It's Audio Season

In other words, it's summer time...... For me, I've found that I'm much more likely to work on the A/V part of my hobbies during the summer. I'm not completely certain why that is; maybe I feel like I need more time than is normally available during the school year. Although you could probably say that about all my hobbies (Photography, computers, and audio). Anyway, recently I found myself reevaluating the A/V system. Yes; there was that little episode with the new TV, but that wasn't really about the system. 

 

Let me start by discussing my current rig and what my plans have been all along. Years ago, I had always planned on my "ultimate" system to be based on Rotel equipment. More on that later. However, a few years ago, when I finally got around to moving on from my temporary system that came about due to our move to the Dallas area, I went with practical versus, what I really wanted. So, a receiver by Integra for about $150 was the order of the day. Not that these things are bad by any stretch of the imagination, they just aren't as transparent and musical as higher order equipment. So, in the back of my mind all these years of enjoying the my bargain Integra gear, I constantly had something else in the back of my mind......

 

About a week ago, while doing one of my periodic searches on eBay for a special deal, I found one! There was an ad for a pair of Rotel RB-956ax amps for what was really a reasonable price (about $300). Unfortunately, one of the amps had a channel that was "out". So, one had 6 channels of 40 watts each, while one had 5 functioning channels. On this particular model, the 3 channel pairs can be bridged into 3 channels giving 90 watts each which is perfect for my system for the 3 rear speakers. As it turns out, the seller sold the good amp to someone and ended up only have the bad one that he wanted to get rid of badly, so I negotiated with him to sell it for $125 shipped to me from Pennsylvania.

If you've never tried to ship high end equipment, especially amps with their high-current power supplies (read heavy), you'll know that the shipping alone probably accounted for close to $30. Above, you can see the inside build of a Rotel amp of similar power. As you can see; these things are heavy duty! The MSRP for it was $500......in 1995 dollars. 

So, now I have one amp, at a power level suitable for rear channels...at least in my system anyway. Where am I going with this? 

That's a Rotel RSP-1098, Pre-Amp/Processor (otherwise, known as a Pre-Pro). In 2004, it was arguably the most advanced unit of it's kind for any price. Of course, it's $3000 was a deterrent to my ownership of it at that time! Last year, my friend Pat who's still in the A/V business gave me his that had developed an issue on it's digital processing board. All the analog functions work fine, just not the digital processing. Therefore, as soon as I make enough money this summer, this thing is going to get fixed! 

You can see from the back of this thing, it has more than enough facilities to take over as the center of my A/V system!

What else do I want/need to do? Obviously, I need at least 3 more channels of amplification. Very likely I'll target the Rotel RB-976 which is the 60 watt per channel sister of the RB-956, and when bridged, it gives $150 into 3 channels, or I can bi-amp the front 3 speakers instead. There are of course other amps out there, so I'll obviously be looking for the best deal. Anything else?

Yeah, a few things. I'd like to upgrade my CD transport from the clearly "mid-fi" Integra 6 Disk changer to possibly the Rotel RCD-1070 or 1072 and a RTC-950ax. 

What is that, you ask? It's a Pre-Amp/Tuner of course! Why in the world would I need a Pre-Amp/Tuner!?! Here's the deal. The RSP-1098 has neither a tuner (which I still use regularly), nor does it have a Phono-Stage needed for my turntable. With this neat little component, I can have both needed pieces in one! Oh yeah, I'm going to need to get that one channel fixed on the RB-956 as well. 

It's going to be a busy summer!