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It's a good tuner, control layout is workable, TEAC has always made good "everyman's" equipment. Very much akin to TASCAM, the commercial partner of TEAC.
Very simple setup. The remote is sort of a frill and a bonus at this point. Oddly enough I still like to tape certain shows off FM radio. I have owned nice equipment before (ex: Cambridge Audio). If you want to rack mount it, I think there's rack mount ears available separately for it. Very clear sound - but not harsh. This exactly fits my needs.Storing channels is a piece of cake.
Tuner has a sleep mode, hmmm could be useful for some. Just got this tuner. It may be that I come to rely on it. Beats the tar out of my (admittely low priced) Pioneer receiver's tuner. I decided I wanted a * good * (dammit) but affordable tuner. While there's no tuning strength meter, once you are on the exact frequency two different red indicators appear: Stereo, Tuned.P.P.S. Either that or you can buy one of those Middle Atlantic rack trays and take the feet off the unit, vecro the bottom of it to the tray - it works.
I'm actually shocked about some of the "audiophile" features included without fanfare (gold plated RCA jacks for example) along with extensive programing and preset options THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO USE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO. Figuring it would give up the ghost sooner or later I went looking for a replacement.what a shock.tuners are few and far between now, so when I spotted the TEAC at less than $200 I figured at the very least it would serve as a stopgap until I could find something more appropriate. I recently had to have a minor repair on my NAD 4155ST which I bought for about $400 at least 15 years ago. The tuner has a clock and built in timer system and can store 30 AM and 30 FM stations to memory if you want to get real geeky about it. I've stopped looking. This unit is the functional equivalent of my NAD, has great reception, and appears to be built like a tank. It also incudes a functional remote. An excellent tuner.highly recommended.
Seriously, my first experience with TEAC was great. and TEAC seems to be on par with these players. Sure, it's not super hi-fi, but it's still worlds above the basic junk out there. I got it up and running and while I was skeptical that "a tuner is a tuner", this thing was impressive. Only a few consumer level companies make higher level components these days (Pioneer Elite, Onkyo Integra, etc).
Sure, radio technology is quite mature but most people are used to car radio, handheld radio or radios integrated into their receivers. The instructions are clear and there are supporting pictures for setting the clock, timers, presets etc.Unlike the Denon TU1500 that I was considering, this TEAC comes with a remote. The Denon does not come with one.how strange. Such a pleasure to deal with.Now for the tuner itself.
It's rare these days to deal with a company who doesnt seemingly outsource customer service straight away. What a concept. For radio, it's darn good.Also, the manual that comes with it is.hold your breath again.printed on nice glossy, card-stock 8.5 x 11 paper written in perfect english. Can you belive that there are actual people at TEAC who.hold your breath.actually pick up the phone and talk to customers. Of course, hooking up a tuner is very easy.antenna tuning/placement aside. While I am new to component tuners, I still appreciate good gear being an Adcom system owner for years.
While it may be technically superior (just a guess based on price) I wouldnt go near it for what it costs (look it up.it ain't cheap).The only thing missing from the TEAC r670 (IMHO), is a singal strength meter. First, right out the box, the tuner felt substantial. First about TEAC.the company. What a difference a dedicated component makes. It's not CD/SACD/Vinyl audio quality but what can you expect.
No flimsy untra-thin copier paper here.
Solid face plate, simple design, nice buttons etc.,.
That would be a nice addition.
I had a tech question about the r670 tuner before buying it and was able to reach "Jimmy" from their consumer audio group who was very helpful and knew exactly what I was talking about with respect to my specific tech question (re: RDS function on this tuner).
Oh, and perhaps to have the technical manual available in PDF on their website.
Once again, they're not Krells or Mark Levinson's but still pretty good.
The packing makes it suspended in the box away from all sides so there's little chance for anything to dent/damage the chassis during shipping.
Also, the Denon looks/feels like a $79, plastic component.
Aside from that, this unit is top class and sits well in a system full of dedicated components (amp, DAC, CD transport etc).It's so nice to take a break from CDs and Vinyl and listen to hassle-free music.
It also comes with a remote, which really changes the nature of listening (think about how the addition of the TV remote changed the way we all watch TV, and you'll understand what I mean). Overload rejection and image rejection were also good, another important consideration for a listener like me who lives close to some stations' transmitters (poorly designed tuners run into problems with these stations, with the latter crowding out all the other nearby signals). The trend towards home theater has really hit the stereo component market, pretty much killing the low and middle end sections of it (the high end audio market is still going strong, with plenty of tuners in the $500+ range available).That's what makes the Teac TR-670 interesting. Now, anyones' experience with a particular tuner depends, to a large extent, on the reception conditions in their particular area, as well as their antenna setup (I use an outdoor, three-element FM rooftop antenna, the signals it captures are sent to the tuner through a 75 ohm coaxial cable.
Selectivity (the ability of a tuner to pick up a specific station without other nearby channels crowding into it) is darn good for a "cheap" tuner, and that's given the acid test I gave this in a suburb of New York where the FM band is crammed. Per comments in the other review on this tuner, no, the tuner market hasn't disappeared, it's just fragmemented. Both the tuner itself and the remote allow you to tune a number of ways, including "direct access" (where you punch in the numbers for the station you want, ergo "103.9"), or scanning through the pre-sets, or general scanning. But for those in urban/suburban and even ex-urban areas, who have component systems and are looking to add or update a tuner, this is a small investment in happiness - for the fun involved in hearing all the new or forgotten music that's still on the airwaves. Sensitivity (the ability of a tuner to pick up distant, weaker signals) is also surprisingly good; I was happily surprised to actually capture strong signals from some stations in Stamford, CT (a good 100 miles away) that I'd previously never heard.
And for those who want to literally curl up on the sofa and fall asleep (or wake up) to the sound of music, the built in clock on the tuner even has timer and sleep functions. One other note: the TEAC cassette deck I purchased back in 1984 is still going strong (yep, I pull out old tapes now and then, the cassette format isn't dead yet), so I have the sense this company builds equipment that stands up. A low cost component aimed at the universe of music lovers who (a) don't own $5,000 level systems but (b) have a reasonably decent component stereo system and view it primarly as a music, not theater audio source.The good news beyond price. Yeah, putting it up was somewhat involved, but for those who really want the best possible signal for an FM radio, this is the way to go). Like the previous reviewer, I also appreciated all the programming and utility features of this tuner, which are numerous.
First, the tuner allows the use to pre-set 60 stations (30 in both the AM and FM bands), and is also capable of doing auto pre-set tuning, where the tuner scans either the entire AM or FM band, automatically adding the strongest 30 stations on each to the pre-set memory. Or stated another way, the best audio equipment on earth isn't going to get you good FM stereo if you live in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from strong signals (those in that sort of situation really need to look into satellite radio). Not that wear and tear is an issue here; outside a few switches, a tuner like this has no moving parts (the things that inevitably wear out), but still, my prior positive experience with TEAC is a significant part of the reason I purchased this tuner.
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