RB850 and RB970BX are excellent power amps. Incredibly reliable too.
The reliability is a good point. The things never seem to go wrong or go off. Even really old ones sound fine and work perfectly.
RB850 and RB970BX are excellent power amps. Incredibly reliable too.
RA integrated amps are they not?
RC pre amps
RB power amps
That what I used to think anyway been a while
Not tried the matching Pre James,i'm using one of these in one of my systems. i've thought about trying the matching pre-amp. have you tried it?
Rotel is aimed at the midrange of HiFi, the sweet spot, but the Michi stuff is very much “high end”, in price as well as performance. I know a happy RHB-10 owner, a true statement amp. Interestingly came with a matching passive pre, quite rare in the 90s.
http://www.thevintageknob.org/rotel-RHB-10.html
I have an RA840BX and and RB850.
The 840BX has a pretty decent MC/MM phono stage.
The two amps use a very similar power amp design which has some interesting features. There seems to have been some thinking along the lines of Naim power amps: no local decoupling, no output inductor, although the Rotels have an unusual frequency compensation scheme.
In terms of sound they do sound quite "80s", with a slightly ragged but punchy upper midrange and lean lower bass with slightly prominent upper bass. Much like Naim!
Impressive in the short term, but a bit wearing in the long term.
Excellent VFM!
Rotel, to me, is similar to Honda's cars.
The problem with this idea for me is that I think of Victor Meldrew, boring late middle aged, and the Rotel I have isn’t that.
Yes that is probably a fair comment.They can sound slightly mechanical but a lot of SS amps sound like that and that includes many expensive ones.If you match them with warm sounding speakers they can sound very good.A friend has one matched with old B&W DM2s and that is just a lovely sounding system.
Makes me think that the power transformer(s) are one of the most important components in a power amp and that this slightly mechanical sound (at least partially) results from the Rotel transformers.
I bought an ‘810A for my son, to drive his Royd Minstrels.
Surprisingly good...