My cousin called me last year and said that he had a couple grand that he wanted to spend on an upgrade to his stereo system. He already had a decent modified Hafler preamplifier and amplifier, so all he needed was a CD player and a new pair of speakers. He is a member of a four-time Grammy-winning string quartet, and in fact is in LA this week to hopefully take home two more, so I wanted to find him the best that I could for the money.

On the surface, two grand doesn’t seem like much when you’re buying for someone with the level of musical refinement that my cousin has, but the choices were actually quite easy. The speakers were a no-brainer: I got him the Vandersteen 2Ce Signatures. These are perhaps my favorite floor-standing speakers on the market, and the fact that they cost less than $1500 is a testament to Richard Vandersteen’s commitment to making quality audio that doesn’t have to break the bank. I myself have had a pair of 2Ci’s for 11 years and have no plans on letting them go, except for maybe an upgrade.

The CD player, though initially a difficult choice, turned out to be equally painless after seeing John Rutan at Audio Connection in Verona, New Jersey. He gave me two choices: the Rega Planet and the Rotel 951. The Rega sounded wonderful but was out of my cousin’s price range (these classical guys don’t make much money, so buy all their CD’s that you can!). The Rotel, at a shade under $400, is nothing short of a marvel. I have a $3000 Wadia 830 CD player (see my review in this section) that I use in my studio. It is, in my opinion, the best one-box CD player that money can buy. But the Rotel was no 98-pound weakling when sparring with the Tyson-like Wadia. While there were differences between the Rotel and the Wadia, they were so minor that they are hardly worth mentioning.

I had heard about Rotel’s high-quality players for some time, but I wasn’t ready for what I heard from the 951, which is the company’s bottom player. To get them out of the way, I’ll start with my negative comments. The highs are a bit etched and on the wrong system could be perceived as shrill. The build quality, though excellent, is not what you’d get from some of the American or British manufacturers. That’s it… I told you that they probably weren’t worth mentioning. Now on to the positive.

The Rotel’s sound carries a weight that I have never heard in a player costing under $1000. The imaging (left-to-right placement of instruments and voices) is dead-on perfect, which is an indicator of how well the 951 handles information in the 800hz-5khz range, which I call the melting-pot of frequencies. It’s here that most CD players fail in my opinion, because this is the range where the human ear is most sensitive. Even the subtlest of nuances are easily heard when they happen in this range of frequencies. As I said, the Rotel was a bit etched at the top of this range, but when combined with a famously laid-back speaker like the Vandersteen, it is absolutely right. My cousin’s first comment when listening to a reference CD-R of the quartet’s newest release was that it got the relationship between the violins and the viola right. He had had a hard time finding a system that could pull that off, but the 951 in tandem with the 2Ce did it nicely and left him some money for cables.

My living is made in the rock/pop arena, not in the classical world. I wanted to hear for myself how the 951 performed on rock music, and I am pleased to say that it did just as well here as it did on classical. I listened to my own recording of The Urge’s "Too Much Stereo" (Immortal 49498-2) and was thrilled with the voice/guitar relationship. This record is very dense in the middle and like with the earlier violin/viola relationship, the 951 pulled it off with flying colors. To add to this, the bottom end was warm but still punchy. A critical area for me when listening to a piece of gear is how the relationship between the bass guitar and the kick drum is represented. While the studio mix has everything to do with how well you hear each instrument, a good CD player should be able to pull off the separation between the two with no trouble. You’d be surprised how few CD players can actually handle it, but the 951 deals with it just fine.

Next, I listened to Massive Attack’s "Mezzanine" CD. This is the true test of weight combined with air and imaging. The only CD players I have heard as of this writing that are able to provide the deep bass and the placement of percussion while keeping the depth of the synths intact are the Wadia 830, the new Rega Planet 2000 and the full line of Rotel’s players, including the 951. On speakers that are able to reproduce the lowest of frequencies, the 951 is all alone when compared to CD players costing under $700. The new Rega is $950 and the Rotel 971 is about $700, and I would have to say that all around these are better players, but remember that the 951 costs less than half the price of the Rega!

One word of caution: Most of you are aware of the current format wars going on between SACD, DVD-A, DVD-V and HDCD. Rotel's entire line is HDCD ready, but the general feeling in the industry is that of all emerging formats, HDCD is probably the least viable. My opinion is that HDCD doesn't hold a stick to SACD or DVD-A in terms of true, full bandwidth resolution, and therefore I cannot claim that Rotel's implementation of HDCD is necessarily an advantage.

I would recommend the Rotel 951 to anyone who wants a great CD player at a small price. When my mom said she wanted a new system last month, I had no reservations about getting her the 951. So there you have it... if it’s good enough for my mom, it’s good enough for you!

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 379