Marantz CD 50n

The Marantz CD 50n is a CD player with a network streamer and a digital-to-analogue converter built in, feeding an existing amplifier.

That combination is deliberate and increasingly rare. It treats a disc collection and a streaming subscription as equally valid sources in one box, rather than making you choose or buy two components.

What Apple Home actually does with it

This is an AirPlay 2 speaker rather than a HomeKit accessory.

• It appears in the Home app as a speaker you can play to, and as an AirPlay target in Control Centre.
• You can assign it to a room and group it with HomePods for synchronised multi-room audio.
• Siri can send music to it by room name.
• It can be the audio output in a scene or an automation.

You cannot switch it on or set its volume from the Home app the way you would a light. Those stay with the speaker itself and its own app.

Before you buy

The DAC section accepts external digital inputs, so the CD 50n can also convert the output of a television or a games console. That makes it more useful than a plain CD player by a wide margin.

If you have no discs, a streamer alone will cost less. The CD drive is a large part of what you are paying for.

HEOS handles multi-room alongside AirPlay 2.

Specifications