmission capability with option RX101
Product Description
Small in size, not in features. While the NR1602 maintains the same chassis as the NR1601, the feature set has increased exponentially. With second zone audio, networking and streaming capabilities, the NR1602 is a full-featured receiver in a small package. Other features include a 7 channel discrete amplifier (50 watts x 7), network/streaming of Internet radio, Napster, Pandora and more, up-scaling HDMI to HDMI 1080 video, four HDMI inputs, plus it's certified Control4, Crestron and AMX compatible.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
131 of 139 people found the following review helpful.
By LoneGunman
I purchased the NR1602 as a system upgrade when my old 720P business projector conked and needed to switch from a 720P DVI universe to a 1080P HDMI universe. As such, the NR1602 replaces a DVDO IScan HD+, an Outlaw 950 and a 200W/ch Rane commercial amp.Size-wise it's awesome. Tiny little thing. How's it sound? Plenty good enough. I mix audio for a living and I haven't heard too many receiver/speaker combos currently for sale that aren't "plenty good enough" for most living rooms. In switching from 200W/channel to 50W/channel the biggest difference I notice is that I turn the volume up more. I can still make the system plenty loud enough to annoy my neighbors in my condo. This thing isn't going to power the Hard Rock Hotel but then, if your concern is oomph you aren't buying a compact Rx anyway, are you?By my count, this Marantz is one of only ten receivers that are currently Airplay-enabled. Airplay works flawlessly on the Marantz: you fire up your iPod or iPhone, the Rx shows up and BAM you switch to it. The Rx will automagically switch from whatever else it was doing and play your portable within about two seconds. Pretty slick. Something to keep in mind, however, is that the NR1602 HAS NO WIFI. If you intend to use Airplay, intend to sting the back of the NR1602 with some CAT5 lovin'. This is actually a feature as far as I'm concerned because I've got a router in the rack and prefer to wire whenever possible but if your sound system is in another room than your cable modem expect to get out the fish tape.The jackfield out back is sparse, which again is a plus as far as I'm concerned. I'm only running a Mac Mini and a Nintendo Wii into it so a whole bunch of extra inputs aren't too beneficial. It will support 4 HDMI inputs which is pretty much the future so unless you've got a bunch of legacy gear, you're likely okay. One annoying quibble: the speaker jackfield is spaced too far apart for the traditional 2-pin banana plugs that have dominated the industry since Edison was in short pants. Oddly enough, *pairs* of outputs work... so your left and right hot can share a plug while your left and right cold share a plug. Which is janky and annoys me, but there it is.Where things start to go pear-shaped is in the UI, the setup and the video. For starters, THIS UNIT DOES NOT UPCONVERT AS ADVERTISED. It converts, yeah - plug an analog signal in and you will get digital out of the HDMI. However, if you give it a 480p signal on component you'll get a 480p signal out on HDMI. Even better, the Marantz will screw up the aspect ratio. Give it a 1080i, it'll give you a 1080i. Give it a 1080p, it'll give you a 1080p. Give it a 720p, it'll give you a 720p. Give it nothing and the GUI shows up as 720p. So it's *got* a generator in there, it's just not functioning correctly. Not only that, but the configuration options for HDMI are sparse at best. Power-up on/off. Volume control TV/Amp. That's it. No output settings whatsoever.Which is kind of the TL;DR on this whole product - "It's in there, it just isn't working right." The "Setup Wizard" crashed on me twice. It won't let you assign a digital audio input to an HDMI video input (in the setup wizard - go digging in the menus and you can do it). In order to check the network connection, you have to press a button on the remote that doesn't actually exist. When futzing about on the internet there are ways to end up in a function with no way to return - Pandora or Flickr, for example. The setup is arcane and rendered in stiff Engrish with no help offered anywhere - and, considering this is an internet-enabled appliance with an HD GUI, the lack of "help" functionality is appalling, particularly since it ships with a scant newsprint "quick start guide" in three languages and a CD full of the actual manual (which is a bulky PDF that taxes my laptop to browse, yet has an index that isn't particularly useful).But then, the whole reason I opted for this product rather than the 1601 or 1402 is that it's the first Marantz product that allows you to update the firmware via Internet, rather than taking it in to a service center to get the ROM flashed. Considering how coy Apple has been with Airplay, I figure a lot is likely to change with this product once Lion comes out - picture/video streaming, for example? If you dig around in the menus, way down deep in options is "Add new feature" which prays to the Internet and finds nothing at the moment. Likewise, there's no new OS for the receiver, and there really should be.The whole product has a deeply "beta-test" feel to it, as if it were rushed out the door in time to make the market ahead of Lion. I'm pretty sure the guys who wrote the manual, the guys who designed the remote and the guys who designed the UI have yet to have a meeting together. I think that the Marantz NR1602 is going to be a hell of a device once Marantz works out the bugs and ships new software for it. Until then, I'd recommend holding off. I used to make a lot of money as an audiovisual consultant and traded this box for 10 rack spaces worth of professional gear and *I* found the setup to be janky, bootstrapped and byzantine. The whole point of a "setup wizard" is to make things easier but to be perfectly honest, I have a hard time imagining the casual users this product is aimed at ending up with anything other than a hair-tearing experience as things sit now.I did a lot of research on the NR1602 before purchasing it and found not a single hands-on review so I figured I'd do the world a favor by writing one. I'll update this one as the situation develops but for those of you looking to make the jump: If you can wait a little, do so. The software on this device is not yet ready for prime-time.SIX MONTH UPDATE:Marantz has updated the firmware on this device. On the surface, it's a little more functional. However, it decided yesterday to have a firmware freakout and go down for the dirt nap (it waited until I was on a business trip, of course, leaving my wife to deal with it). On the plus side, it *did* respond to a hard reset (hold down three buttons and wipe its brain). On the minus side, that means you have to go through an arduous and counter-intuitive setup again, except this time all the connections you're using aren't at all fresh in your mind.It took the better part of an hour, via skype, to restore it to a semblance of functionality. If it does this again in the next six months I'll be having an uncomfortable chat with Marantz.
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful.
By BradNSf
I have had this for a few days and am very happy with the receiver.FIRMWARE:I was able to connect it to the network (through the Ethernet port on the back) and get a firmware update within 15 minutes.AIRPLAY / DLNA:AirPlay is working as advertised (put receiver and laptop on the same LAN, fire up iTunes, select receiver as speaker output). Then play whatever you want in iTunes and it goes seamlessly to the receiver.I also easily hooked up the receiver via the network to my NAS device which has many GB of mp3s. The NAS and the receiver both support DLNA / UPnP and it was seamless.INPUTS:I have 5 devices connected: Net Top running Windows 7 via HDMI XBOX via component video and digital audio DVD player via component video and digital audio Wii via regular RCA red-white-yellow cables. Mini-stereo in to RCA red-white audio (for iPods / mobiles - there is also a USB port on the front)Everything syncs nicely with the receiver and you can name your inputs (so I can select "Wii" instead of "RCA-1").OUTPUTS:I have only one video output: HDMI to the TV. The receiver converts all the component / RCA connections to digital and sends them nicely to the TV. Makes it very easy to select an input and have it "just work" with the audio and video. There are also several other video out formats.For audio outputs the speaker outputs are nice pieces of hardware, and I'm using a separate woofer out (RCA).SOUND:Very good - I paired it with Energy Take Classic speakers and it sounds fantastic. Very clear imaging, really shows the problems with my older / low bitrate MP3s. I'm not a serious audiophile but for a midlevel system (~$1000 receiver + speakers) this is great.It has several types of gee-whiz equalizers for movies, music, plain stereo, etc. They actually seem to help the sound instead of making it worse as I've seen with other receivers. I also used the included Audyssey microphone for setup - it measures the distance of your speakers from the TV and from where you usually sit to form an appropriate profile for the audio imaging. It's all automated and very slick - the type of things I've seen other gadgets get very, very wrong.OVERALL:I couldn't be happier with the system.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
By Mike Engle
I'm writing this mostly because I was just on the Amazon page and was surprised by how few reviews there were. I'm not even sure what I'm going to write yet.I initially had the NR1601 and enjoyed it. As soon as I got it I saw that the 1602 was coming out so I sold the 1601 and bought one of the first 1602's. The 2 amps are very similar, so if you like the first you'll like the second and as far as I can tell they sound the same. I like the remote on the 1601 better because it's lit and it's always dark when I watch a movie. The 1602 remote has some different buttons that I've never used. I think the 1601 had 2 optical inputs where the 02 has an optical and COAX. The 01 had a DOLBY Headphone mode where the 02 has a virtual mode and I have no idea what that means - I don't know if it's another name for Dolby or if it's a fake dolby or something else all together. but it also had DOBLY DTS-HD which I don't think the 1601 had and I like it a lot. Listening to a concert on blueray with DTS is like being at the concert. The manual says to keep the sound mode on Auto - I don't like this. That means it will always play TV, etc in Stereo until it detects some dolby mode and then switch to it. The NR1602 has SEVERAL emulated sound sound modes (more than the 1601) which work surprisingly well. If you keep it in one of the emulated sound sound modes it will automatically switch to a better mode when it is available (like digital dolby from my TV's built in tuner using rabbit ears or DTS from a BD) so AUTO seems like a bad choice. I THINK it also remembers which mode you like for different inputs so if you have on input you do want on stereo, it will switch to stereo - I have noticed it do this but I could have been confused.For speakers I'm using the complete Polk Audio RTI A5 series but with a 700w SVS sound sub-woofer (also nice).I bought the 1601 because I initially had a Sony HTIB system but wound up getting a new set of speakers. These speakers wound up being a little too much for the Sony and I wanted to replace the whole set of speakers so I moved up and the change is sound was incredible. I have an OPPO93 universal player (which I highly highly recommend) which does about everything so I only really needed one input which is why I didn't want one of those huge AVR's with the 40 different input types. I've also added the AppleTV through HDMI and I have the output of my headphone system going in a standard analog input. You can rename all the inputs you want and delete the ones you don't use. I have a Sony TV, the OPPO and the Marantz AVR. With no special programming or special remotes, if I turn on my TV, the Marantz turns on automatically and switches to TV mode. If I turn my OPPO on, it turns on the TV which turns on the AVR which comes up in home theater mode. I control all my devices through the included Marantz universal remote so if I'm watching TV and hit (for me) the DVD button, the Marantz shifts to appleTV mode and the TV switches from it's tuner to the AppleTV input through the Marantz - so it's pretty slick. This may be obvious for people but I thought this interconnectedness was something Sony called Bravia Link which forced you to buy all Sony equipment to make it work. This made me hesitant to buy other gear but it still all works together well.Oh, for the other AVR's you have to pay $50 additional to get to use Apple Airplay. It says this no where I never found any mention of airplay in the manual and I was assuming airplay meant something like AppleTV so I was confused for a while. But airplay is free and already enabled on this system - which saved me an additional $50 payment I was expecting to make - and it works flawlessly. Without setting anything up, one day I hit the airplay button on my iphone and instead of just having an option for appleTV it also had an option for 'Marantz AVR', I pushed it and the music on my phone immediately came out of my stereo. So I went to my computer, brought up iTunes and in the place where you select the output, Marantz AVR was also listed there. So from my computer upstairs I can change what plays on my stereo downstairs. I think it may also interact with DNLP but I have no idea since I've never tried to use it.I think I have the initial run of this AVR. I have never had a firmware issue or found the need for buttons that I don't have. I think there is a 'wizard' for connecting everything but I never used any of them. I just set it up the way I wanted and the only process I had to go through was the automatic sound adjustment that you have to connect the included microphone for. This worked great and made a large improvement. I did have to do it a couple times because I just didn't like the way the first one came out. It samples the room from every speaker 5 times and for people who only want to test the room from 1 position - do the test 5 times from that position - do not skip tests. The process can't work if you skip all the test runs. I have had no issues with the amp.It also has a Saber32 DAC chip in it which is a pretty popular chip right now. Though it is advertised to go to 24/192 (which is awesome) that capability is there for surround sound. According to the manual 2- channel sound can only go to 16/44 (or maybe 16/48?). I did supply it with everything from 16/44 to 24/192 and it played music with each input. Though the manual says it does not support it, it actually switched modes to play 24/96. Actually it was never clear if it was playing 16 bit or 24 bit. Though it did play 174 and 192 khz files I'm sure it was actually playing them at 44 which is still full CD quality.I personally don't care too much for the headphone output but I do have a separate amp for that so I never gave it much of a chance.But if you want a first rate music and home theater system and are worried about video upscaling and all that then - I think the NR1602 and the OPPO93 make for a perfect team for a well priced system without ridiculously overkill components (in size or features). My OPPO decodes all the Dolby and does all the video processing and sends a processed signal to the 1602 (even over HDMI) which then just does the last step. Plus the OPPO plays CD, CD-Rom, SACD, HDCD, DVD-Audio, BD-Audio, DVD-Rom, BD-Rom, streamed music, netflix, etc etc and plays music upto 24/192. A lot of people by multiple components that all have the same features so it's mostly wasted money - this gives you exactly what up need with minimal redundancy and gives it all in 2 components (plus speakers).
Specification Of Marantz NR1602 AV Receiver
Delivering optimum sound and network capability, the Marantz NR1602 7.1 Home Theater Receiver offers powerful performance in a Slim Line design.
Amazon.com: Marantz NR1602 AV Receiver: Electronics
Delivering optimum sound and network capability, the Marantz NR1602 7.1 Home Theater Receiver offers powerful performance in a Slim Line design. The receiver's ...
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Marantz has brought some much-needed flair to the humble AV receiver with the slim-line NR1602. Network-savvy and offering siren-sweet sound, this beauty doesn't miss ...
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No lightweight This slimline AVR re-imagines home cinema for the network age. Steve May hums The Times They Are a-Changin Whether through luck or design ...
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Description: Small in size, not in features. While the NR1602 maintains the same chassis as the NR1601, the feature set has increased exponentially.
Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Marantz NR1602 AV Receiver
5 stars. "Very pleased" I have had this for a few days and am very happy with the receiver. FIRMWARE: I was able to connect it to the network (through the Ethernet ...
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