Marantz NA-11S1 Network Audio Player

Marantz NA-11S1 Network Audio Player

The Marantz NA11S1 network player is expanding the legendary 11 series audio products with a new product category, the music streaming network player.

As we all know, the iPod has revolutionised the way music is enjoyed, enabling thousands of music tracks to be stored in a device that fits into the palm of your hand. For this to be achieved with the hard drive space available at reasonable cost, audio compression techniques were applied to the music files to allow them to fit the available space by throwing out redundant data - however, fine details in the music were also thrown away which should not be noticed by the average human ear. This resulted in popular compressed audio file formats including MP3, AAC and WMA.  Unfortunately, when compressing audio, there is a quality loss which is unwanted.

The smaller compressed audio files also introduced other possibilities - music files could be downloaded from the internet and stored on your PC - also these files could be stored on a home network drive and then streamed to your PC - there were, however, two main limitations - network speed and hard drive storage capacity - audio compression solved these issues.

Since the iPod was launched in the early 2000's we have seen a large increase in home network speeds and much cheaper hard disc storage, which has reduced the need for audio compression, and hence now superb high-quality audio file storage is gaining popularity, especially among audiophiles. New ripping file formats have emerged that preserve the audio quality of the original music file - iTunes, for example, supports the lossless audio format ALAC - a similar quality file format is FLAC - both file formats are ideal for copying your music to a hard drive or NAS without removing any audio quality.

More recently high definition audio formats have been introduced at 24-bit resolution and 192kHz sampling frequency in PCM format, namely WAV and FLAC HD - and last year two new high-resolution file formats became available from online music stores - DFF and DSF. Both contain audio files in DSD format, the same audio format that is applied on Super Audio CDs. The introduction of the new DFF and DSF file formats have created the perfect time for Marantz to launch the state-of-the-art NA11S1 network audio player.

The Marantz NA-11S1 is not just a network player - it offers a complete solution to fulfil all of the requirements of an audiophile consumer. For best audio quality the NA11S1 also offers a DAC mode for USB connection to PC and Mac.

As a network player, the NA11S1 has AirPlay audio playback included from iOS devices such as iPhone or iPad, Mac or iTunes on PC. Secondly, DLNA is supported, which makes music streaming possible from many types of devices including Android smartphones, Windows Media Player and NAS drives. Also, popular online music services are supported, such as internet radio, Spotify and last.fm.

When comparing the network player to DAC mode, the network player mode offers two strong benefits to the user - firstly there is a lot of audio content available on standard audio quality that can be used for all playback types, so any tune can be easily purchased online from iTunes store for example. Also, the song database of a streaming service such as Spotify is growing quickly. The second benefit is ease of use - using the network functionality it is very easy to select music and start playback - for example with the press of one button you can start playback from the iPhone in your pocket to the NA11S1. The network audio function is also suitable for the playback of high-resolution audio files (WAV and FLAC HD).

For the audio enthusiast with the goal of best quality sound, there is also another interesting option included - DAC mode. In this mode the NA11 is used to reproduce the sound of your PC - by connecting the NA11S1 to your computer via USB, the NA-11S1 can be used as an external sound card, bypassing the internal sound module on the motherboard of your PC - by this method your audio files are reproduced in the best possible way. Since the connection between the two devices is USN, a two way communication path is formed, with the precise internal clock circuit of the NA11S1 controlling timing of the digital signals, which reduces unwanted jitter or time distortion - this is called asynchronous mode, with the NA11S1 telling the computer when it can send information, resulting in a bit-perfect transmission of the audio data.

In DAC mode, the audio information is sent to the NA11S1 as a PCM stream - any music file formats are supported including high definition formats such as FLAC HD and WAV, however, it does not work for the newest formats DSF and DFF since they use DSD like it is used on SACD. However, the NA11S1 has a new function called DoP (DSD over PCM) which allows the transmission of these DSF and DFF files in DAC mode. 

For the decoding of the audio files, dedicated playback software is required to support the different file formats - for PC J River is recommended, and for Mac the option is Audirvana.

So why would you buy the NA11S1 - well, you will get the ultimate audiophile sound quality you would expect from an 11 series Marantz product, which is achieved through a top quality build, the use of quality audio components and sophisticated circuit design. Secondly, the NA11S1 has a distortion-free USB connection, as noise from the USB is eliminated by optical isolation techniques. Finally, the NA11S1 applied Marantz Musical Mastering, which applies studio-quality audio to your living room. High-resolution audio files such as FLAC HD will be reproduced at the original high recording quality of the recording studio. 

Who is Marantz?

Marantz is one of the world's most famous hifi brands and was started in 1948 by New Yorker, Saul Marantz, an amateur musician and audio enthusiast who was dissatisfied with the amplifier products available at that time. He decided to build phono pre-amps which could handle all manner of recording equalisations popular in the day, and his friends persuaded him to build them one too. This quickly took all of Saul's time, as he was overwhelmed with orders - the Marantz company we know today was born.