By The truth is that most of us only listen to the first few watts of power available from our audiophile amplifier. Why? Because most modern speaker designs today are really good about not being power pigs, as some audiophile speakers of the past were. Could you power a pair of high-efficiency Focals or Wilson Audio speakers with a small (SET or single-ended) tube amp, or even a Chi-Fi integrated amp, and make suitable sound? The sound would be audible, but I am not sure it would be suitable for somebody making the kind of investment that Wilson and/or Focals require. Would it be suitable? That’s unlikely as higher-end speakers really shine when powered by well-engineered, high-current power amplifiers.
For audiophiles just getting going in the hobby, that first move away from a good, entry-level audiophile product like an integrated amp is often an expensive one, in that there is nothing to sell to help offset the cost of the upgrade. That’s why finding a somewhat affordable amp to play the role of your favorite speaker’s power source is so important. That’s where the Rotel RB-1582 MkII (buy at Crutchfield for $2,199) comes in. Priced at $2,199 and sold nearly everywhere, this power amp is a serious step up from anything found in a real-world integrated amp. 200 watts per channel, nicely-sourced parts, beefy heat syncs and a really solid build quality only start to describe the value proposition with this audiophile power amp.
What Makes the Rotel RB-1582 MkII Power Amplifier Special?
- At this price range, it is rare to find specialty or hand-selected parts, but Rotel delivers “slit foil” capacitors from the U.K. The reported benefit of this design is their ability to charge and discharge quicky. Most of the time, our music doesn’t ask for much from our audiophile amp but, in a split second, the dynamic window in your music can open up, and the need for power is real (and large). The Rotel RB-1582 MkII is designed to deliver more than cheaper amps in those demanding moments.
- The Rotel RB-1582 MkII is a 200-watts-per-channel stereo amp into a four-ohm speaker impedance. This is not the most power that you can find from an amp at this price range, but having reasonable factory measurements helps us make a better decision, thus we don’t need to sift through crazy reported numbers.
- The Rotel RB-1582 MkII is a traditional Class-AB amplifier design. Class-A designs use a lot more power, but have a more tube-like sound. Tube amps are delicate, require biasing and periodic replacement of tubes. The most exciting category of products in the audiophile world are today’s semiconductor-based audiophile amps, which are able to sound like Class-A (or tubes), but don’t need to draw a lot of power from the wall or create a ton of heat and/or need ongoing maintenance. Anyone investing in a Rotel RB-1582 MkII is likely going to look into the growing number of GaN, Pascal or Hypex-based amps out there.
- The build quality of the Rotel RB-1582 MkII is really robust. The heat sinks are solid. The aluminum face place is reminiscent of far more expensive Krell amps of the past. This is a very nice bit of industrial design and a well-made, solid audiophile amp.
- Thankfully, the Rotel RB-1582 MkII can rack-mount easily, thanks to included rack ears. I use a Middle Atlantic rack and have all sorts of power amplifiers in my world, ranging from a legacy seven-channel Halcro to augment my 13.1 home theater to my Anthem MDX-8 (read the review), which is a distribution amp used to power my behind-the-drywall “invisible speakers,” and in-ceiling subwoofers, including implantation of ARC room correction. My reference amp is a Pass Labs XA-25 power amp, which is Class-A in its operation and creates a lot of heat. Getting these amps installed neatly in my rack has its challenges. The Rotel laughs at this task, as it is ready for my installation right out of the box.
- The Rotel RB-1582 MkII is a class balanced design. You can connect your preamp and/or other relevant components using XLR cables and get the benefits (less noise, better connections) of a balanced system. This is nothing to sonically sneeze at but, then again, if you are sonically sneezing, you likely should have that checked out by a doctor.
Why Should You Care About the Rotel RB-1582 MkII Amp?
99 out of 100 times, more power is a good thing in an audiophile system. Adding more power (headroom) in a more entry-level audiophile system can be a jaw-dropping game changer. The extra headroom that an amp like a Rotel RB-1582 MkII can deliver can take a receiver or integrated amp system and change its overall sound in radical ways. The audiophile who is looking to cash in on some of the bigger audiophile gains to be had as we invest more money into our rig is on the table with the RB-1582 MkII amp.
Some Things You Might Not Like About the Rotel RB-1582 MkII Power Amp
- The Rotel RB-1582 MkII isn’t heavy at 39 pounds. It doesn’t create much heat. It is pretty. It is equipped with heat sinks. It has quality feet. It is balanced and it doesn’t cost a fortune. There’s not much to not like about this amp.
- A Class-AB design is rock-solid but not exotic, like the Class-D designs that are all the rage today in the audiophile community.
- Made in China, who knows what the cost of the Rotel RB-1582 MkII will be long-term?That’s not anything that you, me or Rotel can control, but there are made-in-America (at some level or another) options that are a little bit less volatile on the retail price front because of the sales taxes needed to pay for the 902 actual billionaires (that’s the number, I just checked) in the United States.
Listening to the Rotel RB-1582 Mk II Power Amp …
As usual, most of my listening was done on Bowers & Wilkins speakers, as well as some MartinLogan options. The MartinLogan ESLs are a little harder to drive on paper but, because of their hybrid design (their woofers have their own amps), they really aren’t that hard to drive. A Bluesound Node 2024 and various Chi-Fi DACs were used with an SPL Elector preamp in this review. I also had a chance to compare separates versus a very solid McIntosh solid state integrated amp during these listening sessions.
There might not be a better test of the dynamic window than Pink Floyd’s 1979 epic double album, The Wall. The range of sound spans from delicate birds chirping to orchestral swells to dive-bombing airplanes. The Wall has it all to test an amp. Good sections to test are “Vera” and “Bring the Boys Back Home” (this video is the film version). “Vera” is a pretty sparsely arranged track with horns, some strings and good bass. You can hear what the Rotel RB-1582 MkII can do with the tightness and accuracy of Roger Waters’ fretless bass, which sounded great on the Bowers & Wilkins 603 S3 floorstanding speakers. When the full chorus kicks in and the snare drums are snapping and the cymbals are crashing, you get to hear what some real headroom does for you. I cranked it up to almost 100 dB (that’s getting really loud) and never lost coherence. I never heard any audible distortion, and the Rotel RB-1582 MkII sort of just laughed at me as if to say, “Is that all you got, Jerry?” Yes, amp. I don’t want to go deaf, and you’ve proved your point that you have a lot of power.
It takes balls (big balls, to quote AC/DC) to cover anything Jimi Hendrix, let alone his most iconic and badass song, “Voodoo Chile.” Former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello makes a case for being the best living guitar player in the world, as well as one who mixes up his heavy six-string chops with all sorts of genres, be they hip hop, EDM, or, in this case, a classic rock anthem. The melody is familiar to anybody who knows the music of Hendrix, but the all-out assault for this instrumental version of “Voodoo Chile” is one designed to peel the paint off the ceiling in your listening room. The opening of the track has a muted, distant sound that piques your curiosity and then explodes into the most bombastic and glorious chorus that will have you pegging the volume of your preamp. The Rotel RB-1582 MkII held up way better when being pushed than the McIntosh MA 5300 integrated amp (read my review) did on this ultra-demanding track. The bass was tighter and the overall soundstage was more coherent at very high (I don’t even want to measure) levels.
Dave Grohl, in his recent memoirs (as well as on Howard Stern) talked about what it was like to cover “Blackbird” live at the Oscars. Queen B’s (Beyoncé) version is another ambitious, studio-tastic recording of a Lennon/McCartney classic with the most layered, wonderful sound you will find.Forget audiophile music, friends. Find real music with audiophile-quality recording – this is one of those. The depth of the soundstage is so impressive on the Rotel RB-1582 MkII that this modern but short track becomes musically addictive. On MartinLogan ESLs, the openness of the musical presentation was worthy of head-in-vise listening. It was just that good. The little pops and clicks (not from vinyl, as this is an HD file if ever there needed to be one) from the acoustic guitar keep time in this rendition of The Beatles’ classic. A quality audiophile amp can deliver more detail, as well as dynamics.
Will the Rotel RB-1582 MkII Hold Its Value?
The barrier to entry for a solidly-made, powerful, well-crafted power amp at $2,199 isn’t too high, so you don’t have a whole lot of value to lose from the start. Rotel, as a brand, is sold in the best retailers, big box locations and pretty much every good online/catalog reseller. Rotel is a blue-chip brand in the consumer electronics/audiophile world, and this amp will have a long lifespan with lots of appeal to all sorts of clients in years to come, thus your investment will be safe here.
What is the Competition for the Rotel RB-1582 MkII Amp?
There are some audiophiles who simply can’t pop for $2,200 to upgrade their power, but who are reading this review and are thinking, “I want more headroom.” “I want more dynamics.” That’s where something like the uber-affordable Monoprice M2100X stereo amp (read Eric Forst’s review) comes in. With influence from ATI’s Morris Kessler (as legend suggests) this made-in-China amp could shoot up in price or become hard to get your hands on, but it has a lot of the appeal of the Rotel RB-1582 MkII for a fraction of the price. Is it as refined or built as well? Nope, but you do benefit from the direct-to-the-consumer business model, resulting in an almost impossibly low price for a meaningful audiophile upgrade.
The Monoprice amp was a Class-AB design, like the Rotel RBV-1582 MkII. At $2,500 a pair, the brand-new Orchard Audio Starkrimson 25 monoblock amps (review pending from Andrew Dewhirst) are comparably-priced and packing GaN (Gallium Nitride – learn more here) technology. GaN is a semiconductor-based amplifier technology that has all of the benefits of exotic, high-maintenance and often high-energy-draw power amps like Class-A designs or tube amps, and delivers it in a small form factor with big power output and nearly none of the downsides. One trick is that Orchard’s GaN designs don’t always play well with some electrostatic designs (MartinLogan ElectroMotion ESLs are hybrid electrostatic speakers), but they crush it when playing on Bowers & Wilkins 802 D4s (read my review). I’ve done the Pepsi Challenge with Orchard’s more expensive amps and my reference Class-A design Pass Labs XA-25 (read my review), and the differences are small. You do give up a little bit of power on paper, but I couldn’t tell a difference between the power output of the two options.
Another lower-cost option from the world of new-school Class-D amps is from Buckeye Audio. Using a Hypex chip set, Dylan and his team make some of the best-sounding high-power amps in the market today, and nearly all audiophiles can hope to someday afford one. At $1,095, the Buckeye Amps Hypex NCx500 (read the review) is a slick solution that feels more like an ADCOM for a modern era. Speaking of ADCOM, if you wanted to go with a true classic, designed by Nelson Pass, there is the ADCOM GFA-555ms (GFA = Great F***ING Amp) and is a design proven over 30-plus years in the market. Like a DeLorean, you can buy a modern/new version of this iconic amp for about $1,600 from The Audio Legacy retailer online.
Final Thoughts on the Rotel RB-1582 MkII Power Amp …
Whether upgrading from an integrated amp or a receiver, or just making a step forward with your separate electronics, the Rotel RB-1582 MkII (buy at Crutchfield) is a rock-solid option for many audiophiles in the market right now. With ample amounts of power, a beefy power supply and the kind of build quality that you expect from an amp designed to last a generation, not a season – the Rotel RB-1582 MkII is a winner.
Sonically, you are going to get vastly upgrade dynamics, more control and tons of headroom for most of today’s somewhat easy-to-drive speakers. Nobody needs a big, external power amp to reproduce loud sound. However, if you want to get into more control, detail and dynamics, many audiophiles would benefit from such a meaningful power amp. Order one up or take one home for an audition, and you will hear what I am preaching about. You will not be disappointed.
