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Equipment Report
back must stop before the menu
can be brought up onscreen (this,
in contrast to receivers that overlay
menus on top of playback screens,
and that allow playback to continue
while menu adjustments are be-
ing made). Second, when modify-
ing surround mode settings from
the user menu, mode changes do
not take place in real-time. Instead,
they take place only after the asso-
ciated input has been de-selected
and then re-selected.
Remote contRol
Rotel's backlit remote control is—
as AVR remotes go—blessedly
simple and straightforward to use.
A particular strength is that the Ro-
tel remote makes it very easy to ap-
ply channel-level trim adjustments
on the fly. I do, however, have two
minor quibbles with the remote.
First, it does not provide direct
any means for on-the-fly switching
between surround sound modes
(although buttons that provide a
limited range of surround mode
switching are hidden behind a flip-
open hatch). This won't be a draw-
back you're the sort of individual
who likes to pick a favorite mode
and stick with it, but if you like to
experiment with—and do back-
and-forth comparisons between—
various surround modes, the re-
mote (and the menu structure) will
definitely slow you down. Second,
the remote is set up so that certain
buttons vary their functions de-
pending on whether you give them
a "short" or "long" push. This can
be a bit confusing until you've mas-
tered the "short vs. long" learning
curve.
Video PeRFoRmance
I evaluated the performance of the
Rotel's built-in line-double/scaler
using the Silicon Optix HQV Bench-
mark DVD, and found the RSX-
1550 performed extremely well—
especially so on the HQV disc's
challenging jaggies tests. The Rotel
stumbled in just two areas, exhibit-
ing a few flickering moiré patterns
on the familiar racecar-passing-the-
grandstands scene from the "Film
Detail" test, and showing a very
slight lack of smoothness on the
disc's notoriously tricky "Film Ca-
dence" test/
The Rotel proved capable of
switching/passing through very
high-resolution Blu-ray images
without adding any visible noise or
other artifacts.
Sonic chaRacteR
Many of the Rotel components I've
experienced in the past, have had
an airy and transparent, but also
somewhat lightly balanced char-
acter, but it seems to me that the
RSX-1550 breaks new ground, in-
troducing a sound that is some-
what warmer, a bit darker, and—for
want of a better term—more "or-
ganic" in nature. In practice, this
means the RSX-1550 shifts the fo-
cus of the listener's attention more
toward bass and midrange frequen-
cies, rather than emphasizing mids
and highs.
Bass is taut, emphatic, and—if
your main speakers and/or sub-
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