2. digital
  3. 1100669978

Rotel 1072 & Arcam 73 comparison

I compared these two CDPs at a dealership for myself.

Electronics: Audio Research Pre SP 16, McCormack DNA125
Speaker : Quad 21L
(So amplification is quite nice.
Speaker is impressive one for its price)

In general these are good CD player. However, interestingly enough, they are quite different in number of ways.

In short, Rotel can be described as 'A concert Grand Piano played by a rising star pianist.' Arcam is like 'Upright piano played by a maestro pianist.' The strong points of Rotel are rich in information and more air around the sound generators. Arcam's good at balance. Switing from Arcam to Rotel make me say, 'impressive, a deeper sound stage, full body sound'. Switiching from Rotel to Arcam makes everything smaller, but as you hear more you see/hear things are still there and you are adjusting yourself to
the music from Arcam in a nice way.

Well, I like Rotel better. Rotel 1072 is also well balanced for presending many kinds of music. It is just a bit difficult to prefectly balance everything since it chooses to present full of information and musicallity as well. Rotel is closer to analog sound than Arcam. Rotel is more puchier when it chooses to do that. In my opinion, Arcam uses a very good DAC, but not all the parts in its electronics do good jobs. I think that is where the shortcomings are.

Will I buy Rotel ? Not now, I'll search more. As of today,
NAD5xx, Musical Fidelity X-Rayv3, Arcam 73, Cambridge Azur 540/640, are no longer on my list. I am not going to buy Sony this time, because I own one. My short list includes: Music Hall CD25, Rotel 1072, Rega, Ah!, and, well, Sony etc.
Any recommendation ?

Thanks for reading.
augustine

Showing 1 response by mphnkns

mphnkns
68 posts
 
This is an old thread, but I thought I'd make mention of one small thing.
I don't know much about the lower line of Arcams, but the FMJ cetainly had no problem that I could see with the higher frequencies. If not waaaaaaaaaaaay extended, they were clearly present and allowed a sense of the venue that would not be present if they were rolled.
As for the PRAT, it's possible I'm wrong, but since I listen to jazz, big band and older (NOT NEWER, ugh!) R&B from the 60s, I think I'd have noticed any pacing issues. Just play Motown stuff to tell if the PRAT is there. Motown's rhythm section was famous for its 'swing.'
Back to the Arcam: thanks for the insight on the lower line of players. I find it surprising that people are saying the soundstage is 'smaller.' I never found that to be the case at all. What is equally likely is that, since the Arcam moves the soundstage back a bit, it appears "smaller," just as it will sound smaller from the balcony at Carnegie Hall than it does from 6th row center.
More to discover