NewBuyer - no hard feelings! There should be no question that the 1068 is a respectable piece of equipment. As I said, my observations were nothing more than what my ears heard and my preferences interpreted what was reported by my ears. There was someone else here in the forum who found the 1068 a bit harsh, but that obviously doesn't mean there aren't going to be people, systems, and/or rooms where no such harshness exists. As for my comments regarding the remote and manual, I was viewing both through the eyes of a newcomer to home theater rather than someone with prior HT equipment knowledge.

Hey Gonk, you may be referring to me and my results with my Rotel 1068 and Outlaw 950 side by side comparo. I found the 1068 to be quite a bit more harsh than the 950 and ended up returning the 1068. My wife who's not nearly as in tune with such things agreed with me.

Fast forward to the 1st shipment of 990's off the reservation list: I spent several days doing a side by side of the 990 and 950 and ended up Ebay'ing my 950 away. I love my 990 and while I have not had the opportunity to do a side by side a 1068 again, I can only imagine my results would be the same as the 1st round.


Later,
Simp

I asked this question on another board and didn't get a satisfactory answer, so I'll ask it here.

What, exactly, in a pre processor (or receiver for that matter) makes it warm, bright or harsh?

Remember we are talking about a flat frequency response from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz or higher and low THDs of less than .08%.

What is making the difference???????????

Unfortunately I can only report what my wife and I heard, or thought we heard. Can't really tell you why it sounded that way. But there was a significant difference in the sound.

One thing I forgot to mention is that I was running all the pre/pros through a Rotel RMB1075 amp. That's one reason I was so surprised that the Rotel didn't work out. I figured, "Same brand, the Rotel has to outshine the Outlaw." It didn't. The Outlaw pre/pros just sound so much more pleasing to my ear that I couldn't justify the extra $'s on the Rotel 1068. At the time the 1068 was almost twice the price of the 950. I knew that 950's were fetching very good prices on Ebay (I ended up making a killing on mine) so I took up my spot on the reservation list for the 990.

later,
Simp

sraber: what you heard is what you heard. I'll not dispute that.

But, the specific point is that you simply can not tell any difference if the frequency response is flat and the THD is very low. That is fact. Tests have shown that unless the THD is several %, the human ear can hear no difference. You can't have those very low THDs and NOT have a relatively flat frequency response.

So, I'm back to what is the ACTUAL difference in the pre processors and/ or recivers that people hear? Are the people fooling themselves? Are the specifications cooked? Is something else going on?

The terms warm, bright, harsh, etc. were "coined" years ago to describe speakers whose frequency response was NOT flat across the spectrum. I had an interesting post from Alan Lofft (you may recall the name) on this subject on another board. Alan is now a technical consultant for Axiom speakers. If anyone is interested, I will repost his comments here.

I entirely understand your question, ratpack, but unfortunately I do not know what design aspects would be responsible for the sort of differences between units that people (myself included) so often report. My first instinct upon encountering such noticeable differences is to check for mistakes in setting up the equipment - bass management issues (such as main speakers set to small and a sub set to on in a system without a sub), tone control settings that are not zeroed out, or some sort of odd EQ being introduced, for examples - since those are the most logical source of noticeable variances in sound. In the case of my experience with my co-worker's 1068, I had gone through those items in some depth, so I have a hard time attributing my experience in that case solely to a setting oversight.

Others with some hands-on audio electrical circuit design experience may be able to offer some hints. The only aspects that I have heard and can make a clear and straightforward case for would be noise floor - as an example, I'm far from the only person to comment on how absolultely dead quiet the 990 can be (when ground loops are cleared out of the system, of course), whereas the 950 had the teething pains of the red dot and blue dot revisions in an effort to eliminate a noise floor-related hiss. That doesn't really seem to relate well in my mind to issues such as one unit sounding "harsher" than another or any of the other sonic-related critiques that we so often hear about.

I'd be interested, ratpack, even if just a link to the other forum. Thanks.

-SM

Here it is:

"Hi Ratpack,

Those two terms have been in common usage among some of us that participated for 20 years or more in the double-blind listening tests of loudspeakers conducted at the National Research Council in Ottawa.

If you were on the listening panel, there was a vertical rating scale for "Brightness- Dullness", with "very dull" at the bottoom and "very bright" at the top, as well as a kind of ideal mid-position. Dull signified a depressed midrange and rolled off highs, so it was "muffled" and "lacked detail".

"Very bright" verged on harshness; too much midrange and high-frequency emphasis. But you could use "bright" as a compliment as well, meaning "bright, quite detailed" or you might qualify that a bit, if you heard treble resonances that were annoying.

"Warm" was typically used to describe a speaker whose frrequency response had an audible boost in the upper bass octaves from about 80 Hz to 500 Hz. It might be about 3 dB or so, but it lent a kind or "rich" (another synonym) fuzzy resonance to male voices, double bass, cello, etc.

"Warm" was also used to describe a kind of rich, harmonic wash that characterized speakers with lots of even-order harmonic distortion in the bass octaves, and that was also applied to some tube gear, which typically adds that kind of "musical" distortion to signals. Audiophiles mistake that quality for some ethereal or mysterious trait that belongs to their particular tube device. In fact, it's just a different kind of musical distortion, but distortion nonetheless.

The opposite of "Warm" might be termed "Lean", lacking bass content or "Thin"--too little bass relative to midrange and treble.

Regards,

Alan Lofft
Axiom Resident Expert"

And, now, some are using those terms to describe pre processors and receivers that are supposed to have a very flat frequency response and very low THD!!

Go Figure!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gonk: unless someone can offer a strong alternative, I think that one of the following must be technically and theoretically correct.

1. The listener is fooling himself.

2. The manufacturers are cooking the specifications.

3. Both 1 and 2.

I don't know how to answer your question Ratpack. Have you done extensive listening to different processors to draw this conclusion? I am curious as to which ones you compared that you found indistinguishable.