Both in public and private, I am often asked to recommend audio gear. One of the most frequently asked questions is about receivers. Generally, I suggest that people should buy the most powerful receiver that will fit their needs if they can afford it. I also tell people that if you can't afford a receiver capable of pumping a steady, undistorted 18-20 watts into 8 ohm speakers, forget it for now.

That minimum figure is really required, even with relatively efficient speakers, if much of today's music is to be reproduced well. Beyond that you've got the tuner specs and quality of the AM circuitry and then the convenience features.

With that in mind, let's take a look at two receivers that go considerably beyond the minimal criteria in power, specs, features and price. The Marantz 2265B puts out 65 watts per channel, while Hitachi's new Class G SR-804 puts out 50 watts, but the Class G circuitry (more about that later) makes it look like a good deal more.

It's been a number of years since I've had the opportunity of playing with a Marantz receiver for an extended period of time. Yet there was a sense of familiarity as I opened the carton and unwrapped the 2265B from its packing. Several items that I have identified with the company still remain. The unit still has "Gyro Touch" tuning. (Most knob tuning is accomplished by the shaft of the flywheel, oriented in a horizontal position, being extended through the cabinet. Marantz has reoriented the flywheel 90° and extended the flywheel itself through the cabinet.) The multiplicity of controls including a

midrange tone control in addition to the standard bass and treble. Incidentally, all three tone controls are left and right channel adjustable but friction-clutched for easy operation. Another familiar touch is the overall feeling of solidity when you look at the unit or heft it out of the box.

The 2265B's front panel has a variety of other controls as well. A selector switch has the usual Aux (now commonplace), two phono possibilities, AM and two FM positions. One is the standard FM position and the other provides 25 uS de-emphasis for Dolbyencoded broadcasts. Another knob provides additional tone mode control. It will provide flat tone in the "out" position, bypassing your tone control

section completely, or leave them in or shift the turnover point of bass and treble controls either individually or together. Balance and volume controls are standard as is the power switch and the headphone jack. Above these controls are a row of 11 buttons arrayed in four groups. The first allows dubbing from one tape deck to another (you can dub in either direction from deck one to deck two or vice versa) and tape monitor of either deck one or deck two. The second group has mono and FM muting in/out buttons while the third group has two filter switch buttons (15 Hz and 9 kHz) for low and high filtering and a loudness control to boost bass at low volume. The final group of two buttons allows you to select either or both of two sets of speakers. Appropriate lights in the dial panel indicate mode, while signal strength on both AM and FM and center tuning on FM provide accurate clues to proper radio tuning.

One unusual feature of the receiver's front panel is the two phone type jacks that provide dubbing capability for yet another deck directly from the panel. If you want to use a deck you're experimenting with, there's no need to go to the rear jack panel, just use phone cables and plug the deck in from the front.

The rear panel has a few surprises too. The 2265B has a compartment for an optional Dolby FM decoder. A muting level control on the rear sets the threshold for the front panel switch. The 2265B comes complete with a ferrite rod AM antenna and connections for both 75 and 300 ohm FM antennas. Marantz has even provided an "F" type 75 ohm jack for co-axial so terminated. While the pre and main amp circuits are bridged internally, the 2265B has pre-out and main-in jacks so you can plug in equipment like an equalizer between the circuits. Just insert the RCA plugs and you've broken the internal connection and your insert becomes the bridge. One final and unusual piece of the engineering is the quadradial FM output jack. The signal at the jack is unequalized buffered output of the FM discriminator. It would be used for a quad FM adaptor or can be used as a white noise generator by feeding its output into Tape Monitor 1 and then depressing that button along with the muting switch.

Good engineering and good circuitry, but how does it all sound? The answer is very good indeed. When you press the power button, the monotone anodized front panel comes to life. The dial is a bright blue light with punctuation marks of white light marking the odd number FM frequencies. The dial pointer is clear plastic with a tip of pink. Turn the gyro touch knob and sound comes from the speakers. The sound is sweet and accurate. With the muting switch in, there is just silence between stations—no noise at all.

Our standard tests include scanning the FM band via the B.I.C. Beam box antenna, AM scan, tape record/playback and phono. Extended listening on both FM and phono provide the critical tests as these are the two most used modes.

Most quality receivers will deliver good performance as simple amplification, but there are always questions about the sensitivity/selectivity of an FM tuner section and, of course, there are questions about the engineering of an AM section.

I can report that the Marantz 2265B scored well on both counts. I was able to get and maintain FM stations that my conventional tuner (very good quality a few years back) was unable to provide. Marantz claims an IHF usable sensitivity figure of 10.3 dBf (1.8 uV) and I see no reason to question it. Selectivity is listed at 80 dB and, again, this tuner section causes no grief. Capture ratio is listed at 65dBf (1000 uV) as 1.0 dB. Again, no quarrel.

The AM section (and AM is important to me because I'm both a news and sports freak) was more than listenable. It has not been an afterthought.

Overall listening tests showed this receiver with 65 watts per channel at 8 ohms with both channels driven from 20 to 20kHz and 0.05% THD to be a damn fine piece of equipment. It can reproduce crashing transients at earsplitting levels with no audible distortion. There was no fatigue factor. The unit was versatile and had many extra convenience features. While the extras add to the overall quality, they also add to the overall price. This kind of engineering with these features does not come cheap. The Marantz 2265B carries a suggested retail of $580. Pretty machine if you can afford it.

If you can't afford quite that much, but want a nice piece of classy engineering with enough power to scare the shit our of your neighbors, you might want to take a listen to the Hitachi SR-804. While it's a high quality receiver, what makes the Hitachi SR-804 a very interesting piece of machinery is its amplifier section. Most amps today are called Class B. That's a circuit designation, not a quality rating. It means that a circuit is working with or without a certain biasing current. The biasing current is necessary to get a linear output from the transistors. Hitachi has developed Class G. Class G is a design engineered to get away from the problem of amplifier ineffeciency.

The higher the power of a conventional amp, the more inefficient it is likely to be in low output situations. Class G actually incorporates two amplifiers, one for low power needs which operates most of the time and the other for high power peaks. When higher power is called for the lower power amp shuts down and the high powered circuit takes over. Once the peak has passed, the .process is reversed. While the amp in the SR-804 is rated at 50 watts per channel (from 20 to 20kHz with less than 1 % THD), it will produce 100 watts per channel on transients without clipping.

So much for the amp design, but what else has this receiver got? Plenty. Front panel instrumentation featuring a long AM/FM dial window with signal strength and tuning meters on the right, balanced by two power meters on the left which give you the power output of each channel. An FM stereo light gives you visual indication of that mode while a protection light tells you if a fault has occurred in the circuit. A large tuning knob on the right completes the upper front panel.

Below the dial, the control panel features a power switch and headphone jack, pushbuttons for two sets of speakers, bass and treble controls (detented as the Marantz's are), high and low filter buttons, concentric balance and volume controls (volume is detented, balance has a center detent), tape dubbing (deck 1 to 2 and 2 to 1) toggle switch and tape monitor (tape 1, 2, and source) toggle switch. The function switch controls AM, FM, phono and aux operation, while the last three pushbuttons handle stereo/ mono, loudness and FM muting.

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The rear panel has jack fields conveniently arrayed in groups: phone and aux inputs, tape 1 in/out, tape 2 in/out. The panel also has the conventional connections for AM and FM antennas.

When you plug in the SR-804, what you get is good clean sound and some fearsome peaks on crashing transients. Class G seems to be effective on every program source I tried.

FM sensitivity is listed as 10.3 dBf (1.8 uV) with capture ratio listed at 1 dB and selectivity at 75 dB. Signal to noise shows a figure of 74 dB (at 65 dBf) in mono and 68 dB for stereo.

In use, there is no reason to doubt Hitachi's measurements. FM reception was excellent. Again, I got better results with this receiver than I generally get with my standard tuner. The muting control, while not variable, is extremely effective.

The Hitachi SR-804 has no external AM antenna built in, but that did not seem to have a serious effect on my AM reception. It was good and, within the limits of the medium, clear. In a more rural area it's likely that an external antenna would be needed.

Phono and tape provided no obstacles for the receiver either. It responded to both program sources as a fine amplifier should. As noted before, Class G seems to work well. The amp can be toodling along at an easy music level, reach back and give a devastatingly loud transient, and then resume a low output level with no effort and no audible effect save the difference in sound levels. There is no sound of the amp's "action."

On extended listening, the receiver sounded fine. There was no fatigue and nothing that it could not handle easily. While the Hitachi SR-804 may not be the ultimate receiver, it is not intended to be. It is a solid middle-of-the-line model with a lot of thought and care poured into it. The Class G concept of 50 watts normally with an additional 50 in reserve handles most situations with no problems at all. It does not have all of the luxury features that we might want in a receiver selling for a good deal more money, but if you're looking for a solid receiver that does the basics and does them well, the Hitachi SR-804 should be listened to carefully—at $460 it's an awful lot of receiver.