Before this month, I'd never experienced Rotel amplification in one of my own systems, but I have memories of how their amplifiers sounded back in the early 1990s. In those days, at audio shows, I would audition every Rotel amp I could find; I was especially interested in their $369, 60Wpc RB-960BX. I was curious about that model because it was the number-one competitor to the 60Wpc darling of the audiophile proletariat: Adcom's GFA 535 II. My friend Corey Greenberg compared these two popular amps in Stereophile and concluded, "The Rotel is for the budget-minded music lover who wants a good, solid little amplifier that's not going to make listening to music a trying experience."
I trusted Corey's judgment, but the RB-960BX fascinated me because it was a plain-clothed, black-boxed budget amplifier that used ultra-premium, Japanese-made, "Modkateer-Approved" Black Gate capacitors by Rubycon, for which I was the US importer. I had more than an academic interest in the Rotel sounding better than the Adcom.
The Rotel amplifier I remember best is the hip, radical-looking RB-991, which Robert J. Reina reviewed and Thomas J. Norton measured in the August 1999 Stereophile.
When I read that review, I thought, Damn! Rotel put the heatsinks on the front! How cool is that? So ha! When I first saw Rotel's new Diamond Series 60th Anniversary RA-6000 integrated amplifier and the matching DT-6000 DAC Transport, at a preview demonstration at Café Kitsuné in Brooklyn, I recognized those fin sections that bookended their brushed aluminum faceplates as an aesthetic nod to the RB-991's coolfactor styling.
It was happy hour at Café Kitsuné, and after some relaxed listening, I set my drink on the bar, picked up my reporter's notebook, and asked Rotel's super-cool PR crew, "When I write about this, what would you like Stereophile’s readers to most understand about these new products?”
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German kitchens, Japanese amps, and Afropop gems
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