MARANTZ NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH NEWS

Richersounds.ie: John

Boardies,

Apologies for the delay getting to your PM's and posts - I'm just back from a really interesting Marantz / Denon / Boston product launch and there are some really interesting products en-route to us - so I thought I'd try to give you guys a heads up of what's incoming..

I'm tempted to leave the best 'till last - however I just can't help myself tonight I'll just post on my highlight so here's the...

MARANTZ CONSELETTE

Apologies for the noise on this clip - I'll replace it with my own video asap...

This is really the most amazing dock I've ever seen and makes what has been the 'industry standard' B & W Zepplin look and sound - well just ordinary...

The audience was split about 70:30 with 70% thinking it looked amazing and 30% thinking it was awful - however 100% thought it was head and shoulders above ANY other dock in terms of build and Audio quality.

1st of all I may as well get all the bad news out of the way:

BAD NEWS

• We won't see it 'till August
• It will only be available in limited quantities
• It's €999

With all the bad news out of the way - it's ALL good news from here:

GOOD NEWS

The Conselette goes completely against the grain that appears to be the route for all docks at the moment ie make them cheap and bland or of course there is the other route of novelty docks - I mean do you really want to see an Angry Bird sitting in your living room....?

HERITAGE

The Conselette is identifiably a real Marantz product and displays its heritage proudly - with echoes of previous Marantz products right back to the 'Model One Consellete (designed by Saul B Marantz) and using high quality premium lacquered wood with metal and premium materials deployed instead of the typical moulded plastic solutions found elsewhere - the result is that the Conselette is clearly a product intended to be used as a main or secondary system in the home - It will become a centrepiece in any home.

AUDIO QUALITY

In terms of Audio quality which at this price level is how any product will stand or fall - it's just exceptional - the audio quality is outstanding - it goes low, loud and makes it sound easy - It's a proper stereo product (unlike many out there) with a 4 driver system and it user 2 of the new BMR drivers as seen in the new top end Boston MR series speakers (I'll do a post on these interesting drivers over the next few days) and dual 4" Bass drivers.

I have used some of the images from www.trustedreviews.com which give you some idea of the quality of this product:





FEATURE SET

Ok, next most important thing in any dock, never mind one costing almost €1,000 has got to be the feature count - and again the Conselette doesn't disappoint:

• Airplay
• DLNA
• Physical dock for iPod / iPad
• Dedicated internal Internet radio
• Wifi Built in
• WPS easy setup
• Direct iPOS / iPAD set up
• Dedicated App
• Black or White/Silver available ( the white / Silver combo looks A M A Z I N G)

Ok, from the top - it's quite unusual to see an Airplay enabled dock which also features DLNA and streaming - Airplay means that you can use it to make a multi-room system if the budget allows and of course stream from either your iPhone / iPad or Apple PC - it will even stream from a regular PC or Android phone - in terms of set-up I think they have cracked it - you just dock your iPhone / iPad and using the dedicated app (or just pressing a single button on the rear of the unit) it will copy your existing router set up and you are flying straight away - couldn't be easier.



The physical dock is well hidden behind the Marantz logo - I'd guess that Marantz expect most users to use Airplay or stream without using the physical dock - which is a bit of a pity as it's the highest quality drawer style dock I've ever seen - it's a glider... just one touch and a substantial drawer glides out - so far removed from the nasty plastic docks found pretty much everywhere else..

The rear panel has 2 high quality heavily gold plated Phono inputs and of course a USB input for both analogue and digital inputs.

To sum up - I think that this will become one of the Halo products for 2012 - I know I want one ( I've already ordered one in silver) - it's expensive, slightly weird, sounds amazing - looks stunning, all the elements that make for a classic audio product - I'm going to try to organise a pre-launch demo in Dublin & Belfast if Marantz can find me some working samples - so if you are interested just drop me a line and as ever we hope to have some launch specials - however, again whilst I know it's not inexpensive... I understand that the biggest problem may be to actually get hold of any quantity as they will be virtually hand made to order....

As ever keep me posted if we can assist in any way or of course if you would like to provisionally order one.

ATVB,

John Mc