Rotel RCD 06

...Dac-x and am using the rotel as a standalone player.

Now this player cost me £300 (rrp £350) so its not really going to compare when run through a £1200 Dac, but i'm still confident this player will perform well.
I'm using a
Cyrus PreVs2 pre amp
Audiolab 8000m mono bloc power amps
and Totem Arro speakers ( see seperate review)
Now when ever i test or demo a piece of hi-fi equipment i tend to use a ...
...floyd The division bell for this test.

The thing i like about pink floyd apart from being absolutely brilliant is there albums are engineered so well , they sound amazing when played on a decent setup.

I put in the cd in sat back and listened, i was pleasantly surprised at how good it sounded, i was expecting to hear a massive difference but the only thing that struck me at first was that bass was less controlled without ... more

I use this Cd player as a transport for a Cyrus Dac-x (digital/analogue convertor) and it is a stunning little player, it is well built and feels solid, it has a good display which eay to read in all light, the buttons on the front have a nice feel to them. The cd draw feels firm and ejects and closes with a nice solid feel. The remote is solid plastic with a stainless steel front which altough looks like something from the 70's is nice looking and well laid out, you can access all commmands from the remote, play stop forward reverse programming pause eject scan and so on.
On the front you have the power switch on the right with a nice blue light , the draw in the middle and the display to the right, the control button are below, with eject play stop forward reverse pause acessible from here.
On the back you have your power lead Iine out for rca lead and a digital coaxial output, it has no optical connection though which i wan't fussed about as i am using it as a transport, and to be honest digital coax is the better of the 2 IMO.
Now as mine is used a transport( i think i've mentioned that already) its not actually using the internal dac of the cd player, so the actual sound processing is done by my Dac-X (£1200) , So for this review i disconnected the Dac-x and am using the rotel as a standalone player.

Now this player cost me £300 (rrp £350) so its not really going to compare when run through a £1200 Dac, but i'm still confident this player will perform well.
I'm using a
Cyrus PreVs2 pre amp
Audiolab 8000m mono bloc power amps
and Totem Arro speakers ( see seperate review)
Now when ever i test or demo a piece of hi-fi equipment i tend to use a select choice of cd's
So i used Pink floyd The division bell for this test.

The thing i like about pink floyd apart from being absolutely brilliant is there albums are engineered so well , they sound amazing when played on a decent setup.

I put in the cd in sat back and listened, i was pleasantly surprised at how good it sounded, i was expecting to hear a massive difference but the only thing that struck me at first was that bass was less controlled without the Dac-x. Timing was good and the imaging was precise, there was a good sense of detail in the sound , vocals were crisp. The soundstage wasn't as precise as with Dac-x but wasn't to much of a problem.
This player is well suited to a warm sounding system as the midrange can be a bit overbearing on some recordings but nothing to complain about by any means.
As a standalone player i would recommend this to anyone looking to get into hi-fi, for £300 you can't really go wrong for a new player, you can buy better second hand players but thats your choice, but as it goes i was surprised how good this player was for the money.

So i'll now plug the Dac-x back in and get back to some serious listening........... girls aloud anyone? 

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