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
Interesting - I have been looking at these two models myself. Thanks for your comparison. Arthur
HKPearl,
In my opinion, Azur 640C is rather on Rotel 1072 side than Arcam's side in terms of characteristics. Azur 640C does things little less satisfying compare to Rotel 1072 to my ears. But the low freq. is more aggresive (in good way) than the Rotel which might be strong point to some audiophiles. I prefer to have excellent midrange sound, so Azur 640/540 lost against the Rotel in my system.

I was actually forgot to comment on the construction of the Rotel and the Arcam. Arcam's look is very nice a few feet away from the unit but when I touch to operate it, it is just not as good as the Rotel nor the Cambridge. But it is better than NAD. Rotel 1072's construction is very nice and feels solid or unbreakable. HOWEVER, at the end of the day the look doesn't really matter to most of us, I believe.