In August 2022, Dennis Burger reviewed the Marantz Model 40n for SoundStage! Access. It was an enthusiastic review that earned the 40n a Reviewers’ Choice award. This amplifier has since continued to prove its excellence and versatility and has continued to garner critical praise.

When Dennis completed his audition of the Model 40n, he sent it to Ottawa to be photographed and tested in the SoundStage! Electronics-Measurement Lab. Doug received the amplifier at his home for the photo shoot and couldn’t resist the opportunity to check it out for himself. He was so taken with the appearance, build, and sound of the Model 40n and so impressed with its feature set that it became a regular fixture in his “System One” column. Doug continues to use the Model 40n in his system, where it’s been driving a wide range of speakers, from the Sonus Faber Lumina II Amator ($1500/pair; all prices in USD) to the Estelon Aura ($19,900/pair).

The Model 40n’s retail price in the United States remains the same as when Dennis reviewed it: $2499. It measures 5.1″H × 17.4″W × 17″D and weighs just shy of 37 pounds. Both Dennis and Doug feel that in build quality and industrial design the Model 40n is truly exceptional. Reflecting on stereo receivers of a bygone era, Dennis noted an aspect of those classic designs that is still evident in the Model 40n but that is all too often absent in many modern designs: they, and the Model 40n, were made to be seen as well as to be heard.

The Model 40n’s power-amp section is rated to deliver 70Wpc into 8 ohms or 100Wpc into 4 ohms. In our measurements, it surpassed those ratings. Its digital-to-analog-converter (DAC) section has two user-selectable filters, which our measurements show to yield a significantly different (and most likely audible) frequency response, particularly above 10kHz. It includes a moving-magnet phono stage, which, according to our measurements, adheres closely to the RIAA standard.

The Model 40n’s preamp section has many useful features, including defeatable tone and balance controls, a volume control with excellent tracking, and a subwoofer output configurable to a crossover frequency of 40Hz, 60Hz, 80Hz, 100Hz, or 120Hz. At the side of the faceplate is a 1/4″ headphone output.

The 40n incorporates the solid HEOS streaming platform, which Marantz shares with its sister brand, Denon. (The n in 40n stands for network.) HEOS received an important update earlier this year, which made navigating it much more intuitive. It’s a pleasure to use now, according to Doug.

You can connect the Model 40n to a network via ethernet or Wi-Fi. It supports Apple AirPlay and Spotify Connect. The HEOS app allows you to stream from several services, including Amazon Music Unlimited, Deezer, Napster, Pandora, SoundCloud, and Tidal. A notable absence is Qobuz, which is popular among audiophiles. The Model 40n has optical (TosLink) and coaxial (RCA) S/PDIF inputs as well as HDMI ARC. A rear-mounted USB-A port allows connection to mass storage devices, such as flash drives and SSDs, and Bluetooth connectivity allows streaming from any Bluetooth-enabled device. Suffice it to say, the Model 40n can be rightly considered feature rich.

Dennis began his audition of the Model 40n with a pair of RSL CG3 standmount speakers and an SVS PB-1000 Pro subwoofer—a well-matched combination, as it turned out. He writes, “A crossover of 100Hz resulted in a nice integration between the sub and sats, and the system as a whole sounded fantastic, with great imaging, wonderful soundstaging, exceptional detail, no audible noise at anything approaching reasonable listening levels, and excellent tonal balance.” He did most of his critical listening, however, with a pair of Paradigm Studio 100 v5 towers that were connected to the 40n with Elac Sensible speaker cables. The now-discontinued three-way, five-driver 100 v5 towers presented a more difficult load than the CG3s did, but no subwoofer was used to augment the bass.

The first track Dennis listened to was the title track of City of Refuge by Abigail Washburn—“one of a handful of tunes in my music library,” Dennis writes, “that can tell me literally everything I need to know about a DAC, preamp, amplifier, or speaker within a couple of minutes.” It certainly did with this system.

From note one, the Marantz delivered the attack and decay of Washburn’s clawhammer banjo with precision and a wonderful sense of space. Image specificity was spot-on, and the timbre and texture of the banjo strings rang through palpably.

When Washburn’s breathy vocals kicked in at around the 15-second mark, I was struck by the depth of the soundstage: despite the overall simplicity of the mix, its reach was impressive. Washburn’s voice seemed to step out in front of the banjo just a bit and emanate from above it. That told me transients were being handled well and that there was no significant noise or distortion to be concerned about.

The biggest test comes at around the 1:24 mark, though, when the percussion and bass kick in at full force. I don’t focus on the deepest notes of the bass or the lowest fundamentals of the percussion here but rather on some of the higher bass notes and harmonics, in the range of perhaps 100Hz to 200Hz. With my Paradigm towers, some amps can thin out in this region when pushed hard, resulting in a deemphasis of these frequencies, which changes the character of the bottom end, making things sound simultaneously thin and bloated.

The Model 40n’s well-balanced delivery of the lower registers of “City of Refuge,” combined with the airy effortlessness of the vocals and instrumentation, the pitch-black background, and the utter lack of edge, told me that at every step of the signal chain—from decoding to processing to D-to-A conversion to amplification—the Marantz was doing all the right things and none of the wrong things.

Listening next to “Can I Kick It?” from the 1990 album People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (25th Anniversary Edition), by the hip-hop band A Tribe Called Quest, Dennis was particularly impressed by the performance of the Model 40n, writing that “the song starts off with a scratchy, gritty, dirty, and pitch-shifted sample of Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side,’ and the baked-in crackling distortion can, with some DACs, be overly grating at any appreciable volume. Not so with the Marantz.” Another challenging aspect of the mix in this song that is difficult to reproduce is the reverb-heavy drumbeats, which somewhat obscure the voice of Q-Tip (a.k.a. Kamaal Fareed). That was not in the slightest a problem with the Model 40n: “His voice rang through the mix with ease, and bass authority left absolutely nothing to be desired.”

Another album Dennis listened to that put the spotlight on the strengths of the Model 40n was the CD release of Conan the Barbarian: The Complete Film Score.

It takes an amp with really low noise and really low distortion to let you appreciate just how dynamic this recording is. Starting at around 40 seconds into the first selection, “Prologue / Anvil of Crom,” there are moments that get super quiet right before weird percussive attacks, and it’s the contrast between those extremes that really gives the percussion its impact. It’s often the case that the noise floor of the recording gets commingled with the noise floor of the amp I’m listening to, but with the Model 40n I could hear the subtle hiss of the recording during its quietest moments.

There’s also an explosively dynamic outburst at just past the one-minute mark, when the beat of the timpani decays to nearly nothing before a pants-filling onslaught of strings signals that the movement has gone into high gear for the duration. As with the Abigail Washburn cut, imaging and soundstaging here were simply spot-on for the recording, and bass authority was absolutely delicious.

The Model 40n was spoken of in such laudatory terms in Dennis’s review that it soon won a string of awards. In addition to the aforementioned Reviewers’ Choice award, it was selected as one of our Products of the Year for 2022. The EISA organization, of which SoundStage! Hi-Fi is a member, gave the Model 40n a Best Product Award for 2022–2023 in the Smart Amplifier category. We now bestow on the Model 40n the one award it has yet to receive and designate it a Recommended Reference Component.

Manufacturer contact information:

Marantz c/o Masimo
5541 Fermi Ct.
Carlsbad, CA 92008
Phone: 1-844-298-5032

Website: marantz.com