Rotel 1066 Users... (1 Viewer)

[DanaA]

Just remember Andrew, Canada gets a lot darker, quicker in the wintertime and I'd expect that post to be up by about 5:00 pm.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

its here

 

[Jim_C]

Andrew,

I've been following the Rotel discussion in lurker mode. I'm a little unclear about the post you linked to. Is the author from Rotel? It seemed to be more of a general statement as opposed to a discussion of what Rotel does. Maybe I'm missing something obvious. Your post from Club Rotel led me to believe this info was going to be more specific to Rotel. Again, maybe I'm missing something.

>>I'll be posting a lenghty discussion from Rotel on the implimentation of the bass management on their products later tonight that will be sure to generate some heated debate...basically Rotel doesn't feel theirs a problem...and in many ways they are correct...stay tuned more to come in a few hours

 

[Joseph_W]

Andrew,
Thanks for being our voice to Rotel.
I'm expecting my Rotel equipment Friday and I like getting all this information, both good and not so good. (But mostly good!)
Joe

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Andrew- That still doesn't answer the question: when is Rotel going to fix the double bass problem?

5.1 analog passthrough is supposed to be just that: a *passthrough*. No processing, no summing, no crossing over, no nothing. What goes in, is supposed to come out. 6 discrete channels. Companies like Yamaha, Denon, Onkyo, etc, can do it correctly on $500 receivers. Yet Rotel and Outlaw (and onstensibly Cirrus Logic) screw it up. At least on the Outlaw, you can get around it by using the 80 Hz analog crossover.

At least Outlaw, on the phone to me, admitted that if they could do it over again, they would have no summing. Rotel seems to me, to be avoiding the issue.

 

[Bill Polley]

Isn't that actually this article, word for word, from a thread in this forum posted yesterday?

http://surroundpro.com/2002/october/columns1.shtml

 

[DanaA]

Translation: Rotel doesn't recognize and/or acknowledge that there's a problem. So far, I'm not affected as I don't utilize the multi-channel analog, so I don't know what it sounds like at this point. Hopefully, I won't be to bothered when I join the ranks of DVDA or SACD listeners. If it does prove a problem, I guess there's always Outlaw's bass management unit.

Andrew, did Rotel give you any idea as to whether they're going to address the issue further via a firmware upgrade. I will say that I absolutely love the unit otherwise. It's ironic that the two channel performance is extraordinary and this problem exists with the multi-channel performance.

 

[DarrylM]

The article Rotel is quoting from was written for mixing studio professionals, not HT processor engineers (and I hope they at least cited the original author somewhere in their statement). If anything, it seems to me that the article gives mixing professionals pointers on how to prevent the problem created by processors like the Rotel.

The original article does make some good points about dropping the LFE content from audio and video DVDs -- but it's a little late now for that.

It also seems to me that the only way Rotel could use this article to justify its poor bass management would be in the unlikely event that the .1 channel content disappeared from every SACD and DVD-Audio disc out there. Until that happens, I don't believe that Rotel is addressing the bass management issue for such discs correctly.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Sorry I wasn't more clear on that thread...that's a "letter" that Rotel sends its dealers concening the bass management. I'm still working with them on the issue though. Sorry also for not commenting to much here on the subject but for obvious reasons I'd prefer to keep the discussion ongoing over on club rotel so its all in one neat place.

 

[Jeff Kohn]

It also seems to me that the only way Rotel could use this article to justify its poor bass management would be in the unlikely event that the .1 channel content disappeared from every SACD and DVD-Audio disc out there. Until that happens, I don't believe that Rotel is addressing the bass management issue for such discs correctly.

As I posted on the HTGuide forum which contains Rotel's letter, the LFE channel is a total red-herring. Even if DVD-A's and SACD's are mixed without an LFE channel, you're still going to have bass-doubling on the other channels. The only thing that the lack of LFE would do is provide you with a workaround, since you could disable the sub for multi-channel analog mode, that way you would get the full-range signal to your main channel speakers without discarding any LFE content. But that's a hack, a workaround, for the fact that Rotel bass management is fundamentally flawed for the analog inputs. I really can't see any possible justification for the bass-doubling approach. At the very least, stick an analog x-over in there like Outlaw did.

 

[Tyler DJW]

I've been interested in the 1066/1055 and I've been lurking on these discussions. The one question I have is how exactly does the Rotel extract the bass signal it's doubling up. I spoke to a dealer the other day who was adamant that the 1066 provided a straight multichannel pass-through. (He even started swearing about it... bad sales buy, another story) Is the signal going through ADCs to be digitally combined with the LFE signal? Is it an analog crossover like the ICBM? What is the crossover frequency?

Currently this seems to be the greatest drawback of these units, as I'm starting to really enjoy DVDA.

I'm sure this has been covered but I'd appreciate your help. Thanks!

 

[AlvaroD]

I really can't see any possible justification for the bass-doubling approach.

I agree that the rsp-1066 has a bass-management flaw : it doesn't behave like said in the manual.

But the bass-doubling issue might not be as bad as it may seem and may even be positive as I see at least one justification for it :

most studys about sub-woofers placement versus room interference, shows that the more subs you got, the less room resonances you get. In a practital approach, with 4 subs, you are close to ideal.

First article is here from a swedish company :
http://www.sonicdesign.se/subplace.html

Second one is more technically oriented and is from Harman Kardon :
http://www.harman.com/wp/pdf/multsubs.pdf

Let's say you have 2 main large speakers and 2 subs, with bass-doubling, your mains will also behave like subs, creating the 4 subs needed for a line source of infinite length.

I know it may sounds weird, but this bass-doubling issue may not be as bad as it looks afterall

 

[Andrew Pratt]

I just got of the phone with Rotel and posted some thoughts from my conversation with their VP in that thread I started on HTG. It was an interesting talk but I'm not sure you're going to like the answers...regardless of who's correct.

 

[DarrylM]

Even if DVD-A's and SACD's are mixed without an LFE channel, you're still going to have bass-doubling on the other channels.

Perhaps I'm being dense, but how would you still experience bass doubling without the LFE channel -- even with a subwoofer engaged? Unless there is more wrong with the Rotel 1066 than even I imagined, the bass from each channel should be directed to the subwoofer below the cutoff frequency you have set for "small" speakers (unless you have set them all to "large"). In theory, if you have all five speakers set to "large," you shouldn't get any bass to the subwoofer with a 5.0 disc, should you?

 

[Jim_C]

DarrylM,

check out this link:

Link Removed

 

[Andrew Pratt]

before we all make assumptions on the bm in the 1066 lets wait till rotel provides us with some more answers...the VP was telling me he has charts on all the bm in action so he's looking into some issues for us.

 

[DarrylM]

I just read the response from a Rotel VP that was posted in Club Rotel by Andrew. I found this part of the response a little unusual:

...if for any reason you have been sold some of those nasty little satellite speakers that cannot reproduce bass...

By the way, is Rotel suggesting that those "nasty little satellite speakers" are the only speakers that cannot accurately reproduce bass? I've seen very few center and surround speakers that can reproduce deep enough bass -- even in THX speaker systems (which are usually set to "small" with an 80 Hz cutoff). Seems like the VP of Rotel needs to step into a local AV dealership for a reality check.

 

[Trevor_J]

Suggesting that consumers purchase five full-range speakers to avoid the bass management issues produced by their processor doesn't seem like the smartest business strategy to me...

Maybe Rotel is expanding their product line to include full range speakers

 

[Andrew Pratt]

That reply from Rotel was not a response to our questions but simply a sheet that they send out to dealers etc. To say that its "from" Rotels VP is a bit misleading. I'm not saying that Rotel is 100 percent correct on all the issues surrounding bass managment and how it should be implimented in digital and analog domains (which can be very different) but lets wait until Rotel responds to our current line of questions before we all start making assumptions on what it does and does not do. So far all that they have publically said is that its their oppinion that their bass management follows the standards imposed by DVD-A and SACD ie 5 large speakers (which doesn't have to mean full range for music IMO since we're not talking about TRex foot steps in music)

 

[DarrylM]

So far all that they have publically said is that its their oppinion that their bass management follows the standards imposed by DVD-A and SACD ie 5 large speakers

Where did Rotel see that the "standards imposed by DVD-A and SACD" demand 5 large speakers? The SACD/DVD-A mixing engineer whom Rotel quoted certainly didn't feel that the standards demanded 5 large speakers. Furthermore, it seems like Rotel is missing the big picture here... Even if the SACD/DVD-A formats had been written for five large or full-range speakers, it's still the job of the preamplifier/processor to deliver this sound through any reasonable speaker configuration. (By "reasonable," I mean that your system is capable of reproducing bass adequately, even if any one particular speaker is not.)