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.