Review - M700 & the GCD by Audio Beat

http://www.theaudiobeat.com/equipment/ps_audio_stellar_gain_cell_m700.htm

One of many great reviews on these units. I’ve recently grabbed the M700’s and am impressed with the soundstage and detail out of the box.

Some of my reference tracks for new kit:

  • Gone Cold - Clutch
  • Walkin’ in the graveyard - Jimmy Rip
  • Black book of fear - Mad Season
  • Down in a hole - Alice in Chains unplugged
  • Low Rider - War
  • Just got back from baby’s - ZZ Top

Kit this good just makes you want to trawl through your collection and play all your faves - thats what its all about i reckon :smiling_imp:

Direct stream junior next! I’m planning on using it as a pre-amp as well as DAC / streamer.

Cheers Paul, Ted, Darren and co!

The Jr and 700s are an awesome combination… Enjoy!

How do you find the DSJ’s preamp functionality into the M700’s? I could go with the GCD but i really like the ongoing upgrade programme of the DSJ and obviously its dac is a step up.

I run my USB into the Jr along with a Optical. I have no other sources analog or otherwise. The combo worked really well with 5 of six speaker combinations. I now have a pre in the setup as well but same USB and optical inputs. The pre was purely for musicality given my system and preferences. YMMV.

I upgraded to the Jr and never looked back. In my opinion, it is possibly the best component PSA makes given sound and value. M700’s a close 2nd. The cool thing about the Jr is everything sounds better- from Spotify, MP3 to Hi-Res.

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Thanks for your input! Plenty of other opinions here which is helpful but i guess it’ll be my own ears that’ll decide if i need a separate pre.

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Yep. I started with an inexpensive Cary but made a huge difference…

Yes, indeed! I’ve been pulling out old favorites and hearing them come alive.

The review makes sense. I tried a newer and super cheap ESS DAC (9038Q2m) with my SGCD and the newer DAC sound has more glare (or should I call it an aftereffect of resolution) but the SGCD is more musical, has more bass … I too think that it would have been awesome to have 2x upsample like the old Teac UD501 does - helps to give another knob to tune the sound