Rotel RCD-971 CD player with HDCD support (internals and listening impressions)

At October 2002 i opened my Rotel RCD-971 CD player in order to check out which DACs it's using.

I was deeply impressed by its engineering and parts quality.

I really don't know how Rotel managed to make any profit from such machine at 700$.

I hope you will enjoy these pictures.

You can see here a piece of damping material on the cover. This is one of the very recomended tweaks for the Hi-Fi equipment and usually sold separetely.

It should damp case vibrations. In this particullar case it's places right above the transport - probably the most critical place.

This is a part of power supply section. You can see a size of the torroidal transformer. Not every integrated amplifier has such good transformer.

In inexpensive CDP ? It's just amazing !!!

Now, pay attention to tens of these black electrolityc capacitors which are used here.

Exceptional thing about them is that almost all of them are "Rubycon" from "Black Gate".

This is a true audiophile grade type of capacitors and each tweak guide recommends at some stage (usually more advanced one) to replace all capacitors to this type.

In this 700$ CD player it's built in from a factory - WOW !!!

Huge Rotel proprietary condensator.

There are 2 of them.

Tech people said that they're probably part of PSU although they're very close to analog stage.

vvv