I have had this amp for about a month now. It seems to be a solid well built unit. Feels substantial and weighty in your hands and fit and finish are equally satisfactory. I set this up on a PC running windows 10 using the digital USB input. The setup was straight forward I followed the instructions on Teac's website for installing the USB drivers and it worked flawlessly. I have also tried the Bluetooth wireless input as well, sound quality is average and setup was very easy for this input. I haven't connected anything to the other inputs yet as I am very pleased with the performance of the digital USB input. I have it connected to a pair of Klipsch bookshelf speakers and subwoofer. The soundstage is impressive for an amp with this wattage rating. The bass is solid and tight. The mids and highs are a little forward in my opinion but not terrible by any means. I have played a variety of file types (FLAC, MP3, DSF and DFF) with no issues thus far. In fact if you install the free TEAC player you will be able to play any of these file types in any order you like without any issues. To my ear there is a definite and noticeable difference to detail and depth of some music when played back in DSD versus Hi Res FLAC. It also has a remote that is again of solid build quality and seems to work at least from the 10-12 foot range that I have tested it. It does require line of sight to work. And there are some buttons on it that are not for this particular unit. While I find this remote better than the remotes that have the membrane type buttons that aren't much bigger than a credit card. It seems to me that the buttons are small compared to the size of the remote itself but they do work perfectly. My biggest dislike thus far of this unit is that when using windows media player there can be inadvertent gaps of several seconds in the playback even when not using the computer for anything else. I suspect this is because of the way that windows media player handles the music file in memory. I have not experienced this problem when using the TEAC player even during times when multi tasking. However the TEAC player is very basic and limited to simple play, pause, stop etc. so it can't replace the windows media player or any other comparable player if you have a large server based library that you keep your music on. I have not had any of the noises on my unit that have been mentioned on other reviews at any volume level. I almost went with another brand AMP/DAC based on that information but I am happy to report it is not present in my setup. To summarize if you are looking to setup a 2.1 system with a PC, TV or game console and you already have some speakers laying around that are underutilized this amp would be a solid buy. I would also say you will find it difficult to match the performance and feature set of this amp without spending more money.
Pros
Excellent build Quality
Solid DSD playback
Sound stage Punches well above the rated output
Many input options
Small size ideal for desktop use
Cons
Minor glitch at least with my PC during windows media player playback
Not inexpensive you can buy a lower end AV receiver in this price range
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KFT
Solid performer
Reviewed in Canada on July 13, 2018
KFT
Reviewed in Canada on July 13, 2018
Small form factor looks great on my desktop.
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