Technics SA-C600 Premium Class Network CD Receiver by Addicted To Audio

The Technics SA-C600 Network CD receiver has a ton of features, but it seems to be missing something…The C600 is more than just an expensive CD player, it’s also a receiver that offers discrete power amplification, a network streaming player including built-in Chromecast as well as Airplay 2. I was a little shocked that this doesn’t offer USB-C input, but it does take USB-B. The Build quality is decent, you can open the CD door by sliding it in a circle. This is nice because you don’t have to worry about a motor breaking. There is also a phono input for connecting a turn table.The C600 connects to your network, but only by Airplay or Chromecast. The front of the player has a display with touch controls, but the included remote is way more convenient. I was a ... MoreThe Technics SA-C600 Network CD receiver has a ton of features, but it seems to be missing something…The C600 is more than just an expensive CD player, it’s also a receiver that offers discrete power amplification, a network streaming player including built-in Chromecast as well as Airplay 2. I was a little shocked that this doesn’t offer USB-C input, but it does take USB-B. The Build quality is decent, you can open the CD door by sliding it in a circle. This is nice because you don’t have to worry about a motor breaking. There is also a phono input for connecting a turn table.The C600 connects to your network, but only by Airplay or Chromecast. The front of the player has a display with touch controls, but the included remote is way more convenient. I was a little disappointed to find out that the player doesn’t allow you to connect Bluetooth headsets, although it does allow you to connect a Bluetooth music player…As far as the performance goes for the C600, I tried a few different sources to see how well it delivers. I tried out the CD player first, and needless to say, it sounded great especially after using Space Tune. This is feature that’s activated through the Technics Audio Center app, where it uses your phone’s speaker to measure your room and measure the correct sound waves. I used a pair of Martin Logan Motion 15 and a Dynamo sub as my speaker set up. The C600 provides 60w per channel, with a total of 2 channels. I’m a little disappointed with the power output, as I think it should have been able to push out more, but it does sound good. Next, I connected my turntable to the phono input to see how well the built-in phone equalizer performs, I was really impressed with this. My vinyl sounded incredible. The C600 seemed to have amplified my listening experience with vinyl in a major way.Overall, there are many aspects of the C600 that I thoroughly enjoy. Such as, the build quality is great, the rotating CD tray makes it easy to fit snug in a shelf, the ability to stream with music apps via Airplay and Chromecast, not to mention the superb phono equalizer which makes my vinyl sound amazing. But I definitely think there’s room for improvement, one of the biggest things would be increasing the wattage channel, it definitely feels lacking in that area. Another thing would be to add the ability to connect BT headphones to listen to music. I think if it had those features, then it would really set this unit apart from everything else.

The Technics SA-C600 is really a game changer for my living room music setup. It sounds fantastic, works flawlessly, and has a very easy and problem-free setup. However, it has got some perplexing quirks that I’m unsure make it the most user-friendly audio receiver is out there. Still, I wouldn’t trade it for anything as it’s the best sounding and, once you know how to use it, simplest way to listen to music both wired and wirelessly.Opening the box, there’s not much in the way of parts. You’ve got the receiver itself, with nothing to assemble, the power cable, FM radio antenna cable, the remote, batteries for it, and a basic owner’s manual. The manual is very basic and is mostly there to guide you to the Google Home app, the Technics Audio Center phone app, and a ... MoreThe Technics SA-C600 is really a game changer for my living room music setup. It sounds fantastic, works flawlessly, and has a very easy and problem-free setup. However, it has got some perplexing quirks that I’m unsure make it the most user-friendly audio receiver is out there. Still, I wouldn’t trade it for anything as it’s the best sounding and, once you know how to use it, simplest way to listen to music both wired and wirelessly.Opening the box, there’s not much in the way of parts. You’ve got the receiver itself, with nothing to assemble, the power cable, FM radio antenna cable, the remote, batteries for it, and a basic owner’s manual. The manual is very basic and is mostly there to guide you to the Google Home app, the Technics Audio Center phone app, and a digital download of the full manual. I’m not thrilled about basic manuals that direct you to download full manuals, but it’s increasingly common so I don’t consider it a negative so much as me being an old man yelling at clouds.Connecting it is very simple. You’ve got enough connections for two stereo speakers and a subwoofer out, should you have a separate subwoofer. The speaker connections are very easy to use and will accept a variety of sized audio wires from your speakers. In terms of input, there’s several: The FM radio (which is just connecting the cable it comes with), phono in with ground earth connection if you’re not using a pre-amp, line in – either for another device or phono that’s already been through a pre-amp, optical, coax, a front side USB-A and backside USB-B. There’s also a LAN port if you want to hard wire it to your internet instead of WiFi. The optical and coax in are especially nice if you’re going to use this as an audio receiver for your television watching. I wouldn’t personally use this as a main home theater receiver, but I also have the space and a 5.1 surround system for those purposes already. If you don’t have such things, then this is a definite bonus. Physical setup for me was just connecting my FM antenna, record player with ground cable, my two speakers, and the power cable.From there you power it on and, in my case, open the Google Home app. If you’re an Apple instead of Android user, I believe you use the Apple Home app for this part of the setup. I was skeptical of setup via Google Home, as it’s been hit or miss involving other products, but the SA-C600 was found right away and it was a very simple process to connect it to my WiFi network and start the process of updating it to the latest firmware, which took under 10 minutes.At this point everything was ready to go and you’re able to send audio to it via any android app that has google cast options. Additionally, Spotify saw it as a device on my network and all I had to do was to select the receiver as the playback device. While Spotify / the app casting is open you can hit the volume buttons on your phone to adjust the volume on the receiver. This can also be done on your phone by opening the device from the google home app. I can’t stress how simple and quick it was from first power on to working. Frankly, that’s something of a rarity I find with any internet connected device.Let’s talk about the physical properties of the receiver. On the top you have a power button, as well as a volume up and down button. The CD player lid is a clever slide mechanism rather than something that pops up. A magnet holds it in the closed position. When a CD is playing a little light illuminates it. It’s nothing mind blowing, but it’s a nice touch to add a bit of visual to an otherwise plain process of CD listening.The front contains a headphone jack and the USB-A port for listening to files from a thumb drive. In the middle is a small screen. The screen, in addition to a red/blue power indicator light, shows your sources, song title information (if playing digital music), volume, and other info. There are touch sensitive buttons for source selection, backward, forward, stop and play/pause. These are all well and fine, but I find the whole screen incredibly small. There’s so much empty space on the front of the receiver that it feels Technics went for the minimum size possible under the guise of ‘minimalism.’ All the textual information feels incredibly cramped and standing just a few feet away is small enough that it’s illegible. Frankly, unless you’re directly next to the receiver, the screen information is practically worthless.This brings us to my frustrations with the receiver. Using the app is practically a requirement as the remote control and touch interface on the front screen is just too much of a pain. It’s fully functional and you CAN do everything you need via the remote, but with the display only being a single line of text and the remote not having enough helpful buttons, it’s a chore.Whereas I found the screen and touch controls on the unit itself to be small and unhelpful, the remote has the opposite problem: it’s overly large and unhelpful. In terms of source selection, there’s a dedicated CD, radio, and Bluetooth paring button. From there you need to use the select button to scroll, one at a time, every input the machine is capable of. Remember all those input sources I mentioned earlier? You’ll be scrolling through each one of them one at a time as displayed on the unit’s screen – which again can’t be read at a distance. The remote itself has so much wasted space that it could have been either way smaller or at the very least included dedicated source buttons. In my opinion, the remote’s best use is simply to control volume, pausing and playing of music, and turning the device off. It’s worth pointing out here that if you’re casting or selecting the unit on Spotify, the receiver will turn on from standby mode automatically.Because the remote is functional, but far from friendly to use, the Technics Audio Center app is your best bet. While I found the app to be far better at getting to every source and setting than doing anything with the remote or unit touch buttons, it wasn’t exactly pleasurable either. The app – which I believe is version 2.0 at the time of this writing – gets the job done, but I found it to be unintuitive and feels like it’s still very much a work in progress. You’ve got full access to all your sources – both connection device and digital music sources - via a direct button instead of scrolling through them. However, the main screen of the app is slightly confusing. You’ve got rows for streaming, device, and home network. On these rows you can adjust the order the icons are in, but you can’t hide any icons or even display them horizontally, so you have access to your favorites without needing to swipe left and right. Having Tidal and Deezer built-in is great, but I also don’t use those apps, so I don’t need to see them all the time. The same goes for my line in, PC, optical, and coax connections. I’m glad they’re there, but I don’t have anything connected to them, so I’d like an option to just hide them.It also wasn’t very clear how it all works. There’s built in podcasts and internet radio, but it wasn’t intuitive. Neither were accessing the device settings. Some, like balance, and sleep, were obvious, but some deeper settings like dimmer, auto dimmer, auto off, illumination, standby display and standby mode offer no clue as to what you’re really adjusting. This required using the app with a combination of the digital full manual AND there is a separate online only manual for the app itself. It certainly clarified things and, honestly, the most basic features you’re likely to use you could figure out on your own but that doesn’t mean the app couldn’t be far better designed for ease of use.If it feels like I’m being overly negative, I want to clear that all my gripes are purely minor. Combined they do make me consider the value of this down a star from being perfect. They also don’t stop me from recommending this receiver at all. Everything with the app can – and I hope one day will – be fixed in an update. It’s just poor interface design but it does do everything you need it to. The remote and screen are big disappointments as there is so much room for improvement there. It’s just highly cumbersome. For example, to play a record from my connected record player – a purely analog experience that has me standing next to my equipment – involves me scrolling through all the input sources or opening the app on my phone and selecting the phono input. There’s so much blank space on the face of the receiver there’s really no reason why there couldn’t have been some more source selection buttons.With the above taken with the grain of salt, the SA-C600 works – and sounds – amazing. This is a fully digital player, and it does an excellent job at making all my sources from digital origin to compact disc to vinyl record (from my Technics record player) sound just great. The ease of the record player being a Google cast device and Spotify Connect device is fantastic. From anywhere I’m in my house, as long as I’m connected to my WiFi, I can start playing music in seconds. Technics makes great mention of its JENO (Jitter Elimination and Noise-Shaping Optimization) Engine. There’s some buzzwords and technical jargon, but I can say from my lay-audio-person’s perspective it does sound amazing.I can’t overstate the convenience of all the wireless network options. I’m fully 50/50 on using this receiver as part of listening to my vinyl records and listening to streaming internet music from various sources (I’ve used mainly Spotify and the SiriusXM app). If you’re on the lookout for something to aid you in listening to digital music sources along with some external device sources, this is invaluable. And yes, while there is room to improve on the convenience and usability front, functionally it works exceptionally well and sounds just as great.

This is my review of the Technics SA-C600 Network CD Receiver, a truly remarkable component for audiophiles.Recently after upgrading my turntable to a Technics SL-1500C, I decided to replace my carousel CD player with the Technics SA-C600 Network CD Receiver. Technics is a company that reliably produces high-quality audio components, and my positive experience with their new network CD player reinforces my high opinion of this company. Technics purposely incorporated aspects of their turntable design into the design of this network receiver, creating a pleasing consistency in the aesthetic appearance of these two components (see photograph).Following the instructions in the manual, I connected the CD receiver to my speakers (including my subwoofer) and to the ... MoreThis is my review of the Technics SA-C600 Network CD Receiver, a truly remarkable component for audiophiles.Recently after upgrading my turntable to a Technics SL-1500C, I decided to replace my carousel CD player with the Technics SA-C600 Network CD Receiver. Technics is a company that reliably produces high-quality audio components, and my positive experience with their new network CD player reinforces my high opinion of this company. Technics purposely incorporated aspects of their turntable design into the design of this network receiver, creating a pleasing consistency in the aesthetic appearance of these two components (see photograph).Following the instructions in the manual, I connected the CD receiver to my speakers (including my subwoofer) and to the Internet with an Ethernet cable before powering on the unit. When I turned on the receiver it immediately notified me on the display that it was updating its firmware. I was concerned after a few minutes because I saw no indication of progress, just a message that the firmware was being updated. After about 5 or 7 minutes, the unit displayed messages about the percentage of progress, and the entire procedure took about 12 minutes.The display, by the way, although seemingly small at first, is completely adequate for providing visual information about the current state of the system. It is bright, clear, and easy to read. Aesthetically pleasing, too.After the firmware update, I played voice and instrumental musical numbers from my CDs that differed in terms of simplicity/complexity, number of instruments with different timbre, dynamic range, and so forth. Everything sounded beautiful. One thing that surprised me was that the receiver did not identify the name of the CD or track, instead simply indicating that a CD was inserted and referring to each track by number (see photo). With an Internet connection I would think that the receiver could identify the name of the CD, artist, and song titles.I then tried some of the network features of the CD receiver. The receiver has a wireless option, which I did not try out since I had already connected to my home network through an Ethernet cable. The manual recommended using the Google Home app, which I already had on my phone. Upon opening the app, it immediately found the SA-C600 and asked if I wanted to add it to my Google Home devices, so I did. The process was effortless. I opened Spotify on my phone and chose the CD receiver as my speaker, and again, effortlessly, I was able to connect and play songs from Spotify through the receiver. In this case, the display indicated my Spotify connection, the name of the song I was playing (Embryonic), but not the artist or album name (see photo).You can scroll through input options with the remote or on the receiver itself, and there are quite a few physical input and Internet options beyond CD: FM radio, Bluetooth, USB-A (where a thumb drive or other USB device can be plugged into the front of the receiver), COAX, OPTICAL (digital inputs in the back of the receiver), PC (a USB-B input in the back), LINE, PHONO (inputs in the back), DMP (which immediately located a network drive I had set up to house my digital music collection), Internet Radio, Podcasts, Spotify, Tidal, Deezer, Amazon Music, and Chromecast. The options that require an app indicate this when they are chosen. Clearly, there are enough options here to make nearly every music lover happy.The only issue I had with the SA-C600 was how to best integrate it with the rest of my home theatre system, which runs through a standard A/V amp and outputs to a 5.1 speaker set. The SA-C600 cannot replace my current amp because it is strictly audio, with no HDMI connections. After some research, I decided upon a component by the company SPECIALTY-AV called the SP-71 2-way Amp Switch. With this switch I can choose whether the signal from my home theatre amp or the SA-C600 is directed to my two front speakers. The SP-71 does not have RCA jacks, so I needed a separate switch for choosing the source of the subwoofer signal. I found many RCA switch boxes capable of this task, with varying features such as toggles versus buttons and whether volume control and mute controls are included. I eventually settled on the simplest model I could find and am satisfied with the way my two amps take turns using my speakers.Whether you are adding the SA-C600 to an existing home theatre system or using it alone or in conjunction with a Technics turntable, I am sure that you will be delighted with this exquisite audio component for digital music.