Japanese Rotel celebrates its 60th anniversary and releases two interesting products, which they call Rotel Diamond Series (cf. diamond wedding, we think). Namely the RA-6000 integrated amplifier and the DT-6000 DAC Transport, which is a CD player with digital inputs and outputs.
Rotel says that the amplifier is based on technology that we know from the Michi series, which are Rotel’s high-end amplifiers. That bodes well, because we’ve had nothing but good experiences with Michi amplifiers.
For the RA-6000, that means hand-wound transformers and 200 watts into 8 ohms and 350 watts into 4 ohms. Which should be plenty for even the most heavily driven speakers.
The amplifier, weighing a massive 19 kilos, has both analogue and digital inputs. It doesn’t have streaming via Wi-Fi, but Bluetooth with aptX HD, which supports AAC, among other things.
Rotel says it can handle high-resolution formats like MQA, but of course it doesn’t work with Bluetooth. Then you either have to connect to the amp via one of the three optical or coaxial inputs, or the USB input on the back.
The RA-6000 also has turntable input for MM pickup.
The DT-6000 DAC Transport CD player also supports MQA and has asynchronous USB input in addition to optical and coaxial. The player’s eight-channel ESS Sabre ES9028PRO DAC can handle PCM audio formats up to 32 bit/384 kHz.
As you can see in the picture below, it has both unbalanced and balanced XLR outputs.
The Rotel components should be ready during July. Prices are quoted at €4,500 for the amplifier and €2,300 for the CD player.
