If viewed on a monitor, the output stream of a Model 700 looked like analog TV "static" or noise, with slight black bars running down either side.
[3] Many people liked the format because it offered more dynamic range than analog tape, but without the "hard clipping" inherent in PCM audio recorders of the time.
The Model 700 had been designed from the beginning to have many 'tape-like' characteristics, including "soft saturation," and at a time when most professional and amateur recordists were used to analog tape, this was considered a significant feature.
It also offered 14 dB more dynamic range than 44.1 kHz/16b audio, and because of its very high sample rate (644 kHz), it did not contain the same anti-aliasing filters necessary in PCM recorders at the time, which were thought to cause undesirable harmonic interference.
Where the Model 700 differs from classical delta-sigma modulation is in its replacement of the single integrator with a complex system of comparators and high-order linear prediction filters.
[5] This was done in order to reduce the quantization error, and is accomplished in part by changing the effective "step size" of the encoder based on previously recorded information.
The system also has two analog pre-processing steps which compress the input signal in both the amplitude and frequency domain, in order to more closely match the abilities of the encoder.