A breathtakingly ambitious integrated amplifier
At the high end, simplicity is usually king. Short, simple signal paths that use the minimum number of components are the way most manufacturers go when cutting-edge performance is required. Any improvement in sound usually comes through subtle tweaks to classic circuit layouts, obsessive construction techniques and improvements in component quality.
While paying full attention to the engineering and construction, Technics has thrown away the rest of the high-end amplification design handbook here, and the result is one of the most technically ambitious products we have come across.
Behind that clean, uncluttered exterior you will find a breathtaking range of proprietary technologies that use fresh thinking to crack the high-end amplification nut. This is a fully featured, 150W-per-channel integrated amplifier that comes with line-level, moving-magnet and moving-coil phono and digital inputs. This amplifier is built around digital amplification, which is unusual for this end of the market, so every analogue input signal is first converted to digital.
The SU-R1000’s phono stage is a split circuit, with the output from an initial analogue stage converted to digital where the rest of the signal equalisation is completed. This makes it easy for Technics to offer a range of equalisation curves; the standard RIAA and IEC options, but also Columbia, Decca, AES, NAB and RCA. This is a useful feature if you have records made before the mid-1950s when the RIAA curve became the industry standard.
Digital phono circuitry also allows the designer to correct the cartridge’s frequency response and cancel any crosstalk between the left and right channels, thus improving stereo imaging when listening to vinyl.
The rest of the amplification circuitry is all-digital too. Technics has spent years developing its own digital-amp circuitry, creating a range of clever technologies to improve the known weaknesses of such designs. The company has even gone as far as to develop its own output device in order to get the sonic speed and low electrical output impedance it wanted.
There are three line-level inputs, one of which is a balanced XLR, alongside preamplifier outs, power amp ins, and a record loop. There are also balanced and single-ended options for the MM/MC phono stage, though the XLR input is limited to just moving-coil cartridges.
For digital, there are pairs of USB (Type B), coaxial and optical. The SU-R1000 can accept 32-bit/384kHz PCM music files and DSD512, which should be
