Behind the Scenes of Home Audio 3.0

Instead of cluttering up the last post on Home Audio 3.0 with how I built that system, I figured it would be a better strategy to do a separate piece. 

Everyone wants nice equipment, but nobody wants to go and shell out thousands of dollars all at once for it. And you guys know that I've always been a proponent of buying nice used gear and slowly piecing it together over time. In fact, over the course of the last 10+ years of me writing this blog, I've detailed how my own system (v1 to v3) has been built. It's also evident that I don't replace gear all at once, and this version change is no exception.

One continuity are the speakers. I've been using my Bowers and Wilkins DM603/S3, along with LCR600/S3, ASW675 Sub and rears for some time. So there was no money spent on those. That alone is close to half the cost of a system.

Neither did I spend any money on the main amp, a Rotel RB-976. Would I have loved to have replaced it with the amazing RMB-1095 which somebody is selling on Craigslist? You bet, but there's not that much real difference between 150 watts and 200 watts per channel my system.

No money was spent on audio cables of any sort, whether digital, analog, or speaker. That in and of itself is a hidden cost that most people forget. So yes; major changes were made but it's not as simple as going out and buying new gear. 

I can't emphasize enough that it's critical to buy (or trade for) good equipment so it'll last! While on the podium, I'm going to hammer on another point: be patient and use all your resources to search out the good equipment. 

Sure, my experience/knowledge comes in part from working in the industry, but I got that job because I knew things to start with! The information is out there, you just have to expend the time to find it and figure out what works for you. With that out of the way. Here's what I did to create the Version 3.0 system:

• Rotel RP-855 Turntable- I came across this turntable on eBay and noticed that it was a local (Dallas/Ft. Worth) seller. The price was already a decent $200, but he had a "Offer" tag, so I offered him $150. Turntables are notoriously difficult to ship, and most people no longer have the original packing materials. The guy took it and I didn't have to worry about it breaking during transport.
• Rotel RSX-1057 HT Receiver- Another eBay offering with a local seller. High-end receiver/amps are VERY expensive to ship because they are so big and heavy.  The guy wanted $140 and had shipping at $50 (which isn't out of line) for this item. However, the analog jacks for the CD input were bad (I generally use direct digital input for CDs). I offered the guy $100 and he took it. Again, no shipping or damage and I got it pretty WAY cheap for what it is.
• Rotel RDV-1040 DVD Player- Local Craigslist but the seller was in Denton (some distance north of Dallas) for $100. Missing the remote. I offered $75 and they took it. I had to go up there and get it, but it sounds awesome.
• Sum total of $325 for a major upgrade to my system!

What are the Wizard of OZ (behind the curtain) things? Here's a few.

•  When I say, "be patient", that means if it's on eBay now, it'll probably show up again. No need to pay crazy money to ship it. Wait for a local listing so you can just go get it! If the price is too high, let it go.
• Know what you want. I focused on several Rotel models which made it easier to search for and keep track of on eBay because I had done the research and I knew what I wanted and why. What features would help me and what it was going  to sound like married to my system. I already knew that those Rotel pieces would sound great with my speakers. 
• Don't wait and have to do everything at once. When I bought the Rotel amps that are in my system now, I didn't need them. But I knew that they had the ability to bridge into way more powerful amps and in my system of the future, they would be perfect for what I wanted to do.
•  Old equipment to be sold, so I should get some amount of my outlay back. My guess would be almost if not all of it back since I was able to move one of my Rotel amps to running the zone speakers which frees up the QSC commercial amp to be sold. Besides, now it won't sound like a Cessna is revving up for take-off every time I use it!
• Figure out what are good modular parts that can function and bought separately where someday in the future they can go well with the upgraded modules (see above). Case in point, the B&W DM603/S3s that I switched to 2-3 years ago. I learned in the past that Bowers & Wilkins speakers are not a match for certain amps. Over 15 years ago, I bought a sub I didn't need, the B&W ASW675. It was way more sub than I needed for the home we were in and the a/d/s/ L1290 mains I was using at that time. But I got a "Salesman Accommodation" price on it and I figured that someday I might have a bigger house and use smaller speakers. Ta-Da! There ya go!

You could say that my version 3.0 system is built on version 1.0 bones.

Home Audio 3.0

The spring of 2006 was not a terribly monumental time. There had just been a Winter Olympics at Turin, Italy, and the Russians were giving the Ukraine a hard time. So nothing new..... That was 14 years ago. We were into our second year here in DFW and my son was 3. That April, my wife was a month away from giving birth to our daughter, and Rotel brought forth the RSX-1057 home theater receiver. 

 

Here's Rotel's baby. I'm showing the image of the sliver-faced version (I have the black) because it's easier to see everything, and of course the connector covered back panel. One of the things that makes this model special is that it's a 7-channel unit, and pretty much up-to-date in terms of home theater decoding. So much so, that very little has changed since then, unless you're looking for Dolby Atmos, WiFi or Bluetooth. The main knock on it was the rather low power rating of 75w per channel (remember, these are Rotel power ratings).

Why are we looking at this? Because, three and half years after the last major upgrade and around 10 years since I've been using the Integra DTR-6.3 as the heart of my system, I've finally upgraded! I actually went back and looked. I wrote a post on May 1, 2011 discussing my system built around that receiver and already had it at that time! Wow; that's a long time! So, let's get into what I've done. As is typical, I'm not going to review it, I'll just discuss the main features that caused me to go with this component.

The driving force was not really the features, or the newer processing capabilities, but the simple fact that this is different/higher level of sound reproduction. Rotel in a general sense is at the top end of "Mid-Fi" or budget "High-End". I've been dabbling in this direction for some time.

You might remember that close to 2 years ago, I had moved on to using some Rotel amps to drive my speakers soon after I got the B&W DM603/S3. I went with Rotel for their smooth uncolored power and the ability to bridge the RB-976's 6 channels into to a very solid 150 watts into 3 channels. That resolves the major criticism 1057's with something I already had in my system. At the same time, since it was a receiver, I was able to eliminate the use of the RB-956AX by using the 1057's internal power for the rear speakers. I figure that by removing the load of driving the main 3 front channels off of it, the 1057 should have more than sufficient power reserves to drive the 4 rear channels. What else did I do to warrant a full version change (3.0)?A major overhaul of the input sources.

I always saw the Dual turntable as being a temporary fix until I found something better. 10+ years later, it was time. I had always wanted a Rega Planar 2 or 3, or at the very least a good clone like the Music Halls, Pro-ject, or ....... this! Well, actually, I've really wanted the Rotel RP-900 with the glass platter, or it's predescessor, the RP-850/855 as well. There were/are rumors that they were contracted by Rega, but in all probability, they were built by Systemdek, a well-regarded British company that built Rega clones! 

This is the latest piece which I'm listening to right now. The Rotel RDV-1040 (yes, mine is black). A DVD player for music playback? Yup. Rotel DVD players have always been well thought of as CD transports. Unfortunately, it's not far enough up the chain to do SACD or DVD-A, but I'm happy to have a single disc transport. Other than Christmas time when I put on 5-6 CD's and let them play for several hours, I've never really played my discs several at a time and found it annoying to have to have the mechanism rotate them out. So, not having a multi-disc changer was no loss.

You might be wondering if there's a point to changing out everything to all this Rotel equipment. I'll have to be honest, and say that I haven't sat and listened long enough to tell you that I'm hearing a distinct difference. That's going to take time. I'll say that I do seem to detect less stridency and everything sounds more relaxed. Of course, I'm almost 60 and my hearing isn't what it used to be. I will say that I'm happy, after 15+ years, I've finally been able to replicated the equipment of when I work in the industry,  I could honestly tell customers that it was the best sounding "bang-for-the-buck" stuff that we sold.

"Dating" for Audio Components

No, we're not talking about online dating here. It is something just about as archane and mysterious (for many) as the other kind though. What we're talking about is matching audio components based on their characteristics. The concept is to get a setup that's greater than the sum of its parts, but more importantly (at least to me) not to let their individual weaknesses exacerbate each other! I know, there's lots of folks out there that don't believe in this; I know, I was one. They think it's just a bunch of hocus-pocus/mumbo-jumbo that's designed to sell outrageously priced interconnects and such. Humor me, and bear with my story for a little while and you might learn something from my own cautionary tale.

It was the late 80's/early 90's and I was just at a point in my life where I had some money to spend. Like any red-blooded (Chinese-) American male, having grown up in the 70's and 80's, I wanted audio "big-iron". That's separate component audio equipment to you of the great unwashed! And having been taught well, I bought the best speakers I could afford at the moment which was a pair of Bowers and Wilkins DM550 complete with the matching port-tune-able sub.  They were driven by a most unusual combo of Philips equipment: an AH-572 Pre-Amp and an AH-578 amp. When I say "big-iron", this was it! It was rated at a solid 210 watts RMS per channel. Not the most detailed or "revealing" equipment, but it was a start. As I spent more time listening, I wanted something that was more up-to-date, as well as more capable of plumbing the depths of the music. 

This brought me to my first encounter with Rotel. To be honest; I had not even heard of the company at that point and only really knew about Japanese manufacturers. But when I sat down and listened to the above set of RTC-850 Pre-Amp/Tuner and RB-850 Amplifier, I was sold! This little amp was only rated at 50 watts per channel, but it sounded great. First lesson partially-learned (keep reading, I'll explain); that rated power isn't everything. When I hooked it up to my DM550s, it was a match made in budget-audio heaven! Something about the way the Rotel electronics worked with the detailed sound of the little B&Ws on CD sourced music just worked. This state of affairs continued for some time and I was really happy with this system. 

You know..... even if you marry the prom-queen, it will be inevitable that you'll keep looking around..... wondering what she might look better as a blond, ...... maybe taller, ........ yeah.

For me, it was the pursuit of detail. And being young, single and stupid; which means, have disposable income, too much time to think, and stupid, I made the worse audio mistake of my life. I broke up an audio system that worked for one that should sound better. Yup.... sold the Rotel for an Adcom GTP-500II (Pre-Amp/Tuner) and Adcom GFA-545II (Amp). In my defense, the Adcom was "the flavor of the month" at that time. The amp was rated at 100 watts per channel. And the salesman who I thought of as a friend should have known better, knowing full well what speakers I was running..... yada, yada, yada.....

I can say what I want, but in the end, it was a train wreck..... simple as that. Oh, don't get me wrong; I don't hate Adcom, that amp just didn't sound good with those speakers. I learned several lessons here that I put to good use, both for myself as well as later, working as a salesman at that same store. 

So, after that rather drawn out preamble, here's what I'm here to pass on today:

• Know the characteristics of all of your equipment as you assemble your system. Those DM550s tended to be dry and analytical which was fine when I gave them more "sweet" and forgiving electronics..... but when paired with dry and analytical gear...... analytical turned into harsh and fatiguing!
• Power rating isn't all that important. You have to turn up the volume a full 3db to be perceptibly louder to a human ear. That takes doubling the power from an amp. So a 100 watt amp isn't really twice as powerful than a 50 watt amp. It's just one step up the ladder.
• Power ratings don't necessarily lie, they just don't tell you the whole truth. Without getting into details (means math, yuck), there's fat and skinny ratings. An amp can be rated at a fairly meek 50 watts, but can do that all day long, meaning that it should be really rated at 60/65 versus another amp rated at a 100 watts, but it's straining some to get it. But why would a company do that? Let's say for instance a company such as Adcom (as an example) back in the late 80's had an amazing little amp.... lets call it the GFA-535 (just sayin) that was rated at a FAT 65 watts, but the next amp up chain rated the same way..... could only get say..... 75-80 watts, but really needed to sell for more money. That's just too close for marketing purposes, but lets say you rate it at a skinny 100 watts..... why, that would seem almost twice as much..... right? Maybe hook some idiot looking to upgrade! Yeah.....
• Ratings from a "receiver" is virtually never the same as the same power rating from a stand-alone amp. With few exceptions; you almost always get skinny power from a receiver as compared to fat power from an amp. Why? It's mostly in the power supply, but also in the power delivery "devices". The power supply in a receiver has to do everything. Power the amp, the pre-amp, and the tuner. Plus, there's simply not as much room in those things to put in the huge heatsinks to cool all the devices used (either the size or the number) in stand-alone amps. But what about those "flagship" receivers I told you about a few posts ago? They're a little different. Did you notice how big they are compared to the ones you see at Wal-Buy/Best-Mart? Go ahead; try to pick one up.... I dare ya! Just don't send me the doctor's bills! Basically, those are a separate Pre-Amp AND a separate Amp AND sometimes a separate Tuner crammed into one box, so NO, not really a receiver at all, just in name only!
• The last thing is the concept of head-room. What that means is this. When a pencil-neck like me goes to pick up a 50 pound bag of dog food, I can do it "OK", but when my much "heavier-built" brother-in-law does it; he's got some "reserve". And that's what you get from a stand-alone amp regardless of the rating. 

 

So, what I'm saying is that when you look at my am stack of Rotel RB-976 and RB956AX, there's more than one thing going on here. On the surface, when you look at the RMS ratings of roughly, 150 x 3 channels and 100 x 3 channels just isn't that much more than the 100 x 6 channels that my receiver was giving me. You'd be right. And it isn't really even the reserve that having the system powered by stand-alone amps gives me that makes the difference. I just don't drive my system that loud. It's really how the B&W DM603/S3 speakers sound when they are driven by Rotel amps which is the reason that I did it. After all these years: I'm finally back to a system "that just works together". Might have something to do with Bowers and Wilkins buying Rotel back in 1981.....

$325 Worth of What?

This! About 3 years ago, I was randomly looking on eBay and came across a Rotel RB-956AX being sold "As Is" with one channel out. If you aren't familiar with Rotel, here's a little bit of the "back story". They are a British audio design company that is now owned by Bowers and Wilkins (the speaker people), that have for some time had it's components manufactured overseas (Japan, Taiwan, China). This allows them to nibble at the edges of high-end sound at a mid-fi price..... the high end of mid-fi mind you, but close enough so that normal people with high-end asperations can dabble. A "bang-for-the-buck" company. Very similar to NAD, or Proton (back in the day). It's a bit expensive, but you get a lot. What does this have to do with me?

 

So, there was this 956 which was 30watts per channel RMS by 6 channels that nobody was bidding on because it had a duff channel. Here's the thing on this amp (and several other Rotel amps); each pair could be "bridged" into a mono amp for a great deal more power. In this case 90w. So a 5 channel amp pretty much makes it a 30w x 5, or 2 and a half low powered pair of speakers, or 1 pair of fairly high powered and one random speaker. All this made this an awkward amp that's neither nor. So I got it..... cheap. If I remember right, it was a little over $100 with shipping. It sat for most of a year. I finally took it to my friend Pat to look at and he fixed the bum channel. Then, several months later he brought it back when they were visiting about 8-10 months ago and it's been sitting ever since.... waiting for this......

No, it's not identical. It's an RB-976, which is 50watts per channel by 6 channels, but can also be bridged by the pair into a number of combinations, but 150w x 3 is what I want out of it. It was on eBay for $225 and $56 shipping. I offered $160, and he took it. That makes the total a little over $200 and if you add the other one for about $100, they end up being somewhere north of $300.

Roughly, creating this: an amp stack of 6 channels that's 150w across the front Left, Center, Right and 90w across the rear and back center channels. If you're wondering why I would do this since my Integra DTR6.3 does a pretty solid 6 channels of 100 watts, here's the deal. When I had my KEF iQ5 mains and Q6c center, the 100w out of a good A/V receiver was fine. However, if you've ever heard truly dynamic speakers being driven by a stand-alone power amplifier with substantial power reserves, you'll know that there's a difference. If you'll look at the insides of those two amps in the first set of pictures, there shouldn't be many questions on why they'll have a lot of power on reserve. No; I'm not going to be listening to my music at different levels. I'm going to be taking my listen to a different level. In short, when I push the system, these amps will drive the new B&W DM603s/LCR 600 with a type of effortless power and control that I didn't have with the receiver. 

I've already spent quite a bit of time this weekend listening to the 603s this last weekend after substituting them and I'm impressed. So far, I'm not so much hearing things that I didn't before, it's a qualitative difference. For each thing, there's just more depth. An expanded sense of spaciousness that wasn't there before. It was also a sense of nostalgia and took me back to when and why I fell in love with them in the first place. But there's more there. I can almost hear it and feel it. I need those amps to unlock that for me. 

Will I take the next step after that and get out the Rotel RSP-1098 that's also been sitting in the garage? I don't know yet. In case you're wondering; this belonged to my friend Pat and has a bad decoder board which had already been replaced once. So he decided that he didn't want to mess with that any more and ask me if I wanted it. Do squirrels store nuts for the winter? I might give it a try one day this summer when I'm bored, but for right now, the DTR6.3 is going to get a chance to show what it can do with more power.

I do have one more thing I'm definitely going to do this summer. You guys might remember that our house came with 2 A/V systems when we bought it. And that I sold the 2 Denon AVR-3802 receivers and 2 B&W ASW600 subwoofers. There were also 2 sets of B&W LM1 speakers. One in the upstairs gameroom and the other in the downstairs den. They're fine in the den, but upstairs is where my main system lives and most of the LM1s are just hanging on the walls doing nothing. I think, I'm going to take them down, and replacing the rears. They're a little too directional for what I like in the back. 

.....and since the wiring is already in place...... it'll be quick work to put in a pair of in-ceiling and if I get really energetic.....

a rear center as well since I have that channel in the receiver and the new amps as well.