Premium price, premium build and an excellent sound
While we enjoy the benefits of streaming as much as anyone, there is a certain hands-on appeal to CD players that we can’t ignore. More than that, we like to own our music and be able to play it any time we want. Given the relatively fickle nature of streaming rights and the slightly erratic stability of an internet connection, we still see a place for a high-quality CD player in our systems.
This far into the age of streaming, new CD player launches have slowed to a mere trickle, so we can’t wait to have a go on TEAC’s new premium player.
Those initials – VRDS – will mean a lot to hi-fi fans of a certain vintage. They stand for Vibration-free Rigid Disc-clamping System and indicate the use of TEAC’s proprietary CD transport design. There have been numerous versions of this mechanism found in products that range in cost from premium to ultra high-end, but the basic idea is always the same: to minimise rotational vibration and other disturbances by clamping the entire surface of the CD rather than just in the middle, as pretty much every alternative does. The idea is that reducing these unwanted outside influences allows the laser to read the disc more easily and the result should be a better sound. We have heard enough TEAC VRDS-equipped CD players and transports over the years to find that is usually the case.
There is plenty else to admire here. This is a beautifully made player with a pleasingly chunky casework that weighs in at a considerable 11.1kg. We particularly like the precise feel of the two small control dials. One governs the volume of the headphone and line output; the other the play and skip functions of the transport. The large display is easy to read from a distance and is pleasantly crisp.
Don’t be fooled by the TEAC’s metal feet. They may feel loose but are in fact rather elaborately engineered multi-piece affairs that are designed to disperse vibrations. The transport is lavished with similar attention, being fixed to the chassis with what TEAC calls a floating mounting to decouple it from the chassis and minimise the transfer of mechanical vibrations.
Clocking in
Around the back of the 701 are both balanced XLR and RCA line-level outputs, digital inputs in the form of a coaxial, optical and, unusually for a product such as this, a USB-C socket. If you decide to use the 701’s internal DAC section with an outboard source then you will find that it is a capable circuit that is compatible with 32-
