Rotel's rsp1069

I asked about this in the CEDIA sub forum. I was interested in the 1069 till I found out it will not be HDMI 1.3.

Does anybody know if it support 7.1 PCM input over HDMI1.1? It might not be 1.3, but if the player does the decoding will it play multi-channel PCM?

Thanks

I just purchased this SSP today and am not happy with my purchase. I find the OSD to be archaic and the set up is completely inflexible. My PJ does not have HDMI but I wanted to be able to listen to True HD/PCM soundtracks on my blu-ray / Hd DVD's. Unfortunately this is not an option as you can not select Component for video and HDMI for audio. This is an option on many mid-grade receivers costing much less than the RSP-1069 I am shocked that a mid-high end component can not perform this simple task. I will be returning this to my local dealer and getting back my RSP-1068 until Rotel gets their act together.

I have owned a 1068 for years now and love it. But Rotel is just to slow to embrace what is now becoming standard technology. The fact that they have delayed these new models for more than a year now, and when they come out they are botched from the gate without any kind of HDMI 1.3 support is a joke.

I'm not even going to touch the 1069. I'm gonna wait for the 1099 (which should already be out but there doesnt seem to be any info on it anywhere...). However, if these clowns failed to put HDMI 1.3 on the 1099 im going to sell all of my Rotel equipment and move on to a manufacturer living in the 21st century.

At the pace Slotel is coming up with new models, it will take them 3-4 years to come up with something that includes HDMI 1.3 (and by that time there will propably a 2.0 standard or something). I am not going to wait anymore...

Having said that, anyone have any info on the RSP-1099?

I feel the same way about my RSP-1068 and decided to pass on the 1069 as well. I'm moving into a new condo shortly so I have been holding off any new purchases until after then. First will be a stand alone Blu-ray player and then I think I will just keep the 1068 with an external HDMI switch to allow me to control the switching of video with my source in which case I will probably just keep the 1068 for the next year or 2. At least if I can manage to stay out of the audio mall, otherwise I start getting very tempted to buy more toys.

I talked to the Equity (Rotel) rep here in Winnipeg a month ago. He (what an IDIOT) said that Rotel was not interested in 1.3 as there were no benefits (can you say 120 hmz???) and that as a small mfg they were not "allowed" any of the required chipsets in time for mfg the new Pre-Pro.

What a MAJOR idiot!!

I picked up an RSP-1069 the other day. Not sure if i want to keep it though, considering that I have an Onkyo 905 as well. PM me if any one is interested in buying it

I'm - too - waiting to upgrade my (nice) RSP-1066 with a newer model (1.3 compatible, for SACD and new hi-res formats) to link to the RMB-1066 amplifier that I will keep.

But I'm getting angry to wait years fo this...
Does anybody know if an Onkyo 905 could SOUND as fine as my RSP-1066/RMB-1066 combo? I mean for SACD and DVD-Audio 'audiphile' formats, not as home theater...

Many thanks,
Gianluca

FYI, I ended up selling the 905 & keeping the Rotel combo. The Onkyo couldnt come close to sounding as good as the 1069 hooked up to a 1075.

What I imagined...
Yes, Rotel is slow, but... sounds good.
Pls let's keep in touch in this group whenever we realise Rotel is releasing an 'up to date' pre-pro with HDMI 1.3...

tks

FYI...

I have the 1096 and performed a lot of tests to find the bugs and issues. Rotel is aware of them and is working on a firmware update which should ome out very soon.

Its a shame is doesnt have HDMI 1.3, but its not a deal breaker for me. 1.3 is so over hyped. I can enjoy all that HD DVD and BD has to offer with HDMI 1.1.

Agreed

How exactly? Since this is a 1.1 unit, you must be outputting everything at LPCM. Rotel doesnt show the back panel on this unit, but I assume there are not dual 7.1 external in jacks for the high resolution connections to come in processed from the HD players. Can you expand on your statement about 1.1? I have the Toshiba HD-A35 and plan on getting the Panasonic 30k BD player for xmas and next up is a new receiver or pre/pro in January. I have had my eye on Rotel (and how good they sound with B&W) but cant get past how slow they are moving on the new technologies.

I have an hd-a35 & a ps3 hooked up to my 1069 via hdmi & I let both players do the decoding & send the lpcm signal via hdmi.

But the Panasonic 30K only sends the advanced codecs out bitstream. I guess thats a no go for me then as I would prefer the rotel doing the conversion, hence the premium amount to pay for this.

I too am about to buy the Rotel 1069 as my first foray into the high end audio/video market but am concerned about the lack of HDMI 1.3x. Obviously the since it lacks 1.3 it will not be able to handle the deep color from HD-DVD/Bluray but can we just plug a HDMI in and minus the deep color send the signal out hdmi to a Plasma set and get a great picture nontheless?

Since the Rotel doesn't process the 2 new audio formats if the player (in this case Pioneer 95fd) transcodes this into LPCM over HDMI does the 1069 have to be 1.3 to take this and send it to my 1075 amp or is the 1.1 input enough?

Does it play the 2 new audio formats?

You do not need 1.3. If your player decodes to LPCM then the Rotel will handle it fine and it sound awesome. HDDVD and BluRay do NOT support deep color and probably never will. HDMI 1.3 is a curse with all of the misinformation floating around. 1.1 is enough right now, period. There are some players out there that won't decode internally. I'm not sure which ones. I have a Toshiba A3 connected via HDMI to my 1069. Sound comes through as 96K Multi Channel. Sounds freaking great.

I think there's a subconcious stigma against any decoding done in the player because traditionally in the DVD-era, when you talked about player-decoding, you were talking about using the DACs in the player to output to analog. So that terminology really puts people off - I don't think anybody found that audio-out on a player to be a better-sounding solution.

In this new generation, the decoding is more akin to "unpacking." There is no conversion of anything. The player simply does a bit-by-bit uncompression which it then sends as PCM over HDMI, and the pre/pro can do its processing magic. When people say HDMI 1.3 is important because of the bitstream issue, it's much like saying that one particular computer is better than another at unzipping a file. Unless there is something substantially wrong with your computer, error rates are completely immaterial.

The only issue I can think of is that you are committing yourself to an expensive HD player in the long run. If you're getting, say a high-end Rotel Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player, there's absolutely no chance that they would leave out decoding in the player either. However, when Blu-Ray and HD players are in the $150 ranges, this can be a problem, in that you would always need to fork out extra dough to get a high-end player with decoding capabilities. So if you get a HDMI 1.1 AVR, you're committing yourself to getting a $300-600 player even when prices on the generic players may have dropped to the $75 range. That's the only drawback I see.

I get it now. I do see the trade off but if Rotel did end up making a HD/Bluray player I'd have no problem with them doing the decoding in the player and I guess the tradeoff would be that I just pay for the player to do the decoding as opposed to the AVR.

Overnight I've decided to just wait for a couple of months and see what gives in 2008. I hear they will be putting out more internal decoding players and some universal hd & blu players that don't neccessarily sacrifice quality. Will wait and see. In the meantime I'm just going to stick with a straight up DVD player and have the Rotel do the upscaling to 1080p.

http://www.htguide.com/forum/forumdisplay.php4?f=20

checkout this website for any / all info on Rotel products

I have a Rotel RSP-1069 hooked up in my rack and it is fantastic! I have a 35' HDMI from the RSP-1069 to my Mits HC1500. I have the RSP-1069 set to output 1080p. I have my PS3(1080p) and HD-A3(1080i) with the audio on both set to output PCM via HDMI. The video output on the PS3 is set to 1080p60 and the HD-A3 to 1080i. I have my Phillips 963SA DVD player hooked up via component video 480p and coax digital. I have a Shaw cable box set to output 1080i hooked up via component video and coax digital(it's an older box with only DVI and the box will not make the handshake with a DVI to HDMI adapter-it's the boxes problem not the Rotels). I've been able to test it with uncompressed PCM over the HDMI on the PS3 and HD-A3. Both sound fantastic. I had Spiderman 3 running linear PCM at 4.6 Mbps and Cars at 6.9 Mbps and it sounds awesome. The sound quality is much better than through the optical output into my old RSP-1068. Also 2 channel stereo CD's sound a little more open than through the RSP-1068. Don't get caught up in the whole "I have to have HDMI 1.3" thing.The only downside is that you cannot apply any onboard audio settings to get 6.1 or 7.1 output from the discs that are encoded with 5.1 uncompressed PCM. When you output the PCM audio via HDMI the RSP-1069 handles the bass management. Older pre/pros with multi channel inputs relied on the player to do the bass management.
I'm pretty pleased with the performance on the Rotel so far. I'll post and update after I've lived with it for awhile.

PS. Dolby Digital TrueHD also sounds very good. I have not been able to test DTS-MA as my PS3 does not support that format output(yet).
On the video side the PS3 set to 1080p passes unprocessed to my HC1500, the HD-A3 is set to 1080i(it's max output setting)and shows 1080p60 as the input resolution to my HC1500, the Phillips 963SA DVD player is set to output 480p and shows an input resolution of 1080p60 on my HC1500, the Shaw cable HD box is set to output 1080i and show an input resolution of 1080p60 on my HC1500 and the picture shows a slight inprovement in picture quality on non HD channels.

Hi.. did you ever do any comparison between the Rotel and the NAD T175 or look at the feature differences?

I currently have the RSP-1068 and will upgrade in the next couple of months. I was considering the 1069 until I saw that NAD was releasing a unit with HDMI inputs and I had a very hard time getting Rotel to respond to a few simple email requests about the 1069.

But I would still consider the 1069, just wondering if you compared the 2 units.

thanks

No chance to compare the Rotel to the NAD. I'm sure the NAD is a pretty decent unit. But I've had Rotels for the last 5 yrs (RSP-1066,RSP-1068)and been very happy with them. The new Texas Instruments Aureus processor that they are using in the Rotel plus the redesign of the circut path really steps the Rotel up a notch. Plus if you're married and going from the RSP-1068 to the RSP-1069 the wife will never notice. I was showing the 1069 to my wife and she couldn't figure out what I had changed in the system.

That is funny you mentioned it, one of my considerations of the 1069 was that my gf would not have noticed at all that I bought it when I am saying that I should save more...

I would have bought the 1069 already but my local dealer was not very interested in trading in my 1068 for the 1069. But will wait to the new year now and check out the T175 when it arrives (not selling in Singapore yet)

I own neither the ROTEL or NAD units in question, however have been reading like a madman on a mission about these two units, threads, specs, etc. and there is one clear difference for me, the NAD does not have balanced outs. For my system, it makes or breaks a component (krell amps BW speakers). I really can't comment about NAD as a company, or even Rotel for that matter, but the fact there are no balanced outs is an indication of build quality. I know that may infuriate some, and that's not my intention. From what I've read, having 1.3 HDMI is not necessary at least in the next few years, unless all new players only send "bitstream" to the receiver/processor. That's the only thing the processor can recognize to "process". PCM audio is easily transferred via 1.1. Even my local high end shop is having trouble understanding this and couldn't elaborate. I think Rotel has been smart to go with the 1.1 spec (if it's more stable) and I'll be purchasing the 1069 for an audition in my home. I'm a little concerned about the video processing as the PS3 can output in the native resolution of a projector, so theoretically scaling and processing isn't necessary. my cable box will need upscaling for SD, and even HD since my projector is only 720P. I'd really like to upgrade that as well, but since many of my purchases are less than 1 year old, my lovely wife really doesn't understand.

I am considering using this pre-amp but have a few questions. I have two HDMI sources forced to 1080p24 and a cable box that will come into this unit. I would pass through these sources to a projector via HDMI. No problem. I also need to output 720p via component to a HDTV. They will not be used at the same time and I cannot output via HDMI into a splitter as I am forcing the 1080p24 and the HDTV will not accept that resolution.

The reason for this is the cable box automatically changes to 1080i when connected to the projector and the HDTV has issue with 1080i (don't ask but it does) and stays at that resolution when you go back to the HDTV. I also cannot output the PS3 to the HDTV as 1080p24 is forced so to get it to work on the HDTV you have to power up the projector and change resolutions on the PS3. Kind of a pain but I can make it work but when I am not around I don't really want my wife to try this if you know what I mean.

So the main question is can the pre-amp downconvert 1080p24 to 720p via component while leaving the HDMI output as passthrough?

Thanks

If you have or are considering the the 1069 I highly recomend you read this thread. Its great processor and serves well for HD DVD/BD using HDMI. It does have issues and you would be aware of them and the fixes.

http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php4?t=28530