Rotel 1095 with B&W Setup

[Crumpet]

Hi Guys , im new to this forum and was hoping you Rotel guru's could help me out

my speaker setup is as follows
B&W 604's x 2 pairs (front & rear)
B&W LCR6 Center

I am currently driving these with my yamaha rx1000 which i love processing wise but as you would know power leaves a lot to be desired

can anyone give me there opionon on whether the 1095 would be a good match with my b&w's and what difference i can expect to my sound compared to using th amplification of my yamaha

Also i know you are all rotel boys so this is probably a silly question but if there are more suitable amps for my setup which are not rotel , please let me know

the only thing that concerns me are I have heard that rotels and very smooth and somewhat dull on the high end, as I have never heard them , ill wait and see before worring but an someone tell me what the rotels characteristics are really like

many thanks

[weijst]

An RMB-1095 will be a very good match to drive those DM604s. Further more, the 1095 is a good long term investment, since it's a very decent amplifier for most of the B&W speakers (up to the nautilus range!). Not unimportant for you, since you allready have four 604, so I assume you like the 'B&W sound'...

Differences with your current Yamaha: I expect tighter bass and clearer mids (more control). Allthough I have not heard the RX1000, I believe these are the main differences between my RMB-1075 and my brother's Yamaha reciever.

As for other brands, pricetechnically you might wanna try Arcam, however Rotel's price/performance ratio is very hard to beat...

Rotel's characteristics; well, as stated above I think Rotels sound very controlled. It is a no-nonsense, honoust sound that manages to get the best out of your system (that's what I experienced when powering a pair of DM602 S3 with the 1075). Watch out though, it might expose its weak links too...

[PewterTA]

I imagine you will probably find out that the pre-outs on the Yamaha aren't quite as good as on other systems. I had/have the Yamaha Rx-v1400 and got the RMB-1095. First thing I noticed is the sound stage really opens up, it's much bigger with the RMB-1095, that's a little tough to get used to. You will notice more detail in the sound, slight better imaging (although this is tough to judge because of the initial increase in the sound stage).

That's about it... IT will sound very much like the yamaha, but with a little less of the bright sound that Yamaha is known for. After about a week, you won't even noticed it's changed because of the detail you'll hear in the sound.

One other thing you will definitely notice is the "effortless" sound to the rotel that you won't get with the Yamaha. This is the toughest thing to explain, just listen to something that has a lot of soft, then loud passages and you just see how "right there, in your face" the sound is, without it sounding strained at all (do to the lack of power to drive the 604s).

In my opinion, you can't go wrong... I would definitely get it and try it out, I think you'll be pretty happy with it.

One thing I did, which I'm not sure if you do or not, but I connected all my wires to the top binding post, this made a difference in the sound I thought...and liked it much better that way when I got the Rotel. Don't know if that's just my mind fooling me or what, but I A/B the Left and Right speakers to see which way sounded better and it seemed a little bit cleaner this way.