Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I wanted to love this product but ultimately it is a disappointment and I regret purchasing it. I have owned this receiver for 5 months and use it every day. Let’s start with the good - Easily the best thing is that it sounds great, 150WX2 at 4 ohms powered by a pretty good power supply with dual DACs, when playing music or cinema it sounds amazing. It was a moderate step up from my previous Yamaha receiver in sound quality, also the phono stage is excellent for the price point. I have 4 primary complaints about this product that is essentially ruining my - experience. 1. It turns off randomly - about 25 times in the last 5 months I have been just sitting enjoying music and the whole thing just ‘clicks’ and it off - no explanation at all (not auto power down/sleep mode) totally random, very undesirable, something is wrong. 2. The HDMI ports don’t work, what differentiates this product from a lot of great preamp options is that it is actually an AV with HDMI, it’s why I bought the product over other options - but alas multiple issues with HDMI - sometimes a port just won’t load and I have to move the source to another port where it will load - I have had 3 different devices come through with the colors all pink and green - mysteriously it comes and goes - sometimes changing port fixes it - but then just does it again the next time I turn it on. I spent a lot of my time trying to troubleshoot this issue and I was totally frustrated with it. My solution is that I run all my HDMI devices into my TV and use an optical cable to run the audio back to the Marantz. Which totally negates the value of the HDMI ports and the reason to buy this device over just a normal preamp without A/V features. 3. The DAC - (Digital to Analog Converter AKM AK4458VN) Firsty why does Marantz make customers go on wild goose chases to find product info? The official page does not mention the DAC type - the actual product manual with over 200 pages of info does not indicate the DAC type - Amazon and Crutchfield - they tell what the DAC type is. Screw you Marantz for making me spend so much of my time to get basic info about your own products, spending time on the official site and then working through a digital (non supplied) owners manual to find NOTHING about DAC specs, it almost seems intentional like they would prefer that the customer is uninformed. The DAC when it understands the formats performs admirably at its price point - but I have been disappointed in its handling of DSD formats - IF YOU LIKE DSD DON’T BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!! - I have spent a good amount of money on DSD formats because I love the resolution and sound. I was assured by the product page that DSD 2.8 and 5.6 2 channel formats dsd dsf would work. I would not have bought the product without confirming this beforehand. They do not work, half my DSD collection is useless and just won’t load due to ‘format unplayable’ - songs that played and sounded great on a $400 Yamaha won’t even load into a $600 Marantz ‘with dual DAC action’ - that claims to support those formats - if you go to the actual DAC manufacture the DAC can support DSD 11.2 so Marantz has actually engineered the DAC down (confirmed by Marantz in the answered questions above) to below its potential and it is annoying - again if DSD doesn’t matter to you this is pretty trivial but if you like DSD you will be disappointed and keep shopping. 4. HEOS - HEOS sucks, I can’t believe a company as large as Harmon Kardon with so many users has brought the World HEOS as its user interface. I currently can’t access any of my music apps through HEOS because it randomly logged out and won’t recognize my user name - this has happened before. The system indexes music using the most bizarre indexing system I have ever encountered - load a Album from a file and the order is completely wrong - Track numbers are sometimes removed so doing something like playing an album becomes a mind teaser of trying to remember what order the tracks came in. Folders labeled A or 0 don’t come first and it is just a wild hunt for my music - who designed this and how has it not been fixed???!!! To say play a song from my folder takes like 6 clicks to get there, nothing is efficient or easy, it's clunky and seems to be not a priority for Harmon to update. The first 2 issues on my list could be faulty product - the 3rd issue is a engineering choice - but HEOS is the reason I will never buy a Marantz or Harman Kardon line products again in my life - how can such a large organization with so many users in the year 2020 not program and update a fun to use / user intuitive application? I will also add that my first experience with phone based customer service was a 20 minute waste of my time. I will attempt once again with the phone based customer service, my goal is to return this product as I just want it out of my house.