Very nice receiver for a very nice price
Written: Oct 12 '00
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Pros: Price, features, and sound quality
Cons: Lake of multi-room switching
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| esaperst's Full Review: Rotel RSX-965 Digital Receiver |
I've had this receiver since July of '99. I've enjoyed it quite a bit from that time. The sound reproduction is excellent, there is no distortion at all in the whole volume range. I've pushed it all the way with anything from Metallica to Garth Brooks to Bag Pipes and Symphonies, nothing distorts it. I have it paired with B&W 603S2 fronts, a CC6 Center, DS6 surrounds and an ASW-1000 sub. I'll toss in a tidbit that Rotel and B&W are closely linked, they use eachother's equipment at trade shows and for some of their testing ... thus they make a good pair to purchase as a package! Primary source is a Toshiba 3109 DVD/CD player through an optical cable.
I've found this system to be best for home theater over stereo sound using only a powered sub and everything else off the receiver. Although the sound quality is fantastic, the 75 watts (although conservative) spread over 5 channels can fall just short on the final punch of music. I determined this because I auditioned the receiver with a variety of speakers, some of which were B&W's higher end 605S2's I beleive that each contained 130watt amp to add to the base. Sound stage was noticably improved and the overall feeling of "being there" was great. Budget and room size constrictions pulled me back to reality and I got the 603's.
With that said, ff you're looking for an overwelmingly loud head banging feeling in the room with music I suggest dropping it into pro-logic and turning off the center channel. That pushes up the power to the remaining four speakers. Or, if budget allows go with the powered speakers for the large format speaker base. It's not often that I blast it, and most of the time I'm using it for theater so I'm extremely happy just using the receiver's amp.
Movies are great, the dipoler surrounds make me look out the window sometimes to see a bright sunny day when I could swear it was raining from what's on TV. The receiver is also good at isolating signals for the center channel, even without DTS mode going.
I will also add that it's a true five + 1 channel system. There is no channel mixing going on and passing through one amp. There's give sepparate amplified channels and then the pre-out for the effects channel. Also available is a pre-out for a center, if budget allows use it and don't draw the power from the receiver get a powered center.
There is a wide variety of inputs. I've managed to loop things all over the place. The only thing this receiver isn't doing is multi-room and multi-switching. There is one displayed output that's it, you can't send different sources to different places. This means you must bypass the receiver with an extra direct run to your TV if you wish to utilize Picture in Picture from multiple sources. A few extra $ in cable, but hey run the basic Monster cable to keep the cost down and who cares it's just PnP. The standard tape loops are available for video and audio recording.
The DTS feature is fantastic, it's definately worth the effort to setup the system and look for movies that support it. The effects are great and it handles music much better than in just pro-logic or Dolby Digital.
Thus far I've had none of the original listed quality control problems when the unit originally came out. This was usually DOA issues and some full failures, also some noise issues according to the research I've done on various sites listing reviews and comments about this product. Since I've had it I've had only one problem where it seemed to loose its sanity a bit. The menu text was suddenly huge for no reason. Their tech gave me the powerup sequence to reset it back to pre-programmed defaults and everything has been fine since.
The price is right, for around $1100 you get a very nice receiver. To go any better you're right into the $3K range. To much for a home that wasn't setup for audio if you ask me. Accustics in my living room full of couches and vibrating shiney brass objects, fireplace tools, papers, slapping blinds, etc are only going to be so good. If ever I build an audio room I may go higher end, but for now this is just perfect.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1100
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Epinions.com ID:
esaperst
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Member: Eric
Location: Scenic Central New Jersey
Reviews written: 76
Trusted by: 8 members
About Me:
Cute, lovable, perfectly innocent and/or harmless and the future poster child for social norms.
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