I thought the system sounded pretty good for movies since most A/V receivers can handle that with relative ease but the 2-channel audio was always lacking that clarity and imaging. I went down to my local Rotel dealer and auditioned the 1062/1072 combo with Audioquest Diamondback interconnects and wire.
After about an hour of listening to some redbook and remastered cd's I went ahead and purchased the full setup at 5% off which considering the next closest Rotel dealer is 80 miles away I thought that was a nice jesture.
New setup:
Rotel RA-1062 Integrated Amp Rotel RCD-1072 HDCD Player Klipsch RF-15 Mains Audioquest Diamondback RCA interconnects at 1m
I still have the center channel, surrounds and woofer but I dont have them hooked up because I want to focus on pure music playback.
It's been about one day of constant play back and right now the system sounds much much better than my marantz combo. Its still alittle forward right now but I suspect that has to do with Klipsch horns. I think those have now become my weakpoint of my system so Im looking into B&W 700 speakers which Ive read pair well with the rotel combo.
The RCD-1072 Is a gem of a player. Open soundstage, fast response, clear vocals, literally no black noise. Its quite a bargain at $700 but keep in mind it is no Rega Apollo which is $1000.
The RA-1062 is a very powerful amp and really shows what an actual 60watts delivered can really do instead of all this other mass market junk ratings. I have BARELY turned it up and its rather impressive. I do also realize the sensitivity of my speakers has a lot to do with that.
Anyway wanted to drop back in and report on what I thought about the combo.
Altogether my total cost for the full system in use was $1950 which is a pretty good budget stereo system.
No problem, I think ill start looking into some B&W speakers but stu was telling me that the 700 series towers would need more power than the amp can do because of the impedence swings?