SU-GX70

The Technics SU-GX70 is a network audio amplifier that tries to be every source at once, and largely succeeds. Into one Grand Class case Technics has put a 40 W per channel amplifier, a network streamer, a DAC, an FM tuner, a moving magnet phono stage and an HDMI ARC input for a television.

That last combination is the interesting one. A single box that takes a turntable, a television and a streaming service, and drives a pair of speakers, replaces a rack of equipment.

What Apple Home actually does with it

This is an AirPlay 2 device rather than a HomeKit accessory.

• It shows up in the Home app as a speaker you can play to, and as an AirPlay target in Control Centre.
• You can assign it to a room and group it with HomePods for synchronised multi-room audio.
• Siri can send music to it by room name.
• It can be the audio output in a scene or an automation.

It is not an accessory you switch on or set the volume of from the Home app. Power, input selection and volume stay with the unit, its remote and its own app.

The engineering

Technics is Panasonic’s hi-fi brand, and the SU-GX70 uses the company’s JENO jitter-reduction engine, a twin power supply arrangement and Load Adaptive Phase Calibration, which adjusts the amplifier’s behaviour to the speakers connected to it. A Pure Amplification mode shuts down the unused digital sections.

It handles high resolution files up to DSD 256 over the network.

Before you buy

Forty watts per channel is modest on paper. It suits standmount speakers in a normal room rather than large floorstanders in a big one.

Inputs include three RCA pairs, two optical and one coaxial digital, USB-A and USB-B, and the HDMI ARC.

Specifications