Rotel DX-5 Review

Design

• Full-colour TFT display
• Silver or black anodised aluminium finishes

Your money doesn’t buy you a lot of Rotel DX-5, it’s true – and 76 x 215 x 251mm (HWD) it’s noticeably smaller than your average hi-fi component. But what you do get is carefully designed, even more carefully constructed, and built to a standard that seems ready to survive modest earthquakes.

Most of the chassis of the DX-5 is made from anodised aluminium – it feels almost as good as it looks, no matter if you choose the black finish or the silver of my review sample. The quality of build and finish is basically impeccable, and the design manages to come across as understated even though there’s a big, bold ‘R’ stamped into the top of the box.

The fascia features a large, bright, crisply rendered full-colour TFT display front and centre – it offers information regarding input selection and volume, along with some useful and usable set-up menus. It has a physical input selection button at its bottom left, while at its bottom right there’s a 6.3mm headphone socket.

The left of the fascia features a power button with a ring of illumination around it, and the right is home to a large, gloriously knurled volume control that makes adjusting levels a bit of an event every time you use it.

You can also operate the DX-5 using a remote control handset that shares the same material, and the same quality of construction, of the device itself. The buttons are sensibly laid out, and the dimensions of this weighty handset are carefully judged too. If it wasn’t for the fact that it’s pickier about having precise line-of-sight to the IR receiver (it’s embedded in the TFT display) in order to work than any remote control I’ve ever used, it would be ideal. As it is, it’s a bit frustrating.

At the rear of the Rotel there are a chunky pair of speaker cable binding posts, and a pre-out for use with a subwoofer in case 2.1-channel stereo is your thing. Inputs run to a single line-level analogue number via a pair of RCAs, an HDMI ARC socket, digital coaxial and optical inputs and a USB-B connection. There’s also one of the smaller and more discreet Bluetooth aerials you’ll find, facilitating wireless connectivity with SBC, AAC and aptX HD codec compatibility.

Specification

• ESS Sabre ES9039Q2M DAC
• Class AB amplification
• 33 watts per channel (4ohms) / 25 watts per channel (8ohms)

What space there is under the bonnet of the Rotel DX-5 is dominated by a high-current toroidal transformer that’s a) wound in-house, and b) capable of delivering 25 watts of Class AB power per channel into an 8-ohm load, rising to 33 watts per channel into 4 ohms.

These are not, it must be acknowledged, the most promising numbers when you see them written down – but I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that it ain’t how many watts you’ve got but what you do with them that really counts. And the claimed frequency response of 10Hz – 80kHz tells you a lot about the way the Rotel is powered.

Most of the DX-5’s inputs are digital, of course, and it uses the extremely well-regarded ESS Sabre ES9039Q2M to take care of the digital/analogue conversion business. This allows the USB-B input to handle 32-bit/384kHz PCM and DSD512 content (some source machines will need a driver, it should be noted), and gives the coaxial and optical inputs 24-bit/192kHz PCM ability. By way of an encore, the Rotel is certified Roon Tested.

So the features it’s got seem well up to snuff. What about the features it goes without? Well, Rotel obviously didn’t intend to build a streamer here, so there’s no Wi-Fi connectivity – which is fair enough.

It’s also reasonable that the DX-5 goes without a phono stage to amplify a turntable – it’s disproportionately space-hungry even before you start worrying about shielding and what-have-you. But the lonely nature of the single analogue input seems slightly strange… is Rotel guaranteeing that the D-to-A conversion circuitry on board the DX-5 is definitely superior to that fitted to your CD player, network streamer or what-have-you?

Performance

• Direct, dynamic and detailed sound
• Spacious and rigorously defined soundstage
• High-frequency response is provokable

You can’t judge an amplifier by how it looks, of course – and yet it’s still mildly startling to find such a compact device is capable of such a big, broad and spacious sound.

The Rotel DX-5 creates an absolutely wide-open soundstage, defines it confidently, and allows every element of a recording as relatively complex (and relatively dense) as These Blues by Spiritualized all the space it needs to make itself heard on an individual level.

The DX-5 doesn’t just offer separation and spaciousness for the sake of it, either. It can take every one of these nicely isolated elements and cohere them into a convincingly singular presentation with a proper sense of performance – this togetherness goes a long way towards ensuring the Rotel makes music sound, well, musical. And engaging, entertaining and absorbing, too.

A nice even frequency response doesn’t do any harm, either. From the bottom of the frequency range (which is very deep, sure enough) to the top, the Rotel is even-handed and smooth – no area gets overstated, no area gets underplayed.

And at every stage, there’s a lavish amount of detail identified, revealed and contextualised – bass sounds are textured and varied, the midrange communicates in the most unequivocal fashion, and the top of the frequency range is packed with information too. Explicit is not too strong a word to describe the enthusiasm with which the DX-5 dishes the details.

The Rotel is winningly dynamic, too, and more than willing to track the biggest shifts in intensity or volume closely – and it’s equally alert to the more minor dynamic variations inherent in harmonics, too. It controls its low-frequency activity really well, and is able to snap into the leading edge of bass sounds – which means it’s able to express rhythms convincingly and with proper positivity.

In fact, about the only area where the performance of the DX-5 requires qualification is at the top of the frequency range. Tonally it’s neutral, naturalistic and more than willing to get out of the way of a recording in order for its fundamental tone to get full expression – but if it’s partnered with electronics or loudspeakers that have lots of high-frequency energy and emphasis, it’s possible for the Rotel to sound a little too enthusiastic at the top end.

Some reasonably careful system-matching is in order if the Rotel isn’t going to come across as just slightly too lively where treble sounds are concerned.  

Should you buy it?