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Alrighty then my long awaited Rotel RSP-1066 has arrvied and is now installed in my gear rack. I'll preface this review thread by saying that before the rotel 1066 I've owned a Rotel DD/DTS pre amp, HK receiver, Sony DB930, Denon 2800, Denon 3300 and lastly the Sony TA-E9000ES. In each case these were all used as pre amps with external amplification on some if not all channels. I must also point out that unfortunatly I sold the TA-E9000ES prior to moving into our new house so I have not listened to any thing else in my new dedicated HT room so please bare that in mind.
I originally thought that I'd buy the Outlaw 950 pre amp when the early beta testers started reporting their findings so put my Sony up for sale and surprise surprise it sold very quickly leaving me without a pre amp. This wasn't a big deal though since we were moving the following weeking and I'd be building a new dedicated room anyway so I though I'll just put my name on the outlaw waiting list and wait for it to arrive. Well fast forward a few weeks and the news the there are more delays in shipping the 950's so I start looking for alternatives just in case and I see a picture of the new Rotel's which looked fantastic and they had more or less the same features as the 950's. A quick call to my local dealer further got my excited since the price quote over the phone was too good to pass up so I put my name down for the first ones to come in. The bad news was that the black models were back ordered till at least the middle of June but the silver ones were due shortly so I said I'd take a silver one. Yesterday out of the blue two black models arrived at the warehouse so my dealer contacted me asking if I'd like one of those instead! Unfortunatly last night wasn't the best day for me to pick it up since my wife worked till 7:30 but I still managed to quickly race over and pick it up and install it last night. I haven't spent a lot of time with it yet esp in movies but I did get in dialed in and listened to some music so I'll report on the fit and finish for now and update this thread as I spend more time with it.
First impressions are positive. The last Rotel pre amp I bought came double boxed, unfortunatly this model did not which was a little bit of let down right of the bat. Packing inside the box however was solid and well laid out. They included two pairs of the complmentary interconnects that no one uses (or at least admits to
) and the detatchable power cord. The remote is a universal learning model that can control up to 10 devices. Its very well laid out and has a rubbery feel to the plastic coating. Weight seems well placed as well so it fits in your hands quite well. Connecting all my interconnects was a breeze with the only exception being that the amp triggers (two 12volts) won't trigger my HK5800 amps on but that's not a fault of the Rotel but a mismatch of voltage requirements (HK needs 6 volt I believe) One thing that could be a sticking point for some is that there's only two optical inputs. I'll likely have both of these full with the CD jukebox and the DSS which both only offer optical. If you're DVD player is also a model with only optical out you might find yourself one short...of course it has four digital coax inputs which by all acounts are superior anyway but its something to consider.
The fit and finsih of the Rotel is every bit as nice as the Sony with a nice solid feeling case and firm volume knob. If anything the volume knob is a little to firm but I rarely use any controls on the pre amp itself since I reply on my pronto most of the time.
Rotel was nice enough to include a pronto CCF on their web site so buy the time I got the pre amp I'd already modified my CCF, a nice gesture by Rotel IMO and one that should be picked up by their competitors since the CCF includes many discrete codes not found on the OEM remote.
The On Screen Display was intuitive and easy to follow and I only had to venture to the manual once to verify which channel CB1 was vs CB2 (rear left and rear right)
Using Avia to calibrate the volumes for each channel was fairly easy though like so many other models you can't adjust the channel volumes with out engaging the pre amps own test tones so you have to toggle back and forth between Avia's tones and the pre amps to adjust the channel volumes. Its not that bad though since its only a few button clicks and by the time i was doing the rear channels I'd mastered it well enough that its not really an issue. Besides its not like I'll have to recalibrate to often. One thing I didn't like about the Rotel was seting up the delays between each channel. They are still using the older millisecond method where you have to mentally calculate the delay required based on the distances...not only that but you do it based on the longest speaker then set delays for all the other speakers that are closer...plus for speakers other then the centre you're limited to 5 foot increments which was absurd! In my case its not an issue since other then my side speakers the other 5 are all 10 feet away from the sweet spot...sides being 6 feet away. I much prefered Sony's method of simply entering in the distance to each speaker and having the processor figure out the required delays..for the average person setting up their first HT this would be far easier IMO.
The best volume display I've used was with the Denon's who use a negative dB scale with reference being 00. The Sony and Rotel both use a integer scale that increases positively with increased volume. Although this might seem more intuitive I prefer the negative dB scale esp since I can then set 00 to be reference. That said I was able to make 75 the reference level so at least that makes some sense for a reference scale. Speaking of the display IMO the Sony's was better since it was much larger and was dimable. The Rotels is smaller but the letters are larger and they scroll across the display which helps. The volume is also nice and large which was one thing that drove me nuts with the Denon's, unless you have eagle eyes its next to impossible to tell what volume you're at with a Denon.
As I said above I have not had chance to listen to any other pre amp in this new room so I can't compare sound quality vs the others I've used, maybe one of the local guys can bring over their processors and we'll compare them then but for now I'm pretty happy with the sound so far. I spent a little time with the various surround formats incl prologic II and DTS Neo etc and they worked fairly well though I haven't spent nearly enough time with them yet to make any firm comments on them.
More to come so check back soon!
FYI for those that are interested here's the owners manual from Rotel's site. IMO its one of the nicest manuals I've read
I originally thought that I'd buy the Outlaw 950 pre amp when the early beta testers started reporting their findings so put my Sony up for sale and surprise surprise it sold very quickly leaving me without a pre amp. This wasn't a big deal though since we were moving the following weeking and I'd be building a new dedicated room anyway so I though I'll just put my name on the outlaw waiting list and wait for it to arrive. Well fast forward a few weeks and the news the there are more delays in shipping the 950's so I start looking for alternatives just in case and I see a picture of the new Rotel's which looked fantastic and they had more or less the same features as the 950's. A quick call to my local dealer further got my excited since the price quote over the phone was too good to pass up so I put my name down for the first ones to come in. The bad news was that the black models were back ordered till at least the middle of June but the silver ones were due shortly so I said I'd take a silver one. Yesterday out of the blue two black models arrived at the warehouse so my dealer contacted me asking if I'd like one of those instead! Unfortunatly last night wasn't the best day for me to pick it up since my wife worked till 7:30 but I still managed to quickly race over and pick it up and install it last night. I haven't spent a lot of time with it yet esp in movies but I did get in dialed in and listened to some music so I'll report on the fit and finish for now and update this thread as I spend more time with it.
First impressions are positive. The last Rotel pre amp I bought came double boxed, unfortunatly this model did not which was a little bit of let down right of the bat. Packing inside the box however was solid and well laid out. They included two pairs of the complmentary interconnects that no one uses (or at least admits to
) and the detatchable power cord. The remote is a universal learning model that can control up to 10 devices. Its very well laid out and has a rubbery feel to the plastic coating. Weight seems well placed as well so it fits in your hands quite well. Connecting all my interconnects was a breeze with the only exception being that the amp triggers (two 12volts) won't trigger my HK5800 amps on but that's not a fault of the Rotel but a mismatch of voltage requirements (HK needs 6 volt I believe) One thing that could be a sticking point for some is that there's only two optical inputs. I'll likely have both of these full with the CD jukebox and the DSS which both only offer optical. If you're DVD player is also a model with only optical out you might find yourself one short...of course it has four digital coax inputs which by all acounts are superior anyway but its something to consider.The fit and finsih of the Rotel is every bit as nice as the Sony with a nice solid feeling case and firm volume knob. If anything the volume knob is a little to firm but I rarely use any controls on the pre amp itself since I reply on my pronto most of the time.
Rotel was nice enough to include a pronto CCF on their web site so buy the time I got the pre amp I'd already modified my CCF, a nice gesture by Rotel IMO and one that should be picked up by their competitors since the CCF includes many discrete codes not found on the OEM remote.
The On Screen Display was intuitive and easy to follow and I only had to venture to the manual once to verify which channel CB1 was vs CB2 (rear left and rear right)
Using Avia to calibrate the volumes for each channel was fairly easy though like so many other models you can't adjust the channel volumes with out engaging the pre amps own test tones so you have to toggle back and forth between Avia's tones and the pre amps to adjust the channel volumes. Its not that bad though since its only a few button clicks and by the time i was doing the rear channels I'd mastered it well enough that its not really an issue. Besides its not like I'll have to recalibrate to often. One thing I didn't like about the Rotel was seting up the delays between each channel. They are still using the older millisecond method where you have to mentally calculate the delay required based on the distances...not only that but you do it based on the longest speaker then set delays for all the other speakers that are closer...plus for speakers other then the centre you're limited to 5 foot increments which was absurd! In my case its not an issue since other then my side speakers the other 5 are all 10 feet away from the sweet spot...sides being 6 feet away. I much prefered Sony's method of simply entering in the distance to each speaker and having the processor figure out the required delays..for the average person setting up their first HT this would be far easier IMO.
The best volume display I've used was with the Denon's who use a negative dB scale with reference being 00. The Sony and Rotel both use a integer scale that increases positively with increased volume. Although this might seem more intuitive I prefer the negative dB scale esp since I can then set 00 to be reference. That said I was able to make 75 the reference level so at least that makes some sense for a reference scale. Speaking of the display IMO the Sony's was better since it was much larger and was dimable. The Rotels is smaller but the letters are larger and they scroll across the display which helps. The volume is also nice and large which was one thing that drove me nuts with the Denon's, unless you have eagle eyes its next to impossible to tell what volume you're at with a Denon.
As I said above I have not had chance to listen to any other pre amp in this new room so I can't compare sound quality vs the others I've used, maybe one of the local guys can bring over their processors and we'll compare them then but for now I'm pretty happy with the sound so far. I spent a little time with the various surround formats incl prologic II and DTS Neo etc and they worked fairly well though I haven't spent nearly enough time with them yet to make any firm comments on them.
More to come so check back soon!
FYI for those that are interested here's the owners manual from Rotel's site. IMO its one of the nicest manuals I've read
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