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The latter has a touch more sense of realism and solidity to the instruments, but that's about it. And the PM7200 uses much more electricity, even in idle, so I use the SR4600 most of the time.A big advantage of the SR4600 is that it has built in DACs, digital to analog decoders. The only difference is a detachable power cord and HDCD decoding. (In case you don't know, Marantz has been one of the premier names in audio equipment since the 1950s, although it went off course in the 1990s). However, I have a high end CD player that sounds just a bit better, which should not be a surprise given that it costs about as much as the SR4600, alone. That is one of the strong points of Marantz - they have a 3 year warranty, too.For the money, the SR4600 has to be one of the great bargains out there - you are getting 7 amps.My advice: Save your money on the receiver and put it into better speakers. But for most people the built in DACs are going to provide excellent sound, with an exceptional amount of detail.The sound, with very good speakers, is very natural, like having real acoustic instruments before you.
I also have the PM7200 class A amp. Great specs and sound mean nothing if you don't have reliability. I have not had the slightest problem with either of my current Marantz amps, nor with the several I have had in earlier years. I actually have the SR4600, the replacement for the SR4500. There is very little, if any, difference in sound, as hard as that is to believe. I use it mainly for stereo classical music reproduction, at which it is impeccable. I tried it as home theater, with good speakers all around, but decided it was not worth the clutter.
This receiver plus good speakers, plus any old DVD player hooked up digitally equals true audiophile sound.
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