A timely revisit to The Phantom Menace showed the Marantz's mettle in creating a big scene with bass effects that start somewhere in the subterranean depths. The howling battle sequences are just pure gung-ho enjoyment, and before you know it the HCC editor is harassing you for the review and you are still cheering on the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi...

Before listening to the Audyssey-tweaked sound, we couldn't help but look at the onscreen frequency charts to see what the MultiEQ has implemented - and, in my room's case, it wasn't pretty.

Despite a decent sized room (5.5m x 3.5m) and capable speakers (Tannoy Dimension TD system), the overall Audyssey implementation added progressively more gain as the frequency increased, culminating in a whopping 9dB at 16kHz on many channels. After several re-runs to ensure the supplied mic hadn't gone tone-deaf, the results remained. This should lead to a sound on the bright side of brighter than a bright thing on bright street.

The Audyssey-tuned sound as standard is certainly not going to be everyone's cup of tea. Yes - it cleans up the midrange spectacularly. Yes - it adds amazing sparkle and clarity to the top end. And yes - it adds several perceived acres to the soundstage. But the trade-off is the SR7001's low-frequency impact and bass richness is all but gone; in its place is a lean and dry balance that turns splashy and sibilant at high volumes.

The Marantz's menus do, however, let you access the RoomEQ settings with ease - albeit without any Q adjustment to the filtering. Manually trimming back some of the HF gain begins to mix the best of both worlds, the SR7001's richness with the Audyssey-borne clarity and space.

Looking at past notes, this is near identical to the results we got from the first Denon receiver with Audyssey MultEQ I tested, and the conclusion is the same. The Audyssey has a lot of potential - but don't expect instant results without spending time fine-tuning the gain on all 56 filters - nine frequency points across each of the seven channels.

The SR7001 is a great receiver. It's well-specified, well-equipped, good-looking and possesses a rich, warm balance that is a winner with big action movies and up-tempo music alike. The MultEQ implementation is far from 'plug and play', though, but for the audio enthusiast, the SR7001 is still very tempting indeed.