Rotel RCD-950

Author's product rating:   

Sound Quality
Ease of Use
Look & Design
Range of Features
Value for Money

Advantages:	fantastic smooth sound, "analogue touch", very good reading of scratched CDs, best buy
Disadvantages:	no optical digital output, scarce functionality

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

It was a typical phenomenon. I was perfectly happy with my Rotel CD player. Excellent sound, solid construction and all the functionality I needed. Until I discovered its successor. Suddenly my old CD-player, looked old-fashioned and had the appeal of a worn off antique sofa.

The product in question is the Rotel RCD-950, a £350 CD-Player, top-rankings player in its price range, recipient of endless awards from the major audiophile publications, and sex-symbol of stereophiles seeking a budget entry to the world of high-end equipment, until, well until the RCD-951 entered the market in late 1998 for the same price.

I immediately went to my Rotel dealer, left a deposit and took the new RCD-951 home for a week, and expected my 950 to look really old when tested against the 951. Surprisingly (considering how easily I usually waste money without second thoughts) I kept my old RCD-950. And my week of extensive testing has left me with three conclusions, which are still valid today:

1. If you have £350 for a new CD-Player, buy a new Rotel RCD-951 and keep it until CDs are history. Even if you want to spend £500 for something better, don't. It won't get any better.

2. If you live on a tight budget and can't spend more than £200 for a CD-Player, buy a second-hand Rotel RCD-950. You will never regret it. If you only have £100, keep saving.

3. If you already own a 950, keep it and forget the 951. Yes, the latter is fantastic, a real bargain, but so is the former, and the slight improvement isn't worth the extra money. Instead, if your mind can't rest, invest just a little to fine-tune your 950.

Let's have the look at the product which had the unusual effect on me to not spend more money.

The Rotel RCD-950 CD-Player
_____________________________________________________

Rotel is a well renown British Hi-Fi brand, but most of its products are made in Taiwan to keep costs down, and so is the RCD-950. Yet the technical layout was designed in Britain, and the parts employed in this player are all rigorously selected and bear low tolerances. As usual with Rotel components, all the money was put into sound, and the functions and features of this player are so scarce that they can be learned in two minutes.

The warranty period is two years, twice as long as that of other producers, but non-transferable to a second-hand buyer.

 The Specifications

The RCD 950 employs a Sony CD transport and a Philips 20 bit Digital-Analogue-Converter. When connected to a laboratory set-up, the test results will show nothing like the straight frequency curves produced by its Japanese counterparts. But the Hi-Fi journals have taught us that excellence technical data is no guarantee for good sound.

There is however one technical specification which Rotel has got perfectly right: the extremely low output impedance of 90 ohms. This allows the RCD-950 to push even the weakest amplifiers to unexpected heights without distortions or stress symptoms.

As for outputs, the Rotel comes with a mere three connectors: analogue audio left and right, and a coaxial, i.e. electrical digital out (as opposed to the optical TOS-link which transmits digital signals by infrared light). The lack of an optical digital out can be a problem in some chains, as I will explain below.

 Functionality

Even the first CD players produced in the early 1980s couldn't have come with less features. The front has exactly 15 buttons, including the on/off button. No individual track selection (only on the remote control), no custom file selection or disc memory, not even a volume control for the headphone output.

Modern CD players often come with a variable output, allowing you to set the volume via remote control. Rotel have left out this function on purpose, for it is one of the major sources for reduced sound quality. That's because variable volume comes with a high output impedance which causes distortions.

As a result, the Rotel RCD-950 will make you run for your stereo system more often than you may like to, to adapt the volume or change the programming. But good sound comes with sacrifices.

 The Sound

How can I sum up something that is so difficult to describe in words? Quite simply, the Rotel RCD-950 beats anything near its price, except maybe a Marantz CD 97SE which was created with the same philosophy in mind. And this philosophy implies that you won't realise that you are listening to a CD when indeed that's what you are doing.

Have I lost you? A typical weakness of budget CD players is that they sound analytical and disintegrated. Whereas all CD players can sound clear and detailed, few manage to recreate the original acoustics of the studio or concert hall, and let you feel part of the scene.

The RCD-950 has this rare quality. It sounds as smooth, integrated and atmospheric as a very good analogue turntable, but without the effects of dust or scratches. One of its characteristics is an enormously deep and tight bass, which usually comes only with players twice its price. If it has any weakness at all, it could be its slightly too bright trebles, but hey, we have already entered the limit here of what the human ear can perceive.

 Reading Performance

The Rotel can read even my most badly damaged CDs without much problems. CDs which I had already considered to throw away when I still owned my old Pioneer PD-7500 player. This is due to the excellent Sony drive, which is also responsible for the very good reading performance of most of Sony's higher-priced players.

After around one year in use, my RCD-950 had something like an eextended menstruation period and refused to take in certain CDs. But some kind of self-regulatory mechanism solved the problem after around two months, and it hasn't returned in the two years since.

 Minor Disadvantages

The Rotel RCD-950 has only a few minor disadvantages, however the average Hi-Fi user will never even notice them.

One is the simple two-pole power wire without grounding. Not that you will ever hear this, but it doesn't satisfy my standards for solidity. Now that the warranty period has ended, I will probably make some changes and fit it with a properly grounded power supply.

The coaxial digital out is only a problem if you plan to record mini discs, as most budget MD recorders only come with optical digital input. I have solved this with an external coax-optical converter which cost me another £40 plus £20 for good digital cables. This is however no problem in combination with external converters, most of which bear both coaxial and optical inputs.

 Advances in the new RCD-951

Unlike the RCD-950, the 951 is not an independent development, but derived from its bigger brothers 961 and 971, of which it uses some of the high-end technology.

The major progress in the successor model are Burr Brown PCM69 Digital-Analogue-Converters combined with a Pacific Microsonics PMD100 digital filter, which allows reading HDCD-encoded CDs. HDCD (High Density CD) is a standard that extends the 16-bit data processing of the CD to 24-bits. Players which fully capitalise on the advantages of HDCD can easily beat almost any DVD-Audio player currently on the market. Only SACD (Super Audio CD) is better than HDCD, but has never really had a market breakthrough.

There are currently around 2000 HDCD-encoded CDs available, most of which are not the popular albums that many of us would have in our collections. HDCDs can also be played on regular CD players with 16 bit resolution. I only own one, Mark Knopfler's Local Hero, and it's a fantastic feed even for the RCD-950, without HDCD decoding.

Thus the RCD-951 is the player for you if you require state-of-the-art technology that will survive the end of the CD. For anyone else who seeks excellent sound at an unbeatable (second-hand) price, the RCD-950 is a player that will provide joy for years to come, analogue feel included.

_______________________________________________________

© 2001 Hansjörg Gebel, Witten, Germany.