Marantz RV351II (c. 1987)
The RV351II is a compact Dolby surround processor from Marantz, sold around 1987 for ¥29,800. It was a fairly early try at home surround sound for the company. It's a small, low-slung unit (420 × 60 × 200 mm, 3.2 kg) with a Dolby surround decoder and a built-in rear-channel power amplifier rated at 30W dynamic power into 6Ω. There's also a headphone output for what the period materials called "personal surround sound." You didn't need a full multi-channel receiver. This box sat between your existing stereo amp and a pair of rear speakers.
The documented feature set is fairly generous for such an obscure box. It had two front signal output paths, so it could be wired into a TV's audio input as easily as a stereo system. A master volume control governed the front and rear volumes, and a separate rear-only volume knob handled balancing. Beyond straight Dolby Surround, it had a multi-surround mode for regular stereo and mono sources. Stereo sources got a matrix surround treatment, and mono sources got a spatial stereo effect. Calibration and delay controls (delay variable from 15 to 30 ms) tailored Dolby playback to specific software. Further effect controls adjusted the depth and spread of the matrix and spatial modes.
The specs sheet gives a direct-mode frequency response of 20 Hz - 20 kHz ±1.5 dB. The Dolby path rolls off to 100 Hz - 6 kHz ±3 dB. THD was rated at 0.03% (1 kHz, 20W, 6Ω). Signal-to-noise was 90 dB (IHF-A) in direct mode, dropping to 68 dB in Dolby. Input sensitivity was 250 mV/68kΩ.
That's about the extent of the record. There are no user reviews, no reception history, no maintenance lore, and no sense of where it sat in Marantz's lineup. The two Japanese database sources that document it appear to mirror each other. The only secondary trace found in research was a Yahoo! Auctions listing for a faulty unit ("power-on check only, defective"), which at least confirms the model turns up in the wild occasionally.
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