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At this store we also listened to the Pioneer VSX-53 vs the Denon 3803. I think something was set up wrong, because the Denon sounded like poop
Maybe it was poop. I had the 53TX and the flagship RSX1065 in my same room. CD player playing 2 channel direct on the 43TX sounded neutral and did not add to the sound compared to the RSX1065. 43TX sounded almost exactly as when I had the CD player hooked straight into the power amp. My CDplayer has volume control. The RSX 1065 seemed vieled maybe because it doesnt have bypass and is using the digital stage for volume. You should check out your 1066 is that is not the case.
Also for multichannel music and DVD playback. The Rotel could never match the speakers well tonally. The use is in millisecond delay is all but useless. Do you REALLY know how many millisecond it takes the sound of your center and main speakers to hit you. How many millesecond you should set your rears to the front channels.
The use of distance for delay makes sence. Sit down and get a measuring tape out and enter the distances for all your channels. The 53Tx will set up the delays automatically.
And most importantly is MCACC. I never believed in this before and doubted this as a gimmick even if Sushi said many times this is the real thing. Well even if you have an all Axioms lineup there is some tonal diffrences between the line-up. Not as much as having different speaker but there is some difference.
I tried manually setting the speakers between my planer speakers and the vp150 and my old PMC TB2 center. For the life of me I could not match anything. It was too difficult to match. Even when I had all PMC all around it was close but not equal. I tried matching the vp150 and QS4 and that also was not easy. I could not get a match. Qs4 had a higher tonal character than the VP150.
Thats when you pop in the special microphone and run the MCACC software. It shoots out multiple pink noise test tones at different tonal ranges and auto-calibrates all the speakers to match it in 5-6 different ranges of sound frequency. In the end what come out is having all the speakers to match or almost match tonally in most ranges of sound frequencies. I was blown away when the pink noise of the QS4 and the VP150 tonally matched in level and frequency with my planer speaker...WOT!!!!. It was pretty close. Your talking 2 totally different sounding speakers. I was floored. So the ELite series has EQ calibration in 5-6 ranges of tonal frequencies .... the RSX 1065 does not have that.
I think that is why the 53TX sounded way better than the Denon. It is properly configured.
As good as the Rotel is for power and being musical I think technology has just surpassed it and the Elite's and the Yammy lines were just smarter thinking.
Craig if you actually have volume control on your CD player or a preamp ... try connecting your CD player straight to your Rotel power amp. See if you get the same sound as when you have it connected to your pre/processor. If thats the case then the 1066 has analog by pass signal and using a analog attunuator rather than using its digital volume control stage. To me it was a big difference and it was time for me to sell the 1065 off. It was/is still a great receiver just a little bit of a big dinosaur.
