estreeter
Super Member
The heart of the Oppo, the ESS Sabre 32, is manufactured in Fremont California, very near where I work. Which DAC chip does the new Marantz use?
CS4398 - a modestly priced chip that Marantz gets a lot of mileage out of. I'm of the view that it's less about the silicon than the implementation, but you'll find plenty of people who try to tell you 'All SABRE DACs sound the same'.
Marantz use the CS4398 in most of their CDPs and several of their SACD players - the NA11S1 and SA11S3 flagships uses the DSD1792A from TI - I believe this was initially a Burr-Brown chip until they were bought out by Texas Instruments in 2000. No shortage of reviewers out there who seem completley unaware of the changeover.
http://www.ti.com/product/dsd1792a