Product Description
There’s no doubt that the SA11s3 Premium SACD Players looks the part. It’s a substantial, heftily attractive player which appears engineered to reassure those who may go a bit weak-kneed at dropping two and a half grand on a CD player. “Don’t worry,” it seems to say, “I’m worth that in base metal alone.”
A scan through the spec-sheet brings more encouragement. As well as the huge toroidal power supply and expensively sourced DACs that any player at this price is expected to pack, the SA-11S3 adds a vibration-resistant drive mechanism and double-layered bottom plate. And as well as playing CDs, the Marantz plays SACDs (they’re a specialist interest less common than those of Max Mosley by now, of course, but the partial will be excited).
The provision for manually altering the digital filtering is less inspiring: just why is it that £2500 doesn’t buy a player that sounds its best at all times? – but overall the Marantz looks thoroughly equipped. And when playing CDs – we listened to everything from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet to Public Enemy’s She Watch Channel Zero – the SA-11S3 throws down a performance simultaneously rugged and refined. Low frequencies, thought not the most rigorously defined, are solidly punchy while at the other end of the scale, treble reproduction is crisp and clear.
