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FIRST-DAY IMPRESSIONS: Sony AVD-C70ES Digital Amp/SACD/CD/Tuner

Posted by Kent2003 (A) on September 17, 2003 at 14:55:37

Sony AVD-C70ES Digital Amp/SACD/CD/Tuner - Very Early Impressions/ Review.

I've been using my AVD-C70ES S-Master digital amplifier / sacd/cd multichanger & fm-am tuner for a few hours now. It is too soon to pass serious judgement on its sonic signature but long enough for some initial impressions.

1. It sounds just fine right out of the box. A robust 120 watts per channel. I'm running it full bandwidth, 2-channel. I'm not going to evaluate its sound closely until it's broken in, but it clearly sounds very good already. I cannot discern any sonic demerits compared to my previous Musical Fidelity 5350SE with various CD/SACD players. But as I said, I haven't scrutinized it.

2. Lots of mechanical noise. An audible fan that runs most of the time and for no apparent reason (the unit stays pretty cool, as a digital amp in such a large chassis should.) Not loud, but audible from my listening position. I've heard the fan can be disconnected without any problem, but haven't wanted to void my warranty /return options yet. A very loud clunk as the changer shifts discs especially when ejecting one.

3. Intolerable remote. This is almost a deal-breaker for me. The remote is ridiculous, at least without an onscreen menu to follow. Buttons you would use incessantly on a disc changer are nowhere to be found (such as next disc / previous disc). You have to go into submenus to do basic things like advance to another disc. Furthermore, even in the submenu for disc advancing, you'll find no next disc / previous disc option: You must remember which number disc is playing right now, in order to select numerically the next disc. This are just examples. I found the remote as counterintuitive and unlikely a candidate to ever operate "without having to stop and think about it" as any I've owned, and man, I've owned some really bad ones. I'm sure all this difficulty is necessary to accomodate the complexity of advanced video functions, but compared to my audio-only remotes it's a dreadful experience. If your style is to put a set of discs in and play them without skipping around, you may not find it so horrid.

4. Full spectrum subwoofer outpute selectable. I got an email from Sony technical support specifying that the crossover is 120 hz and 12 db to the octave. But you can run it full spectrum and let your other electronics handle the low-pass filtering. No stereo preamp output.

5. Outstanding FM section! I'd given up on FM reception in my system location, and running an external antenna isn't an option. On a tip from Dmason, I plugged in the single-wire FM antenna, and voila! Quiet, robust, very listenable FM. I've used a highly regarded Sony ES tuner in this same location with no success even with a Terk FM-50, so I'm quite impressed.

6. The look is OK, but definitely not up to the highest previous ES standards. Nowhere near as attractive as its successor the C700ES appears to be.

7. Small faceplate display. I can still pass my driver's test without glasses by squinting, and I can't read the display from 9 feet away.

8. Poorly laid out buttons, both on the component and on the remote. E.g., once you open the carousel, you must reach over it and down to find the slender advance disc button. (and don't get me started on the remote again!)

Faceplate ease of use: B.
Remote ease of use: D+ for audio-only users.

9. Painfully slow disc access. Even on CD's. Maybe 15 seconds?

10. So far, it seems that if you want to switch from CD/SACD to tuner or another source, when you come back to CD/SACD the track isn't paused where you left it -- it defaults to the beginning of the disc. There may be some way around this that I haven't discovered yet.

11. Decent headphone output. Sounds fine through my Sennheiser 580's -- a cut or two above the usual A/V receiver headphone jack.

12. And last but not least, mine is going back: It has a weird defect -- it skips at random moments on multichannel SACD's. Not (so far) on CD's or 2-channel SACD's. Anybody experienced this glitch on this or another player? Anybody know what's going on here? I probably need a replacement.

Thanks to everyone for the advice and encouragement you've given me as I try out all-digital signal path, "from Disc to Driver".

Looks like this direction is going to work well enough for my ears. Only time will tell, but I have no a priori reason to expect the sound to deteriorate, and I could live with it as-is. Others have said it blooms considerably with time.

It is as if an el-cheapo swiss army knife suddenly was able to satisfactorily replace my entire collection of kitchen knives. Now I am left to wonder if I will miss the tweaking and incessant upgrading. Sniff.

Kent

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