REVIEW: Marantz Professional Turret Broadcasting Video Streaming System

With video steaming becoming more and more popular among children and adults for both personal as well as business purposes, there are a handful of companies/programs that allow you to do so, such as YouTube, Facebook Live, Twitch, Skype and Podcasts to name a few. This has been making peoples lives easier when communicating and also the ability to share things with others.

As great as being able to stream via your mobile phone, tablet, laptop or desktop with a camera, the quality of video and sound can vary greatly. Marantz, a company that has been around since 1952 selling high-end audio products, has come out with the Turret, their all-in-one HD broadcast video streaming system under their Marantz Professional line.

 

 

 

 

 

The Turret I have to say is the best piece of equipment to happen to video streaming and podcasting in this day and age! You have this amazing all-in-one system that is made of professional grade equipment and in a relatively small package!

The Tower itself contains the main controls that the streamer/podcaster will access to use the system. There is an LED light dimmer, with click/off at extreme left position, headphone output jack, headphone volume, Mic gain knob and an illuminated Mic mute button and camera on/off switch. There is also a long arm that swings out and rotates, so the microphone can easily reach the person.

 

 

 

Let me talk about each of the features one by one:

 

* The Camera on the Turret is amazing. It’s an auto-focus design, with Full HD 1080p video (up to 1920 x 1080 pixels) compatible with the latest version of Skype. It supports full HD video recording (up to 1920 x 1080 pixels). It has automatic low-light correction and is compatible with Windows 7-10 or later as well as Mac OS 10.6 or later (HD 720p on FaceTime for Mac or other supported video-calling clients; Full HD 1080p video recording with QuickTime Player). The camera can also be adjusted up/down and side to side.

There is also an LED Ring Light around the camera that has a 100mm diameter with a color temperature of 5600K (daylight-balanced). It’s dimmable and includes a Cool Filter accessory (plastic, snap-on) 7000K, a Warm Filter accessory (plastic, snap-on) 3000K, and a Diffused Daylight Filter accessory (plastic, snap-on) that help light up the person talking to look perfect in any room/light conditions.

 

         

 

*The Microphone is also an extremely high performance unit. It’s a condenser design, with a 14mm diameter back electret condenser,  with sensitivity of -34dB ± 2dB (0dB = 1V/Pa @ 1kHz), max SPL of 132dB (THD: 0.5% 1kHz) and a wide-range frequency response of 150 – 15kHz. It also comes with a removable pop filter that is attached to a shock mount, so you can be assured that you will sound crisp and clean when talking on it.

 

     

 

* Headphone Amplifier. For the ultimate user convenience, the pre-amp is integrated with the microphone gain control on the tower. Users can directly monitor the microphone signal while recording/streaming, without the delay of monitoring through the computer’s headphone output. There is also a headphone output with level control, located on the tower that is tied into the extremely high-quality headphone amplifier which is a critical part of the Turret system.

Without a crisp, high definition signal being sent to the headphones, the entire experience falls apart. The Turret nails it here with a headphone amplifier of amazing quality. Here are some of the technical specs to show the professional levels: THD <0.009%, Signal-to-Noise ratio >100dB and a frequency response of 20-20kHz. With an RMS power output of 130mW and an impedance of 30 ohms. With these specs,  the Turret headphone amplifier will drive virtually any headphone to peak levels, with the utmost clarity and accuracy.

 

 

 

 

 

*Rear of Tower: There is a USB-C jack for output to PC/MAC, (2) USB 3.0 jacks, so you can expand/power any additional equipment, and AUX out jack and the 12V DC input jack

 

 

I was blown away buy the Turret when I first saw it and it still never ceases to amaze me. Whether you plan to use this professionally or for personal use, as you can see from above, this is an amazing well equipped “Streamers/Podcasters” dream. You have a stylish and high-quality packed, full system built into a tower that can sit right next to your computer. It’s an easy plug-and-play into the computer and this takes making your videos to a whole other level with how professional you will look from correct color lightning and video quality, to how crisp you will sound from the professional grade microphone.

 

This retails for $299 and can be found on Amazon as well through dealers near you by clicking HERE.

 

Here is a quick recap video of the Turret