$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.