I bought my Teac in the UK at £144.00, which is considerably more than the $99.00 you can get it for in the US; but still a bargain considering its sound.
I hooked it up last night to my 'conventional audiophile system' and had time to listen to just a couple of disks, so this is very much an initial, unburned in impression.
I refer to my system as conventional because so far this system doesn't contain any of the, what I call, 'revolutionary' components. In the 'revolutionary' category I include these low cost digital amps, of course, and Horn speakers. Because, for me, these components are a revolution, or perhaps I should say a revelation.
The speaker binding posts on these made me really angry. They're the stupidest most impractical designs I've ever come across. In the pictures they look like conventional binding posts, which I was hoping to shove my Nordost Blue Heaven Bananas into; but in fact the ends are just caps which unscrew to reveal a very small hole where you can insert thin bare wire from the side. I couldn't even use my Monster flex pins which work fine in spring clips, so these binding posts are even worse than spring clips in my opinion. Fortunately I had some Cat 6 cable to hand that Ed Schilling kindly sent me for nothing, when I bought the Horn Shoppe horns, which I use in another system. I had to strip this to 10mm or less to fit into the binding posts; but of course it was certainly thin enough to fit.
The speakers are ProAc Super Towers, which consist of metal dome tweeters flanked by two mid-bass drivers in the D'apollito configuration. All four mid-bass drivers are new, since I replaced them last year and I removed the protective covers from the metal dome tweeters many years ago, for better dispersion.
I set the volume pots to max for the left and right channels on the Teac, set the System/Single switch to 'Single' hooked up the IC's from my preamp. Then I turned on the preamp first and let it warm up, followed by the Teac.
The pre-amp is a Jadis JPL which is a tube preamp without, I think a typical tube sound. It actually sounds grainless to me and quite neutral with extended highs and excellent microdynamics. The Teac is substituting for my regular Plinius SA50 solid state class A amp, which can be operated in either class A or AB. Harry Pearson described this as "a honey of an amp" and I think that's a good description. It actually sounds more like a tube amp particularly in its class A mode than the Jadis does.
I've been very pleased with this system for many years. The limiting factor is the speakers, which I plan to replace with Horns. The ProAcs are quite transparent, dynamic and musical within their limitations; but the presentation is, of course, scaled down compared to larger speakers or the real thing. Their main problem, I feel, is when they try to do bass which they can't quite manage; but attempt to do anyway. This can lead to a sluggish sound which can spoil or smear the timing.
Frankly I wasn't expecting much out of the Teac, using this ultra thin give away speaker cable, and knowing it's susceptible to RFI/EMI as all these digital amps apparently are. I expected noise or interference of some sort. I have had some low hum and occasional light buzzing noise through the speakers with nothing playng and the volume on the pre-amp minimized. Although I double checked I also wasn't too confident in the speaker connections to those lousy binding posts. Maybe I'd only managed to connect the insulation and not the bare copper.
After turning on the Teac I put my ear to one of the speakers and, just as I thought, completely dead. Not a sound. Not even the very low fffffffff I'm used to hearing when I turn on the Plinius. I'll have to go back and re-check those connections, I thought.
Then I remembered a post here which mentioned just how silent these digital amps can be, so I though, to hell with it, I may as well put on a disk just in case something comes out and lo and behold! music!!!
The disk was 'Touchwood' by Antonio Forcione. This guy has been called the Hendrix of acoustic guitar. That's probably because he literally plays just about every part of the instrument in every imaginable way. Not at all gimmicky, though. A really great musician. I managed to see him last week at the Edinburgh festival where I had a chat with him and got a signed copy of this disk. The disk is on Naim audio, so as you can imagine it's very well recorded.
The live sound of his quartet in the wonderful acoustic of St Georges in Edinburgh is still very fresh in my mind.
I had already listened to this disk quite a few times through the Plinius, so I was reasonably familiar with it.
My first impressions were that the highs sounded a little too etched and perhaps strident; but perhaps that was due to me projecting my expectations onto the soud. The overall sound was much cooler than the Plinius which in comparison seems to bathe everything in a rich ambience. Not overly warm, more like the clear blonde variety of honey. In other words there is a texture to the Plinius which permeates the entire soundstage. It is delicious and makes for a very enjoyable listening experience. I am obviously describing a coloration; but it is more subtle than I'm probably making it sound here. It only becomes obvious in comparison to something else, which either lacks this coloration or is colored in the opposite direction.
I suspect that by itself or in combination with a pre-amp that had similar characteristics I might judge the Teac to be colored in the opposite direction and deem it cold.
In combination with the Jadis though, listening carefully and making adjustments after being so used to the Plinius sound, I'm inclined to describe the sound of this combination as being as neutral as I've ever heard. As I already mentioned the Jadis is atypical of tube pre-amps and in fact can sound a little too cool and a bit processed until it has warmed up.
By the time I'd got towards the end of the Forcione disk it had warmed up and so had my impression of the sound of the Teac. I think one of the best mods you can do to this amp is to use it in combination with a tube pre-amp.
The Forcione disk is a studio album, nevertheless, through the Teac it reminded me very much of the live sound of these instruments I'd heard a week earlier under close to ideal conditions. It really seemed to get the timbre of most of these instruments right with the possible exception of the cello.
One of the best features of this amp is, I believe, related to that silence I heard, or rather didn't hear, on turn on. When music is playing is allows the notes to start and stop with great precesion and allows me to make much more sense of the music. More about that later.
I was reminded of two demos I attended at High-End dealers in Hong Kong when I lived there during the 80's. The first was in my classic 'audiophile' period having been very much influenced by the Absolute sound. I owned a pair of Quicksilver Monoblocks and a CJ PV5. The sound was always lovely, never fatiguing or irritating on almost any recording. Mind you I only listened to vinyl at the time.
Still I had a nagging doubt that it wasn't really accurate. Perhaps this approach was the best path to take with recorded music; but live music didn't really sound like that. Real instruments were always more exciting to listen to; but can you reproduce that excitement in an audio system without introducing distortions which make the overall experience unlistenable I wondered?
I can't even remember what it was I was listening too, except that it was a CD front end with some solid state amps all highly regarded at the time and highly priced. I do remember though, when we were listening to Miles Davis and I objected that the trumpet sounded cold. The dealer said, "what do you expect" a trumpet is cold. It's supposed to send shivers up your spine".
I had to admit he had a point. He'd obviously become exasperated with audiophiles who expected everything to sound so sweet.
I've always suspected that among all those Japanese electronics there must be some real gems lurking which could provide true high end sound at a reasonable price. I went back to visit Hong Kong in 1999 and having read recently in TAS, HP's enthusiasm for some Denon monoblocks, when I spotted a pair in the window of a dealer I had brought stuff from, I thought, I must give them a listen. Of course, HP had the top of the line huge expensive model, POA 20 I think; but these were a mini version, POA 10 or something, so I figured they might share similar sonics with their big brothers. They also had the Bryston ST3B amp which Robert Greene was raving about at the time. I hope the reason I mention all this will soon become clear.
As I remember those Denon amps they sounded very much like the Plinius I have today. The Bryston on the other hand, I just had to admit sounded more real; but there was some other texture there that I couldn't quite pin down. HP described this as a kind of grain. I think he said a sooty or charcoal grain. The dealer actually became angry with me this time when I said I preferred the Denon. He didn't have anything to gain, since they were both about the same price, I believe; but he insisted that the Bryston was far more accurate and couldn't understand why I couldn't hear that.
There was a minor controversy over the sound of the Bryston between HP and Greene as I recall. Greene insisting that what HP called grain was actually the texture present in some of the instruments themselves when they're played.
If these experienced audiophile writers can't agree on these issues what chance have we mere mortals got? Actually I think quite a lot, if we listen carefully and use our experience of how instruments sound to us live.
Having now heard the Teac in combination with the Jadis JPL I feel that the Bryston amp did have a certain texture. The Teac is like the Bryston with that texture removed.
I don't claim the Teac is perfect, especially straight out of the box. I do think that its problems have less to do with the highs, which I think are just more accurate than I'm used to, and more to do with dynamic compression. I'm talking about the wide dynamic swings here. I just kept finding myself wanting to turn up the volume and never quite being satisfied. The music didn't bloom in that sense. It's as if when I cranked the volume everything got louder by the same degree rather than the louder sounds getting much louder in comparison to the softer sounds It's the same phenomenon that occurs with MP3.
I'm really hoping this aspect goes away with warm up or otherwise can be cured with better speaker cable and/or mods. The Teac may also be slightly underpowered for the ProAcs; but they are fairly efficient, so I doubt if it's that.
Continuing on the positive side, I just feel the Teac truly allows me to appreciate the music making and the choices the musicians/recording engineer made. This manifests itself in the interplay between the musicians, when certain instruments are played louder in relation to other instruments and so on.
It is as if you've been struggling to learn a language, and before the language often sounded very interesting and sometimes pretty; but didn't always make sense, then suddenly it all does make sense, and you realize how much you've been missing. Music is a kind of language after all.
I've gone to some length to describe all this, because I know that I'm having to get over some of my audiophile prejudices in order to learn to appreciate this amp. I believe I was already on this path as I've learned to embrace Horn speakers for the same reasons that I like what the Teac does so well.
In fact I'd go as far as to say the Teac made my ProAcs sound far more like horn speakers. It's as if there were less driver excursion but what there was, was much faster as though I had a Lowther or Fostex driver in there. Yes, you could say the bass was lighter; but it was also cleaner, not sluggish; but tuneful. I could also feel the bass as much as hear it, even with the limitations of the ProAcs which, I believe, start to roll of just below 40hz.
I haven't mentioned the source. It's the Sony SCD-777ES using its built in DAC. This DAC provides several filters for standard CD's with various degrees of roll-off so that regular CD's aren't too embarrassed after listening to SACD's. I had settled on filter 2 which is for small scale Jazz and vocals and I switch between this and the standard (non-filtered) settings.
I realized on my first session I may have been taming the Teacs' sound by using this filter. When I tried an SACD (which is unfiltered) of Cecilia Bartolli performing the work of Salieri it was obvious the Teac couldn't handle the wide dynamic orchesteral swings; but when I just concentrated on her voice, I could really appreciate the music making in her singing for the first time.
The Teac also doesn't do any favors for average recordings, you really need a good to great recording to appreciate it. I tried the latest Madredeus and although it was enjoyable enough, I think the Plinius would have smoothed it out, enriched it, and made it more enjoyable. I played it unfiltered so maybe one of the filters would improve average or below average disks. I suspect that poor recordings will really sound poor through this amp.
Although my description may give the impression that the Teac sounds thin, I don't think that is the case, since the body of instruments such as the acoustic guitar was certainly present; just not exaggerated. I tend to suspect thin wire of robbing instruments of body; but this would be a simplistic argument and I believe the Teac has proven me wrong on this.
I think some people might tend to put this amp towards the analytical category. I haven't heard the Panasonic XR45; but I wouldn't be surprised from what I've read that it goes in a similar direction.
Having said that, I don't believe an amp can actually be analytical only we can be analytical. Just as I don't think of an amp as playing music, it can only let the music played by the musicians through, if it's doing its job properly.
On a good to outstanding recording the Teac does this. For Bill Frisells' Brilliant 'Intercontinentals' disk all the same comments apply as for the Antonio Forcione disk and I played the Bill Frisell unfiltered.
What we've come to know as true high end gear is usually produced with the designer listening very carefully at each stage of the design. I can't imagine anyone was listening very closely as part of the design of these low cost digital amps; but who knows, perhaps some of the audiophile influence has got through to these companies over the years? Or perhaps someone at Tripath has been listening very carefully. Either way it looks like we're onto a real bunch of winners here and at very reasonable prices. It seems that the quality of the components, other than the chips may be less critical than with conventional amps; but obviously there is still room for improvement with sensible mods.
I will continue to report on the sound of this amp as it warms up. I should be able to give it a thorough work out over the weekend and maybe I'll get to use some different speaker cable and/or get it modded. From what I've heard so far it definitely sounds like it'll be worth pursuing further.
geoff
