Post by Mr. Ben on Mar 13, 2009 8:56:46 GMT -5
Ok – I’ve had my RSP-2 for several weeks. Time to write a review.
Short version:
It’s a bit better than my Denon receiver in direct mode (MSRP $1,000), and a bit better than a Classe CP-60 (MSRP $3,700). The phono stage is “even more better” than a Bellari VP129 (MSRP $250), and a lot better than the one in my receiver, but it’s sensitive to interference.
Long version:
My stereo system doubles as a home theater, so there are other speakers and players in my setup, but 80-90% of the time it’s used for 2-channel music only. My main speakers are B&W CDM 7NT’s, powered by Emotiva’s MPS-2 (you can read my review for that over in the appropriate section). I also have a M&K MX-350 subwoofer to fill in the bottom end, as my main speakers are only good down to ~40Hz. My primary sources are a ProJect 2.9 wood classic turntable with a Grado Reference cartridge, and a Denon 3930Ci CD/SACD/DVD-Audio player. I have gone through many speaker brands and source components in the past, and I’m happy with what I have today. I feel that they’re quite good, and have the resolution to bring out differences in other components. I have a lot of surround sound SACDs and DVD-Audio discs. When the RSP-2 arrived, I was using a Denon AVR-3300 receiver as my pre-processor, supplemented by a Bellari VP129 phono preamp for turntable duties. The Bellari is a vacuum tube preamp, and it sounds like one. This particular receiver has a nice direct mode with analog bass management, allowing me to run in 2.1 without digitizing the signal, which is pretty rare and is a feature I wanted in the RSP-2. In my comparisons below I only used my two main speakers in full range – no sub.
I tried a few different ways of wiring everything up for comparison. The unbalanced outputs of my source went into the preamp or receiver. I used unbalanced connections to the amplifier for the receiver, but balanced connections from the RSP-2, which may or may not be unfair. Since this is how I would be running them anyway, I consider it fair, and the interconnects are only ~1.2 meters (Outlaw audio PCA’s). I also tried running the receiver in the RSP-2’s processor loop, so that the signal would go through just the RSP-2 or the RSP-2 plus the receiver (CD input, preamp outputs, in direct mode). Once level matched, this let me switch in/out the receiver with the push of a button. This also let me do a blind test by covering the indicator light on the RSP-2, and hitting the remote’s button a bunch of times so that I couldn’t tell by sight if the receiver was in the loop or not, but I could verify my hunch by removing the cover. I acknowledge that the receiver was at a disadvantage due to sending the signal out and back over interconnects. I did not try it the other way around, putting the RSP-2 in the tape loop of the receiver. For testing the phono stage, I either connected the turntable to the phono input of the RSP-2, or to the Bellari, with the Bellari’s outputs going to the aux-1 input of the RSP-2. This was level matched via the volume control of the Bellari. I didn’t directly compare the phono stage in the receiver to the RSP-2, since I already know it’s nowhere near the quality of the Bellari.
I had the opportunity to take my RSP-2 over to a fellow lounge member’s house (nicholas322) to compare it to his Classe CP-60 preamp. Several others on this forum attended as well, and you can read more on this in the “Brooklyn Bash” thread. We did this comparison by directly replacing the Classe with the RSP-2, using the same cables, source & speakers. We listened to several complete songs on the Classe before switching to the RSP-2 so that we could all get a baseline, but I usually prefer to spend much more time with components before making any judgments. Nick is able to articulate the differences much better than I can since it was his system that we changed, so I’ll let him speak about the gritty details of how the Classe and the RSP-2 differ. Overall, those that expressed an opinion agreed that the RSP-2 sounded better than the Classe. My personal observation was that the sound was slightly more detailed, but there’s the possibility that I was influenced by the expectations of myself and others in attendance.
In evaluating the performance of the RSP-2 compared to the Denon at my home, I mostly listened to SACDs. It took me a while to hear a difference when swapping out the two, with the Denon in direct mode and the RSP-2. The differences were more obvious when I put the Denon in the processor loop so I could switch out quickly, and once I pinpointed the differences that way, I confirmed that they continued with the Denon operating on its own. I was expecting a “night and day difference”, “as if a veil was lifted”, etc, but that wasn’t the case, and it was much more subtle. On a Patricia Barber’s Nightclub SACD, I found that her voice sounded more real to me – like she could be identified more easily as Patricia Barber rather than some other singer. This sounds kinda silly – many people could identify her on an iPod, but I felt like there was a bit more personality there than I’m used to. This improvement in detail was more pronounced in Hilary Hahn’s Bach Concertos SACD – the violin sounded more like a violin, and individual instruments were more identifiable than before. More live, and cleaner, like listening to a string quartet in a small venue without amplification, compared to listening live with amplification. There’s just more buried in the strings and the bow that comes out, when I’m normally used to hearing the notes, and that they’re from a violin, but little else. This didn’t work with everything. On several other albums, I heard no difference. I’m guessing that it takes really well-recorded source material to be able to detect what is lost in the line-level stage of a preamp. Luckily, it’s those well-recorded albums that suck me into the music, and the RSP-2 made the biggest improvement on those same albums, which makes me happy to have it.
While the detail improved a bit when I used a SACD source, the improvement was greater for the phono input, compared to my Bellari. But there were some other differences as well. Particularly annoying was the fact that the Bellari had more bottom end to it compared to the RSP-2. Taking the RSP-2 out of direct mode and adjusting the bass up a bit gave me the same tonal balance – I don’t know if this imbalance is due to the Bellari overdoing the bottom end or the RSP-2 under doing it. I’m suspecting it’s the Bellari, and I’m going to have to retrain my ear for the albums I’ve become so familiar with. Once I got the RSP-2 to sound the same I noticed better detail in all the albums I tried, right away. They also lost that “tubey” sound which is great for some albums, such as anything by Robin Trower, but for the majority of what I listen to, I preferred what I consider the higher accuracy of the RSP-2’s phono stage. I tend to lean towards the “more detail” end of the audiophile spectrum rather than the “warmer” end, so the RSP-2 was an improvement for me. If you lean towards the warm side of things, you may not have the same opinion. The phono stage however is very sensitive to its environment. I originally placed the RSP-2 on top of the MPS-2, and this caused a noticeable hum in the speakers when the volume went past 9 o’clock. The other inputs were silent, but the phono due to its higher gain was picking up some interference. So for those of you who stack these on top of your amp, take it off! Another source of frustration is that the dimmer on the front panel seemed to cause a hum noise as well. I determined that my turntable, which was a few inches above the RSP-2 was picking up some electromagnetic interference from it. I would have preferred that the RSP-2 was better shielded against these things, but it looks like I’m going to have to move all of my components around. Also discovered in my quest to quiet down the phono stage was the outlet that I plugged the RSP-2 into made a difference. Normally I have everything but my amplifier plugged into an APC 1400 Smart UPS for noise filtering, but the noise floor went down a bit when I unplugged it from the UPS and instead plugged directly into the dedicated 20A circuit I ran for the amplifier. Interesting.
I haven’t tried the headphone output with my Sennheiser HD650’s yet. I almost never use the headphone output in this room, but it’s nice to know it’s there if I need it.
As a result of all my testing, I’m keeping the RSP-2, and I think it’s well worth the price tag. I still use my Denon for handling surround-sound decoding in movies, and as a multi-channel preamp for the times I want to hear the surround-sound track on my SACDs and DVD-Audio discs. While surround sound is great for some types of music, I think having so many speakers running together eliminates some of that detail that you get in 2-channel. So I don’t think the sound quality is as critical in surround sound listening as it is in 2-channel, and bringing in the RSP-2 for 2-channel duties makes an improvement where I want it the most.
Besides the phono input’s sensitivity to interference, I have a few other minor issues with the RSP-2, which have been mentioned in other reviews. It has mis-aligned tone control knobs, and the volume control via remote could be smoother. Balanced inputs would be nice, although I don’t have any balanced sources so it would just be audiophile bling.
A final note on the way I have the RSP-2 wired up, now that I’m done doing A/B comparisons. The rear and center preouts of my receiver run directly to the MPS-2 amplifier. The front channel preouts run to the processor inputs of the RSP-2, and the receiver is configured with full size fronts and no subwoofer. When listening in surround sound, I set the volume control of the RSP-2 to 12 o’clock, and the receiver outputs have all been level matched with it in that position (it’s just about right at that point anyway, this must be the 0db point in the volume control). I biamp my main speakers using four channels of the MPS-2, with the balanced full range “main” outputs of the RSP-2 running through two amplifier modules to the tweeters, the “high pass” balanced outputs run to the woofers, and the subwoofer output runs to my sub. I prefer the sound of the lowpass filter in the RSP-2 to the one in my sub, so I have it set to 80Hz and the sub’s crossover is disabled. The level control of the sub is just about at 0db, so the RSP-2’s sub output seems to be pretty well level-matched to the mains. Just for the record, I don’t hear any difference when I biamp my mains compared to straight amplification, but I don’t listen at loud levels and the amps would otherwise be unused, so I biamp. The RSP-2’s multiple outputs let me do this without splitting the signal.
Thanks for reading.
[edit: picture removed]
Short version:
It’s a bit better than my Denon receiver in direct mode (MSRP $1,000), and a bit better than a Classe CP-60 (MSRP $3,700). The phono stage is “even more better” than a Bellari VP129 (MSRP $250), and a lot better than the one in my receiver, but it’s sensitive to interference.
Long version:
My stereo system doubles as a home theater, so there are other speakers and players in my setup, but 80-90% of the time it’s used for 2-channel music only. My main speakers are B&W CDM 7NT’s, powered by Emotiva’s MPS-2 (you can read my review for that over in the appropriate section). I also have a M&K MX-350 subwoofer to fill in the bottom end, as my main speakers are only good down to ~40Hz. My primary sources are a ProJect 2.9 wood classic turntable with a Grado Reference cartridge, and a Denon 3930Ci CD/SACD/DVD-Audio player. I have gone through many speaker brands and source components in the past, and I’m happy with what I have today. I feel that they’re quite good, and have the resolution to bring out differences in other components. I have a lot of surround sound SACDs and DVD-Audio discs. When the RSP-2 arrived, I was using a Denon AVR-3300 receiver as my pre-processor, supplemented by a Bellari VP129 phono preamp for turntable duties. The Bellari is a vacuum tube preamp, and it sounds like one. This particular receiver has a nice direct mode with analog bass management, allowing me to run in 2.1 without digitizing the signal, which is pretty rare and is a feature I wanted in the RSP-2. In my comparisons below I only used my two main speakers in full range – no sub.
I tried a few different ways of wiring everything up for comparison. The unbalanced outputs of my source went into the preamp or receiver. I used unbalanced connections to the amplifier for the receiver, but balanced connections from the RSP-2, which may or may not be unfair. Since this is how I would be running them anyway, I consider it fair, and the interconnects are only ~1.2 meters (Outlaw audio PCA’s). I also tried running the receiver in the RSP-2’s processor loop, so that the signal would go through just the RSP-2 or the RSP-2 plus the receiver (CD input, preamp outputs, in direct mode). Once level matched, this let me switch in/out the receiver with the push of a button. This also let me do a blind test by covering the indicator light on the RSP-2, and hitting the remote’s button a bunch of times so that I couldn’t tell by sight if the receiver was in the loop or not, but I could verify my hunch by removing the cover. I acknowledge that the receiver was at a disadvantage due to sending the signal out and back over interconnects. I did not try it the other way around, putting the RSP-2 in the tape loop of the receiver. For testing the phono stage, I either connected the turntable to the phono input of the RSP-2, or to the Bellari, with the Bellari’s outputs going to the aux-1 input of the RSP-2. This was level matched via the volume control of the Bellari. I didn’t directly compare the phono stage in the receiver to the RSP-2, since I already know it’s nowhere near the quality of the Bellari.
I had the opportunity to take my RSP-2 over to a fellow lounge member’s house (nicholas322) to compare it to his Classe CP-60 preamp. Several others on this forum attended as well, and you can read more on this in the “Brooklyn Bash” thread. We did this comparison by directly replacing the Classe with the RSP-2, using the same cables, source & speakers. We listened to several complete songs on the Classe before switching to the RSP-2 so that we could all get a baseline, but I usually prefer to spend much more time with components before making any judgments. Nick is able to articulate the differences much better than I can since it was his system that we changed, so I’ll let him speak about the gritty details of how the Classe and the RSP-2 differ. Overall, those that expressed an opinion agreed that the RSP-2 sounded better than the Classe. My personal observation was that the sound was slightly more detailed, but there’s the possibility that I was influenced by the expectations of myself and others in attendance.
In evaluating the performance of the RSP-2 compared to the Denon at my home, I mostly listened to SACDs. It took me a while to hear a difference when swapping out the two, with the Denon in direct mode and the RSP-2. The differences were more obvious when I put the Denon in the processor loop so I could switch out quickly, and once I pinpointed the differences that way, I confirmed that they continued with the Denon operating on its own. I was expecting a “night and day difference”, “as if a veil was lifted”, etc, but that wasn’t the case, and it was much more subtle. On a Patricia Barber’s Nightclub SACD, I found that her voice sounded more real to me – like she could be identified more easily as Patricia Barber rather than some other singer. This sounds kinda silly – many people could identify her on an iPod, but I felt like there was a bit more personality there than I’m used to. This improvement in detail was more pronounced in Hilary Hahn’s Bach Concertos SACD – the violin sounded more like a violin, and individual instruments were more identifiable than before. More live, and cleaner, like listening to a string quartet in a small venue without amplification, compared to listening live with amplification. There’s just more buried in the strings and the bow that comes out, when I’m normally used to hearing the notes, and that they’re from a violin, but little else. This didn’t work with everything. On several other albums, I heard no difference. I’m guessing that it takes really well-recorded source material to be able to detect what is lost in the line-level stage of a preamp. Luckily, it’s those well-recorded albums that suck me into the music, and the RSP-2 made the biggest improvement on those same albums, which makes me happy to have it.
While the detail improved a bit when I used a SACD source, the improvement was greater for the phono input, compared to my Bellari. But there were some other differences as well. Particularly annoying was the fact that the Bellari had more bottom end to it compared to the RSP-2. Taking the RSP-2 out of direct mode and adjusting the bass up a bit gave me the same tonal balance – I don’t know if this imbalance is due to the Bellari overdoing the bottom end or the RSP-2 under doing it. I’m suspecting it’s the Bellari, and I’m going to have to retrain my ear for the albums I’ve become so familiar with. Once I got the RSP-2 to sound the same I noticed better detail in all the albums I tried, right away. They also lost that “tubey” sound which is great for some albums, such as anything by Robin Trower, but for the majority of what I listen to, I preferred what I consider the higher accuracy of the RSP-2’s phono stage. I tend to lean towards the “more detail” end of the audiophile spectrum rather than the “warmer” end, so the RSP-2 was an improvement for me. If you lean towards the warm side of things, you may not have the same opinion. The phono stage however is very sensitive to its environment. I originally placed the RSP-2 on top of the MPS-2, and this caused a noticeable hum in the speakers when the volume went past 9 o’clock. The other inputs were silent, but the phono due to its higher gain was picking up some interference. So for those of you who stack these on top of your amp, take it off! Another source of frustration is that the dimmer on the front panel seemed to cause a hum noise as well. I determined that my turntable, which was a few inches above the RSP-2 was picking up some electromagnetic interference from it. I would have preferred that the RSP-2 was better shielded against these things, but it looks like I’m going to have to move all of my components around. Also discovered in my quest to quiet down the phono stage was the outlet that I plugged the RSP-2 into made a difference. Normally I have everything but my amplifier plugged into an APC 1400 Smart UPS for noise filtering, but the noise floor went down a bit when I unplugged it from the UPS and instead plugged directly into the dedicated 20A circuit I ran for the amplifier. Interesting.
I haven’t tried the headphone output with my Sennheiser HD650’s yet. I almost never use the headphone output in this room, but it’s nice to know it’s there if I need it.
As a result of all my testing, I’m keeping the RSP-2, and I think it’s well worth the price tag. I still use my Denon for handling surround-sound decoding in movies, and as a multi-channel preamp for the times I want to hear the surround-sound track on my SACDs and DVD-Audio discs. While surround sound is great for some types of music, I think having so many speakers running together eliminates some of that detail that you get in 2-channel. So I don’t think the sound quality is as critical in surround sound listening as it is in 2-channel, and bringing in the RSP-2 for 2-channel duties makes an improvement where I want it the most.
Besides the phono input’s sensitivity to interference, I have a few other minor issues with the RSP-2, which have been mentioned in other reviews. It has mis-aligned tone control knobs, and the volume control via remote could be smoother. Balanced inputs would be nice, although I don’t have any balanced sources so it would just be audiophile bling.
A final note on the way I have the RSP-2 wired up, now that I’m done doing A/B comparisons. The rear and center preouts of my receiver run directly to the MPS-2 amplifier. The front channel preouts run to the processor inputs of the RSP-2, and the receiver is configured with full size fronts and no subwoofer. When listening in surround sound, I set the volume control of the RSP-2 to 12 o’clock, and the receiver outputs have all been level matched with it in that position (it’s just about right at that point anyway, this must be the 0db point in the volume control). I biamp my main speakers using four channels of the MPS-2, with the balanced full range “main” outputs of the RSP-2 running through two amplifier modules to the tweeters, the “high pass” balanced outputs run to the woofers, and the subwoofer output runs to my sub. I prefer the sound of the lowpass filter in the RSP-2 to the one in my sub, so I have it set to 80Hz and the sub’s crossover is disabled. The level control of the sub is just about at 0db, so the RSP-2’s sub output seems to be pretty well level-matched to the mains. Just for the record, I don’t hear any difference when I biamp my mains compared to straight amplification, but I don’t listen at loud levels and the amps would otherwise be unused, so I biamp. The RSP-2’s multiple outputs let me do this without splitting the signal.
Thanks for reading.
[edit: picture removed]
No Pictures??? 
