@charles1dad 

Hello there. Sorry to say, but I don't do streaming. Although everything is built into the Technics and reviewers love the sound they get out of it, I'm just not into the process of it all. 

On another thread I mentioned just how great good old FM sounds so that suffices for my background music. What I find amazing is how the sound keeps improving with CDs. At around the 6 week mark, it just filled out to the point where I stopped fiddling with the pots on my JBLs and experimenting with the filter settings on the Technics SACD player.

It just keeps getting better. The musicians are very dimensional and almost lifelike. Digital artifacts are gone (except for poorly recorded CDs-thankfully few) and the sound has taken on an analog quality to it. No Class A/B amp I've had sounds like this. I think the matching SACD player has more than a hand in this as it was going through the break-in period when this all happened. 

All the details I love are still there but they refuse to draw attention to themselves and simply blend in with the flow of the music.I was considering different speakers until the digital sound dissipated and now my JBLs sound full and rich but with no bloat or smearing. Heck, even the TV sounds fuller than any soundbar I've had and reminds me of what old tube TVs used to sound like: relaxing.

There's a calmness to the music that can scale dynamically when called for and settle back down, showing the range it can hit without breaking a sweat. I guess you can tell I'm loving it. 

Now, I don't know how much the speakers play a part in this but with this integrated, I'm getting pretty consistently wide sound staging that can go a yard out past both speakers and retain great center stage imaging. I couldn't get that with my old Marantz. 

All the best,
Nonoise

@nomoise,

Technics certainly has the resources and talent pool to get it right when they commit to the task. Based on your listening descriptions, they hit this one out of the park! Glad to know that you have found a very satisfying long term solution for your music loving needs.

Charles

Curiousjim and nonoise - thanks for the education about improvements in Class D amps - and especially Technics new equipment. I have never considered Class D but this Galium Nitride innovation sounds amazing going forward. I have always been a Krell guy when it comes to amplification, but it looks like I now have other options to explore when my current equipment ‘ages out’.

@nonoise 

Question,  do you have a lot of SACD’s and how do they sound using the SLH-700?

Nonoise, I wish I had a local jazz station to listen to.  I do not use the internet radio, seems to be about like satellite radio, meaning it sounds washed out.