Rotel vs Denon

[b&w fan]

I am curious about the brand Denon. I am shopping for a good quality amplifier to drive my BW BM604 S3. The seller in one store is strongly recommend me to combine the speakers with a pair pream Denon PMA 1055R and amp Denon POA-T10.
I have not found much about them in the internet.
Do you think there are good choices?
There is no much Rotel offering where I am ...

[Andrew M Ward]

I am curious about the brand Denon. I am shopping for a good quality amplifier to drive my BW BM604 S3. The seller in one store is strongly recommend me to combine the speakers with a pair pream Denon PMA 1055R and amp Denon POA-T10.
I have not found much about them in the internet.
Do you think there are good choices?
There is no much Rotel offering where I am ...

You've got to be in either Europe or Asia... Thats my guess

Those Denon pieces are almost impossible to find in North America, we have very little experience with Denon seperates in North America, most Denon dealers in the USA sell Denon as a price driven ~ feature loaded receiver.

I remember the POA-1 (I think) in 1990 it was excellent, big ol' honkin' gold thing with orange power light and funny looking feet.

[b&w fan]

You guessed very close

Actually I am in Egypt. I am attempting to build a decent home stereo but it has been veeery difficult. Besides the fact that they dont advertize as we westerners do, there are, as you say, lots of brandnames unknown for me.

One of those unknown brandnames is Denon. I have read lots of good comments in internet about it, but I just want to know how it compares with stuff more familiar to me.

Thank you for your comment!

[PewterTA]

Denon's are good for HT, but if you are going to listen to music on them, Denon's not your best choice.

[eelco74]

I do not agree

like rotel, denon has some Stereo development in the UK and the POA-10T is a decent amp for the money.

however it is true that Denon has (succesfully) moved into HT and has not developed Stereo in the same pace as Rotel has. Also comparable rotel Amps have most of the time received better reviews that the Denon.

It is most important to test your amp in combinination with your speakers. Denon stereo amps do have the tendancy to sound a bit warm. So a combination the bright speakers may combine very well. However on older KEF speakers, Denon sounds a bit dull.

[greve]

The latest Denon stereo offerings have received very very good reviews in UK. I'm talking about the 2000AE amp and cdp costing £1200 each. And the impossibly expensive big brothers gets even better reviews, but best value for money should be the 2000AE range. They haven't given up on stereo...

[Zoran]

Latest HI FI Choice (april 2006 issue) bench-test deals with integrated amps - new Denon PMA-1500AE and Rotel RA-1062 among others... Result? The Denon evaluated as best-buy, Rotel sunk - outperformed in all aspects earned the bottom rang... Please note that Rotel RA-1062 was assesed as very, very strong competitor at a time when launched (2 years ago?... - I cannot recall corectly).

By the way, I have extensive experience with two brands.

So that - impossible to claim which one is better in advance - depends on many factors... I consider Denon integrades PMA-1500 and PMA-2000 significantly better than Rotel RA-1060, 1062 & 1070, or older RA-980 & 985. Opositely, Rotel's smaller integrades seem to be slightly better than Denons... On the other hand, Rotel has one of the best value heavy-weights ever made - RB-1090. Smaller RB-1080 also very good. Denon has not any competitor in this segment...

Long story, as you can see.

Zoran, Macedonia