Despite claims to the contrary, the profile of many brands best fits either a hi-fi scenario or a home cinema one.

Marantz is one of the very few companies with feet successfully planted in both camps.

So, it's in an ideal position to rule the universal disc player roost, where musical performance - both stereo and multichannel - is as important as the visuals. The DV9600 ably demonstrates that Marantz lives up to the task, thanks to a role-call of video toys that would make any home cinema buff salivate and a level of audio performance that even the most die-hard music snob will find to their liking.

The big plus point to the Marantz sound quality lies in those eight evenly spaced gold plated phono sockets along the top of the back panel. With two sets of stereo outputs and the four surround connectors, these phonos sit in front of a board made up of discrete and proprietary HDAM circuits, one for each channel.

Normally, HDAM circuits are limited to the stereo channels, the rest making do with conventional op-amps. Even very expensive players make this sacrifice, usually on the grounds of cost-saving. Marantz has given every channel HDAMs, immediately raising the bar on multichannel sound at the price.

Natty amp modules are all very well, but if the electronics that precede them don't cut the musical mustard, they will merely amplify poor sound. Fortunately, Marantz doesn't seem to have cut corners here, either. It delivers 24-bit/192kHz performance all round, with the audio processing circuit based on a brace of Cirrus Logic CS4298 chips.

This stereo Delta-Sigma D-to-A converter chip has two useful feathers in its tiny silicon hat: it delivers a mighty 120dB dynamic range and deals with Direct Stream Digital data from an SACD player like a native, filtering the datastream at 50kHz.

Marantz has also designed the chassis to separate the audio, video, transport and PSU stages; with a substantial transport mechanism and large transformer inside, these need to be isolated from the delicate audio and video circuits.

If you want to keep the audio in the digital domain, there are optical and coaxial outputs for CD and DVD-Video data, plus a pair of i.Link connectors that will additionally pass SACD and DVD-Audio to suitably-equipped amps. Unlike the majority of today's players, there's even a headphone socket and the now obligatory RS232 and remote control links.

This is impressive enough to prick up audiophile ears, but the video side is perhaps even more significant. The HDMI (v1.1) digital output supports HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection), a must-have for the latest 'HD-Ready' screens and projectors.

This is nothing special - most HDMI-equipped DVD players do the same. The big improvement is the addition of 1080p scaling - Classé got there first, but Marantz is the first company to deliver 1080p on a player that's not hand-built (and not with an accordingly stratospheric price tag).

What is 1080p scaling? Put simply, it takes the 480-line, progressive scan picture output of a DVD player and blows it up to 1,080 lines while retaining the progressive scan (frame by frame instead of line by line) functionality.

This is done thanks to industry-standard Anchor Bay technology, using the latest, high-precision 10-bit scalar chip to produce up-converted 720p, 1080i and 1080p video signals from 480p signals received via the HDMI port. It can even be used as external video processor for 480i output sources.

Marantz uses top-notch video processing for more humble screens too, with 14-bit/216MHz D-to-A conversion and an Analogue Devices Noise Shaping Video processor. The video DAC is a notch above the average at the price (meaning sharper, more colourful images) and the NSV system allows the user to perfectly tailor the output of the player to match the picture quality of the monitor.

This is one of those rare universal players that remembers CD might be the senior format, but it's in no way a 'legacy' one. With five squillion CDs out there, and millions more bought every month, it's still the dominant source for music on disc.

Often, it seems that the designers get starry-eyed at the prospect of high-resolution sources and overlook the simple fact that the bulk of most people's collections are CD-based. Fortunately, Marantz has made CD playback a priority with the DV9600.

There is an excellent sense of stereo soundstaging from CD. The music stretches far beyond the speakers, with good stage width and very decent image depth. Many universal players present a wide, but paper-thin soundstage; here, the Marantz expands the stage by projecting into the room and behind the speakers. There's even some stage height, but this really is the domain of top-notch dedicated CD players.