I am currently using a 950 and a Rotel 1075 amp. My Rotel dealer gave me a killer price on the 1075 and I was using my Onkyo receiver as a pre/pro. I found a buyer for the receiver and had to go pre/pro shopping. I ended up wanting to listen to the Rotel 1068 and 950 mainly because they were the only pre/pros that landed within my budget. So I did audition the 950 and 1068 pre/pro side by side and I finally decided on the 950 for several reasons. But ultimately I thought the 950 just sounded better.

I was originally interested in the 1068 because it was upgradable, had PLIIx, and seemed to be the perfect match for my 1075 amp. The 1068 that I was auditioning was slightly back level in software and as a result I experienced some bugs that have all been resolved in newer code. I agree with Gonk regarding the harsh or overly bright sound of the 1068. I was very surprised about this. I really thought that this was going to be the perfect match for my 1075 amp and B&W speakers. Not so. I'm not a big advocate of "break-in" periods, but I wanted to give the thing a fair shot so I let it play for about 3 days straight. No change in sound at all.

I don't necessarily agree with the comments about the 1068's manual and remote. Being a geek, I spent a lot of time going over the manual before I got the 1068 in my house. Setup of the 1068 was, imo, very straight forward and provided more options than the 950. I think the remote is superior to the remote supplied with the 950. But this was never part of the audition as I already owned a universal remote that I was happy with.

Enter the 950. At first I was hesitant to order it. I was worried that it was getting "dated"; I was concerned about the limited 45mhz bandwidth component video switching; lack of upgradability was also an issue. But based on what I read here and reviews on other sites, I bit the bullet.

Out of the box the 950 sounded better than the 1068 ever did. And this was before I tweaked it for my setup. I am still amazed how good this thing sounds.

At first I was thinking that the comp. video switching was screwing with my picture, but after swapping the 1068 back in and out, I realized that there really wasn't any difference at all. So the component video switching turned out to be a non-issue, and since I'll soon be getting a Denon 2910 DVD player with HDMI output, I'll stop using the 950 for video switching altogether.

So in the end, I have no regrets going with the 950. The Rotel is a nice unit. I guess it just didn't fit in my system. (Still not sure I understand that one.) So I saved a lot of cash and endedup with a better sounding system. I love it.


Later,
Scott