Hi, my name is Eric, I'm a writer here at Crutchfield and I'm here today to talk to you
about the Rotel DT-6000. It's part of their Diamond Series, and it's a kind of a unique component. It is
a CD player, but it is also perfectly capable of functioning as a standalone DAC, and we'll talk
more about that. As you watch the video, you may notice that the screen on the front of the unit
appears to be flickering...that's just a camera artifact, it definitely does not look like that
in real life. So I've owned a lot of CD players over the years, and something about this one that
stood out to me from the very beginning is just how quiet it is. Rotel calls the tray that you
place the CD in a "smooth action tray," and it's got a spring-floating mechanism that makes it
very silent when you play CDs. You can't hear any mechanical noise, you just hear the music.
As with almost all Rotel components, there is an audiophile-grade toroidal transformer in here,
and power is crucial to the resolution that you're going to get out of this machine. Resolution is
really the key word I want you to keep in mind when you think about the Rotel DT-6000
because that was its most impressive performance characteristic when I listened to it. The thing
that makes this component most impressive is the DAC chip that's inside. It is a 32-bit/384kHz
DAC, which a lot of things have. This one, however, is constructed differently. It's an eight-
channel DAC chip, so each output gets four channels dedicated to producing the highest resolution
from your digital music that you can get. The DT-6000 only has analog outputs, which is kind of
unusual, but the DAC chip in here is so impressive that you really wouldn't want to use anything else.
For the audiophiles, there are XLR balanced outputs, and then there are also unbalanced RCA outputs
as well. The reason that I refer to this as a standalone DAC as well is that this unit has
inputs for digital sources. If you want to take advantage of this chip that's in here for your
other digital components, you can plug them into this and they're going to sound even better. There
is a coaxial digital input on the back, as well as an optical digital input. There's a type-B
USB for plugging in your computer to listen to all those high-res files you have stored
there. Now there is a type-A USB on the back as well, but that is just for firmware updates.
And because of the fact that there are inputs on this unit, you will notice there are more buttons
on the front than you'll usually see on a CD player, because you are able to switch between
those inputs as well as just use the playback functions for the CD player. There are lots of
nice, rounded buttons that are easy to use on the front, and those are mirrored on this handy
remote control which lights up so you can use it if you're listening at night. So I happened to come
of age during the time when compact discs were the primary source that you listened to music on,
so I have a lot of them that I've been listening to for a couple of decades now, so it was very
interesting to put some of those CDs into this machine and listen to them and experience them
in a whole different way. There were a couple of different ways that I chose to test the high-
resolution ability of this player. One was I put in a disc with a jazz orchestra that had lots of
parts, lots of different sections in the orchestra, and being able to hear that wall of sound and yet
still pick out individual instruments, individual sections, really hear how they came together to
form the hole was very impressive to me. Another way I like to test that is I listen to maybe a
guitarist who has a very precise finger picking style. I'd listen to somebody like BB King or
Charlie Hunter and really hear the way their notes ring out, and that's where that resolution becomes
goosebump-inducing. It's not just I'm listening to music, it's I'm feeling the music. So that's the
Rotel DT-6000. It's a CD player with a standalone digital-to-analog converter in it that brings out
really high-resolution sound from your digital sources. So if you have any questions about this
unit or anything else, please don't hesitate to contact us here at Crutchfield. Thanks for watching.