Once upon a time, audio receivers were made to listen to music. They had a left and right channel amplifier for stereo speakers. But, for decades, Home Theater has driven the receiver market, and today there are only a few receivers made... just for stereo.
     There are lots of preamps and power amps for audio perfectionists at very expensive prices, for example you can choose between dozens of CD players that sell for well over a thousand dollars. And, people still listen to their CDs.
     So, this new Marantz combo unit with a built-in CD player and stereo only-- not surround sound, is a great, affordable music lovers dream.
     Compact Compo. It fits on a desk, or on bookshelf. Great for the office, bedroom or kitchen. You can choose tiny speakers, connect it to speakers in the ceiling, or even some nice bookshelf audiophile speakers. This small unit does so much...
     It includes an AM and FM stereo tuner, four 30 watt amps that allows bi-amping, built-in Wi-Fi, built-in Bluetooth, Internet radio, Pandora, Spotify, and Sirius XM. It plays music from USB hard drives and NAS drives. It decodes HiRes music up to 192k 24bit and DSD and double DSD. And it all can be controlled by an App on your phone.
     And it plays your CDs. Everybody still have CDs they love and Marantz plays them.

Plus, it has a built-in CD player. It plays music from your phone or iPod... or from your computer. It can wake you to music or let you fall asleep to music.  
     Real Hi-Fi Power. There are four built-in amps. If you speaker has separate terminals (the Episode does not) for the tweeter and woofer hookups, you can biamp. This means a separate amp drivers the woofers from the tweeters. It also allows two pair of speakers to be hooked up and you can control the volume of each pair separately.
     Hi Resolution Music. Today you can go to many on-line music stores and buy music albums that have higher resolution than the 33 year old CD. CDs sample music 44,100/sec. Hi-Res can be FLAC files, AIFF files, WAV up to 192k 24 bit samples. This Marantz also plays DSD... Direct Stream Digital files found on Super Audio CDs, which you can now buy as an on line download. DSD files use 2,822,000 samples per second.
    Network Receiver. These music files can be on your computer, Mac or PC because the Marantz has Apple Airplay and is DNLA compliant. The files can be on a thumb or hard drive plugged directly into a USB port on the Marantz. Or... they can be on a NAS “network attached drive” and controlled from an App on your phone.