John Darko
The ‘Ess you are one thousand’ – or SU-R1000 (€8499/US$9999) – has been Technics’ flagship integrated amplifier for the past five years. Its vital statistics are as follows: two sets of loudspeaker binding posts, 150wpc into 8 Ohms; 300wpc into 4 Ohms; six digital inputs (two each of USB, coaxial and TOSLINK), three line-level analogue inputs including balanced XLR; MM and MC phono pre-amplification via single-ended RCA and balanced XLR; REC IN/OUT for tape decks or tube buffers; pre-amplifier outputs for subwoofers and third-party power amplifiers; power amplifier inputs for third-party pre-amplifiers.
On the front panel, a volume knob that rotates with reassuring heft, a headphone socket, a ‘notched’ source selector rotary with an accompanying display and – the star of the show – a large pair of VU meters. Wrapped in a thick-walled aluminium chassis that registers 23kg on the scales, the SU-R1000 must surely be an old-school Class A/B beast. Right?
Nope. Not by a long shot.
We get our first whiff of the SU-R1000’s Future-Fi credentials when popping the hood to see no toroidal transformer staring back at us. Instead, this amplifier uses a switch mode power supply that Technics has dubbed ‘Advanced Speed Silent Power Supply’ — or AS2PS (to avoid ‘ASS’ being part of the abbreviation).
Technics’ website gives us this skinny: “The SU-R1000 uses a switching power supply system to ensure a stable supply of voltage and current required by the digital amp. In a conventional switching power supply system, the ON time of the switching operation was controlled in order to stabilise the voltage, and this causes the switching frequency to fluctuate according to the load, resulting in a modulation noise to affect the sound quality. The Advanced Speed Silent Power Supply has eliminated this noise by fixing the switching frequency in the 400kHz band. Furthermore, a Super Low Noise Regulator is provided in the later stage. This prevents the decrease of regulation resulting from the fixed switching frequency and impedes the mixing of noise component into high frequencies. The result is ahigh-response power supply that results in the best performance from the digital amplifier.”
However, only when we learn that the SU-R1000’s six digital inputs talk to no internal DAC do we begin to see just how forward-thinking Technics’ engineering team were when they designed it.
In my house, digital signals dispatched by a Samsung ‘The Frame’ TV, Rotel Michi Q5 CD player and dCS Network Bridge arrive at the SU-R1000 over optical 1, optical 2 and coax 1 respectively. Crucially, they remain in the digital domain as they journey through the SU-R1000’s internals. Only just before the output stage are those digital signals upsampled and converted to PWM (and, then, 1-bit data). This two-step data conversion process forms the backbone of Technics’ jitter-reducing JENO engine — short for “Jitter Elimination and Noise-shaping Optimisation”. Once JENO-optimised, the digital signal switches a pair of GaNFET transistors that juice the loudspeakers. In my case, that’s a pair of Vivid Audio Kaya S12.
The benefits of digital signal processing in an amplifier don’t end there.
According to Technics, the back wave of a loudspeaker driver can introduce low-level electromotive distortions to an amplifier’s output stage. What if the signal read at the SU-R1000’s speaker terminals could be 1) re-digitised; 2) reduced in gain; 3) compared to the JENO engine’s output and 4) the inverse of any differences fed back into the amplifier circuit to cancel out those distortions? That’s how I understand Technics’ Active Distortion Cancelling Technology (ADCT) to work.
JENO? ADCT? The abbreviations come as thick and fast as DSP’s utility elsewhere. Press the LAPC button on the sturdy ‘Dad remote’ and the SU-R1000 will generate a series of test tones that measure the connected loudspeaker’s impedance characteristics. The loudspeaker output is then adjusted accordingly — but we can turn LAPC on and off according to taste; and according to the DSP’s processing time which, although only tenths of a second, is long enough to cause lip-sync issues when watching TV.
DSP also fuels the SU-R1000’s phono cartridge cross-talk cancellation and the ‘Phono Response Optimiser’ (that compensates for impedance mismatches between the cartridge’s output and the phono stage’s input): we engage the corresponding menu item, play the supplied ‘test tone’ record and turn the results on or off according to taste.
Signal digitisation has also allowed Technics to split the SU-R1000’s phono EQ between an all-discrete analogue stage that adds gain to the lowest frequencies and a digital stage that adds gain to the uppermost frequencies. Splitting the phono EQ down the middle and digitising all line-level analogue inputs is an AKM ADC from Asahi Kasei.
The SU-R1000’s absence of an interstitial DAC stage and its (almost) all-digital signal handling are two reasons why Technics refers to the SU-R1000 as a ‘digital’ amplifier. In the last two years, we’ve seen ‘direct digital’ amplifier tech like this spill from Peachtree, Marantz and JBL — and with the SU-R1000 first launching at the end of 2020, Technics beat all but Lyngdorf to the punch.
I requested a sample because Technics’ digital amplifier tech has since trickled down into its SC-CX700 streaming active loudspeakers (which I thoroughly enjoyed). I also wondered to myself – and then to Technics – if they would send an SL-1300G with the SU-R1000 so that I might test the cross-talk cancellation and impedance corrections with one of their own ‘tables. Yes, they would. A tonearm designer and turntable expert stopped by yesterday to fit a Zu DL-103r and an Ortofon 2M Black to a pair of headshells, allowing me to spread the review process across two cartridges.
The SU-R1000 box arriving at my door was more adhesive tape than cardboard, undoubtedly due to years of journeying around Europe. Pixel peep the photos and you’ll see detritus (that I’ve since removed) from the RCA analogue inputs and remote control wand. Amazingly, and perhaps a testament to its stellar build quality, the exterior of this SU-R1000 is 98% perfect.
The big box from Technics is (obviously) not a new product — but it’s new to me — and I’ll be assessing its audible performance over the next three months. A video will follow in June with side-by-side comparisons coming from Lyngdorf’s TDAI-3400, Luxman’s L-505Z and the Marantz Model 10.
Further information: Technics
