I've been meaning to follow up for a while now.
In a nutshell, to me, the TEAC 701 is astonishing. By that, I mean just right. There is no emphasis on any of the spectrum and everything is delivered "just right". I'll likely use that phrase a lot.
What I mean by "just right" is say, the tambourine on your last favourite playback device that had a nice "bright" crisp sound to it, now sounds like a tambourine should sound. Not sharp, not over emphasised; just a tambourine that might have a bit of oxidation on the cymbals. The honesty of the playback threw me a bit at first and I harked for the admittedly emphasised/false sounds of its predecessor until I realised how much detail the TEAC was revealing. When you pair that with the very open and revealing Bryston, you're in for a treat.
It also excels at decay like nothing I have heard by that before. It delivers the notes with incredible separation, then moves on as fast as it delivers them. That "should" be a bad thing but, individual notes become events. Example, Jeff Buckley Hallelujah starts with a sigh- we all get that. But this thing reveals a sigh, a teeny bit of sibilance then the sigh decaying. I gave myself a back injury I jumped up so fast to take note. The delicate piano intro to Sentinel by Mike Oldfield takes on more weight than I have ever heard before and each hammer strike is an event by itself, even at low volumes overlaid by the gorgeous ringing of the piano strings. You really realise that a piano is a percussion instrument through this combo.
In fairness, I have 700W monoblocks with huge amounts of head room and hi sensitivity large speakers that are probably contributing to the minute details being so present. What will surprise some, is that all of my IC's are silver and speaker cables are hybrid silver/copper. To many, that would result in harshness or excessive "brightness", but not in this camp. Its all very au naturale.
For giggles, I plugged in my last CD player that is just back from having a new transport fitted expecting the margin between it and the TEAC to be small. Not so. Not by a long margin. The TEAC and Bryston are in a different league to it and the Bryston and all the unwelcome over emphasis was back.
So, back to summation. Anyone interested in a very revealing, "just right" sound is going to love the TEAC/Bryston BDA3 combo. It didn't even need that long a burn in.
