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Rotel's first DVD-A
Rotel's quick off the mark
by Michael Jones
September 2001
Rotel RDV-1080 DVD-Audio player. $4200
Rotel 
are
quick off the mark with their first DVD-Audio player, with the RDV-1080
being one of few players available in New Zealand able to handle this
new format. It also plays DVD video discs of course, and is one of the
few models available that will output progressive video to suitable equipped
display devices (no, not your telly in the corner).
The 1080 looks a substantial player - it's big and beefy look even includes stylised handles on the side. Curiously, the weight of the player doesn't match the look, with the 1080 being much lighter than expected.
The 1080 has a centre-mounted disc drawer with a display panel above. To the right are very small buttons to control the player, with lights above to indicate the sampling frequency (44.1kHz, 48, 88 or 192kHz) above.
On the left is a "display off" button and a piecing blue light to indicate that a DVD-Audio disc is being played. Annoying, the "display off" control does not turn this light off.
Around the back are the normal connections for a DVD player - video outputs (composite, S-Video and component), digital outputs (coax and optical).
Plus there are six outputs for analog signals. Due to piracy concerns, part of the licensing requirements for DVD-Audio - and SACD - is an insistence that digital output of the high resolution signal not be possible. Instead we have six analog outputs (left, centre, right, left surround, right surround and subwoofer).
There were a few quirks using the Rotel. Place a disc in the tray and the 1080 spends many seconds reading the disc before commencing play. It's disconcerting at first but I did get used to the much longer wait before music appeared.
Also the remote control was troublesome. For example, when a disc was playing the numeric track buttons on the remote control would not work.
As a CD player
The first musical task for any DVD-A player is playing the existing library
of millions of CDs available. After all, there's no point in upgrading
to a new player if it does a worse job on reproducing the archives.
I've had a lot of problems with DVD players performance on CD. While they will play CDs, the musical performance is often lacklustre. Typically, the sound is smooth but boring, low resolution and uninspired.
I'm glad to say that the Rotel is better than that, with a performance equating to around a $1500 CD player. It does share some DVD player characteristics: both good (smooth sound) and bad (kind of boring musical performance), but at a much higher level.
I suspect that music enthusiasts would find the Marantz 6000KI (tone, weight and scale) or the Rega Planet (foot-tapping timing) more rewarding when viewed strictly on CD performance.
One minus point against the Rotel is that it will not play CDR discs. While that may have been acceptable with DVD players a year ago, I find it astonishing that a company can release a new model which cannot play CDRs.
As a DVD-Audio player
Playing DVD-Audio discs is another matter. Here the Rotel showed some
of the potential from DVD-Audio.
As with my review of the Philips SACD player, there was very little music to play on the Rotel. My thanks to Auckland's AudioVision Centre for the loan of several DVD-Audio discs.
As with the Philips SACD player there were glimpses of greatness with some of their discs. A DVD-A disc of Gregorian vocal music showed that surround sound can work very well for music designed for a very wet, reverberent acoustic.
Some of the rock albums were fun to listen to. One of my all-time favourite albums is Fleetwood Mac's Rumours which has been released in multi-channel format. Initially disconcerting, the multi-channel Rumours became fascinating to listen to. Switching back into two-channel mode, the DVD-A version of Rumours sounded substantially better than my CD version.
A couple of rock discs (Natalie Merchant's Tigerlilley and Rumours and a Dvorak symphony showed that DVD-A can indeed sound better than CD.
As a DVD video player
Alas, due to time-constraints I really didn't get to try the RDV-1080
as a DVD movie player.
Conclusions
An interesting first DVD-Audio player from Rotel. DVD-A shows great promise
but and it will be interesting to see its progress. As for the Rotel player,
it's adequate rather than great on CD playback, but throw in DVD-A and
DVD video performance and some Rotel fans will be tempted.
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