Home > Consumer Reviews > Marantz ES7001 Simple Surround eXperience Home Theater Sound Bar (Black/Silver)

I also managed to snag this as the deal of the day -- quite the deal!! This was a great solution to upgrading the TV sound in our family room, which is a very open floor plan. No need to have wires going all over or have expensive installation. It is a fantastic upgrade from the TV speaker sound for sure. I love how music sounds and it just sounds better and better the more you crank up the volume. I did just order the subwoofer today to add to it. You can certainly use this without the subwoofer and there is a subwoofer button on the remote you push to turn that off and the sound adjusts if you just want the soundbar without the subwoofer. I just felt it would be the full experience (especially for movies) to add it. The best part for me was that I was able to hook it up myself. Yes, I'm a gadget lover, but I'm also not super high tech and I want to be able to install things myself. I don't want to have to wait for the husband to be around to help me out. I was able to simply plug the HDMI cables of my HD cable box and HD DVD player and then another HDMI cable from the soundbar back to the TV and bingo, it works. Would I put this in an expensive, high-tech dedicated home theater? No. For the average person who just wants to upgrade the sound of any TV in the home with no fuss, no muss, I think this is a great solution.

Bought this a couple of days ago when it was Deal of the Day. Also got the subwoofer. Both arrived today. For a total investment of $599 ($399 for the soundbar and $200 for the subwoofer), I'm very happy.

We replaced two crappy bookshelf speakers with this, and we're hearing stuff in our HD shows that we never knew was there. Our room has an open floor plan, so running speaker wires was out of the question. This is a great solution.

I replaced a Yamaha YSP-800. This thing blows the Yamaha sound bar away. Fuller midrange, more open highs, and with the Yamaha subwoofer going, the bass is just fine. I leave the subwoofer on all the time, since it's not dedicated for power to the Marantz; also, I don't believe that any subwoofer (regardless of corporate advertising) is made for a particular sound bar; the bass on all of these is so mushy below 200Hz that it won't matter what you pair with a sound bar, and, none of the inexpensive subwoofers or any sound bar that I know of have any sort of low frequency control to adjust bass cutoff points. To continue, the two (wish there were a couple more but could get a HDMI splitter if I really needed more inputs) HDMI inputs and the output work well. Does Dolby and DTS. Overall, it gives much more of a home theater experience than the Yamaha. I was watching The Dark Knight and my cat got scared out of the room. Never happened with the Yamaha sound bar. If that isn't a high recommendation, I don't know what else is! ;o) Doesn't compare, of course, to the sound in my dedicated home theater room with a 7.1 speaker system going, but for my home office and 46" Sony HDTV, it's great.

I am generally happy with the price point and surround sound that this item produces. However, i am having a major issue with the system producing a very high squealing sound that is painful to the ears and will continue its ringing especially with sporting events and situations that engage the surround sound.

Wow! The sound quality is amazing. However, you do need the subwoofer to really get the full potential. My only complaint is that the maximum volume is not loud enough for a large room. I would not purchase this for a home theater setup but it is as good as it gets for audio from your PC.