Teac Worthy: The Soul Note SA-710 Monitor Amplifier

We've been looking for a desktop amplifier worthy to drive our Teac S300 NEO's. At 2200 GBP, the Nippon Hi Fi SA 710 Monitor Amplifier might just be the thing. Although only offering one set of 10W x 2 on the speaker terminals, the SA710 offers a nice looking case with good screen printing only marred by a poor quality main logo, XLR and RCA connectors.

The knobs match nicely those of the Teac 501 range, and the case work appears a cosmetic step towards Rowland consummate.

Interestingly, the unit offers an amazing 3.0 W of headphone power, which is rather high as things go. The speaker connectors are superb, and it would be nice to see a better back panel, and simply more juice on the speaker outs.

Frequency Response

 

Speaker      .........5 Hz ~ 350 kHz (+0/-1 dB, 1 W, 8 Ohms)

Headphone...5 Hz ~ 400 kHz (+0/-1 dB, 200 mW, 32 Ohms)

Output

Speaker  ........................................10 W × 2 (8 Ohms)

Headphone   ............................... 3.0 W × 2 (32 Ohms)

Preout  ........................................... 2.0 V (10 k Ohms)

Total Harmonic Distortion

Speaker     .......0.2% (10 Hz ~ 100 kHz, 3.3 W, 8 Ohms)

Headphone 0.03% (10 Hz ~ 100 kHz, 200 mV, 32 Ohms)

Preout     ... 0.05% (10 Hz ~ 100 kHz, 2.0 V, 10 k Ohms)

For 3000 EUR they make the SD 710 D/A converter, which would be an interesting comparison to our TEAC 24/192 reference.




JP 2014/11/05
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